The Study of Administration

"The Study of Administration" was an article published in the June 1887 Political Science Quarterly publication by Woodrow Wilson. It is widely considered a foundational article in the field of public administration, making Wilson one of the field's founding fathers, along with Max Weber and Frederick Winslow Taylor.

Overview

Although colleges were already teaching public administration in the 1880s, it was considered a subfield of political science. Wilson argued that it should be treated as its own field of study, with public administrators being directly responsible to political leaders. He believed that politicians should be accountable to the people and that political administration should be treated as a science, and its practitioners given authority to address issues in their respective fields.

"The Study of Administration" was heavily inspired by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's treatment of law and the state in his work Elements of the Philosophy of Right, especially Hegel's picture of how public institutions arise and mediate social conflict.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Wilson, Woodrow (1887). "The Study of Administration". Political Science Quarterly. 2 (2): 197–222. doi:10.2307/2139277. JSTOR 2139277. Retrieved 9 December 2012.
  2. ↑ Christopher Hood (30 March 2000). The Art of the State: Culture, Rhetoric, and Public Management. Oxford University Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-19-829765-9. Retrieved 15 December 2012.
  3. ↑ "Woodrow Wilson on Administration". Archived from the original on September 26, 2012. Retrieved 2012-12-15.
  4. ↑ Pestritto, Ronald J. (May 22, 2019). "The German Stamp on Wilson's Administrative Progressivism". The American Mind. Retrieved 2026-04-28.