Harry F. Byrd, Sr. and the New York Bureau of Municipal Research: Lessons from an Ironic Alliance

Abstract

Nearly 100 years ago political scientist Woodrow Wilson provided some of the intellectual underpinnings and the symbolic origin for the study of American public administration.' It is not surprising that, as students of politics and administration now approach the bicentennial of the Constitution and the centennial of Wilson's contribution, renewed attention is being directed to the historical and theoretical bases of the field.2 Some of these efforts have been guided by the explicit aim of identifying weaknesses or inaccuracies in various aspects of the field's conventional wisdom and thereby advancing understanding.3 This paper belongs in such a genre. A portion of any standard account of the development of American politics and administration deals with the relative roles of the administrative reform movement and the nation's political machines. During the early 20th century reformers initiated a series of alterations in the structures and conduct of public life. These changes included the commission and city manager plans of municipal government, the state reorganization movement, and civil service and budget innovations. The reformers, claims the conventional wisdom, employed their tenets of administration in doing battle not only with inertia, ineptitude, and ignorance. They also had to contend with malevolence: political machines, especially in urban locales, and their leaders -the bosses-fought reform generally and opposed such specific proposals as neutral, merit-based hiring and the development of sound financial procedures. Gradually, however, the reformers won the day against the machines.4 This is an outline of the familiar account. But is it accurate? Or, more precisely, to what extent does it underplay significant features of the actual political context? To what effect? These two questions frame the study of an important case, an analysis of which can contribute to a more mature understanding of American politics and administration. The discussion below proceeds in two stages: first, the facts of the case are presented; and second, some lessons are elicited from the case for the study of politics and administration.