Woodrow Wilson: A foresighter

As we know that, Woodrow Wilson is regard as the founder or father of study of public administration. Because during the evolution of public administration as a discipline Wilson played an important role in enlighten of public administration as a discipline. During the era of evolution of public administration in 1887-1926, the main theme was the advocacy for the separation of politics from administration. This advocacy was started with the publication of Woodrow Wilson’s essay "The Study of Administration" in 1887.

About Woodrow Wilson:

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson was born in 1856 in Virginia, USA. He began reading at the age of ten. As a teen, he taught himself the Graham shorthand system to compensate, and achieved academically with self-discipline, studying at home with his father, then in classes at a small Augusta, Georgia school. During Reconstruction, Wilson lived in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1870 to 1874, while his father was professor at the Columbia Theological Seminary.

After graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axson.

Wilson advanced rapidly as a conservative young professor of political science and became president of Princeton in 1902. His growing national reputation led some conservative Democrats to consider him Presidential timber. First they persuaded him to run for Governor of New Jersey in 1910.

He became two terms President of USA in 1913 and 1917 respectively. During his second term the famous “Versailles Treaty” was signed, and founded the League of Nation. For his sponsorship of the League of Nations, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize, the second of three sitting presidents so honored.

The President, against the warnings of his doctors, had made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died. Tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, he lived until 1924.

Work of Woodrow Wilson:

Congressional Government was the first work of Wilson in 1885, and advocated the parliamentary system in his work. He critically described the United States government, with frequent negative comparisons to Westminster. The book reflected the greater power of the legislature, relative to the executive, during the post-bellum period. Wilson later became a regular contributor to Political Science Quarterly, an academic journal.

The second publication was a textbook, entitled The State in 1890, by Wilson. The book was used widely in college courses throughout the country until the 1920s. In this text, he argued that government should not be deemed evil and advocated the use of government to allay social ills and advance society's welfare.

The essay of Woodrow Wilson is credited with the politics-administration dichotomy named The Study of Administration in 1887. This essay laid the foundation for a separate, independent and systematic study in public administration. Wilson came up with a theory that politics and administration are inherently different and should be approached as such.

Wilson’s View on Politics and Administration:

Woodrow Wilson is usually regarded as the originator of the “Doctrine of Politics- Administration Dichotomy”. In his essay Wilson divided government into two separate spheres of politics and administration. In his opinion, politics is dealt with questions of policy formulation; administration is dealt with carrying them out. He defined public administration as “detailed and systematic execution of public law”.

Wilson wrote in his essay in regards to public administration: “The field of administration is a field of business. It is removed from the hurry and strife of politics.... Administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics. Administrative questions are not political questions. Although politics sets the tasks for administration, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices.”

Wilson believed that administration is a science. Thus, he said that “the science of administration is the latest fruit of the science of politics which was begun some 20 hundred years ago. It is a birth of our own country, almost of our own generation. We are having now, what we never had before, a science of administration”. He called for a separate study of public administration. His basic argument was that “it is getting to be harder to run a constitution than it is to frame one”. Hence, there should be a science of administration, which shall seek:

•       To straighten the paths of government
•       To make its business more businesslike
•      To strengthen and purify its organisation
•       To crown its duties with dutifulness

Criticism Woodrow Wilson:

The politics-Administration Dichotomy has faced many criticism, they are:

1. The standard definition of the dichotomy is too narrow. If politics includes all of what we know as policy making, then the dichotomy would bar administrators, presumably including city managers, from participation.

2. The dichotomy of policy and administration was a conceptual distinction underlying a theory of democratic accountability. It was not intended to guide behaviour, it was intended as a behavioural prescription directed against contemporary practices of machine politics.

3. The dichotomy is a strict definition and there is not conceptually possible to have a one way dichotomy that keeps elected official out of administration but allows administrators to be active in policy.

4. Wilson’s statement of “Government should be run like a business” opened up many loopholes for the capitalist society to exploit the government for things they didn’t actually have. This statement ends in a very dangerous uncharted territory for people now.

As far as I think, the foundations of public administration are the deep and permanent principles of politics. Therefore, the Study of public administration was derived from the study of politics and was to be distinguished from it, but never divorced from its “maxims” and “truths”. If I agree with Wilson then the public administration was much more than technical detail and it was to be conducted in a political context.

Thus I assumed, politics and public administration as “two sides of a coin”.