Federal-State Personnel Relations

Abstract

T HE rapidly expanding literature of public administration has wisely ignored much of the old-line political science which was one of its several parents. It has not worried itself greatly about sovereignty or pluralism or academic distinctions between types of states, and has thus avoided much confused metaphysical thinking, all unrelated to reality. At the same time, however, public administration should be alert to pick up any political science viewpoints which may affect the basic goals of our administrative institutions. Recent treatments of administrative aspects of American federalism have been unfortunately devoid of careful analysis of the manner in which the fundamental goals of our American federal system are affected by the administrative institutions described. For example, Professor V. 0. Key's otherwise brilliant study of The Administration of Federal Grants to States 1 omits the most fundamental reason for operating governmental services through grants to the states rather than through a Federal agency-the value of political decentralization for the maintenance of constitutional, democratic government. Moreover, although the book mentions such other important purposes of a grants-in-aid system as the desirability of flexibility, it consistently omits mention of instances in which an excess of Federal administrative zeal has defeated these purposes. Similarly, Professor Jane Perry Clark portrays The Rise of a New Federalism 2 in a volume which, however stimulating, makes almost no