Wilson and Weber: Bourgeois Critics in an Organized Age

Abstract

\incent Ostrom's provocative book, The Intellectual Crisis in Public Administration,' reflects current search for self-definition among students of public administration. Concerned not only about future directions in field, such writers also have speculated about what previously accepted doctrines may have contributed to excessive centralization and rigidity frequently said to characterize contemporary private and public institutions.2 As a critic of mainstream public administration theory, Ostrom argues that at heart of problem is convergence between early scholarship in field and Weberian model of bureaucratic administration. He contends that discovery of Weber's academic sociology among social scientists after World War II reinforced classical principles of public administration advanced by such early writers as Woodrow Wilson and thus closed off promising efforts to go beyond them. Wilson and Weber, in other words, converged on similar principles of effective government, and prescriptive theory derived from their work has been burden of public administration ever since, a burden now necessary to overthrow. The classical yardsticks which Ostrom argues have contributed so much to bureaucratic ethos include such maxims as divided power is irresponsible power; administration lies outside sphere of politics; all modern governments have strong structural similarities in administrative functions; hierarchical order of professionally trained public servants is a precondition of good administration; perfection of hierarchical organization will maximize efficient administration, and perfection of good administration is a requirement of modern civilization. Insofar as Wilson subscribed to such doctrines, he stands with Weber in anti-democratic tradition of administrative thought. In his review of Ostrom's thesis in Public Administration Review, Robert Golembiewski agrees that principles Ostrom outlines have indeed been predominant among theoreticians of public administration. But Golembiewski rightly notes that critics have been chipping away at them for much longer and with much greater effect than Ostrom implies. Golembiewski suggests, moreover, that Ostrom would have been on firmer analytic ground had he emphasized (let us say) Weber rather than Wilson as his theoretical nemesis.I In other words, Ostrom might justifiably complain that classical administrative principles and Weber's definition of bureaucracy converge, but he exaggerates when he claims that such principles can be derived from Wilson's commentary on these issues. Golembiewski argues that Ostrom exaggerates Wilson's impact * A counterpoint between political thought of Woodrow Wilson and Max Weber shows that Wilson's approach to administrative organization was an indirect reply to Weberian pessimism about future of individual freedom in a bureaucratic age. Both critics and defenders of Wilson's early, seminal essay on administration have missed this fundamental point. Nor have they paid sufficient attention to historical context in which that essay was written. Nor have they tried to understand evolution of Wilson's thought on relationship between politics and bureaucracy as he emerged into public life as university president, state governor, president, and war leader. Even a cursory look at some of these developments underscores Wilson's ongoing search for a distinctively American type of state with the bureaucratic fever shaken out of its veins.