Ideal and Practice in Public Administration by Emmette S. Redford Review by: James W.

Fesler The American Political Science Review, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Mar., 1959), pp. 199-200 Published by: American Political Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1951741 . Accessed: 04/01/2014 13:36
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

American Political Science Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Political Science Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 207.30.63.143 on Sat, 4 Jan 2014 13:36:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS

199

outside pressures. The administrative organization best calculated to defend institutional integrity may bear little resemblance to an organization that groups related functions under common direction. Each of these books should be read by students of administration, but the Selznick volume deserves special recognition for its readability and for its suggestive, stimulating ideas.
MARVER BERNSTEIN.

Princeton University. Ideal and Practice in Public Administration. BY EMMETTE S. REDFORD. (University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press. 1958. Pp. xii, 155. $2.50.) The American practice of public administration has gained a distinction that has been obscured, at least in academic circles, by doubts about theoretical foundations, philosophic values, and criteria of success and failure. In an admirably organized set of lectures at the University of Alabama, Emmette S. Redford has sought a "public philosophy for administration" by exploring five ideals that recur in the literature of the field. These are efficiency, the rule of law, competence and responsibility, democracy, and the public interest. His quest reflects the interplay of a logical mind, sensitively experienced participation in administration, and scholarly study. It reveals even more his commitment to "institutionalization of ideals" as "the supreme task of political science." This is a task, he argues, in which "informed and semi-objective judgment," resting usually on inconclusive data, must perform a function that eludes exact science. Each of the five ideals is given its due as a moving force in administrative behavior and as a test that can be used in measuring certain aspects of administrative performance. Redford is least satisfied with the ideal of efficiency, whether in the guise of the old or the new orthodoxy. This is not because it lacks validity in the circumstances to which its more prudent adherents confine it, but because these circumstances exclude so significant a part of real-life administration. Fact and ethic, quantity and quality, neutral means and intermediate and ultimate goals are intertwined in much of administrative decision-making. Value-free decisional situations and those in which value premises are authoritatively furnished to administrators are not the most important portion of the universe of public administration. The rule of law in its older form has lost vitality, but "administrative due process" has become integral to administration itself not only through mimicry of the courts and statutory prescription of procedures, but as well through administration's own emphasis on hierarchy, clearances, and elaborations of procedures. Discretionary policy making and program development, however, get little guidance from the ideal of the rule of law; it is a rule for procedure rather than a source of wisdom on substantive policy decisions. Given administration's embroilment in choices among values, Redford looks for assurance to the technical and professional competence of administrative personnel and the accompanying internalization of a sense of responsibility. The broadening of values beyond those of the specialists is sought in "a layer of generalists at the top level of the professional service," a ready inflow of

This content downloaded from 207.30.63.143 on Sat, 4 Jan 2014 13:36:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

200

THE AMERICAN

POLITICAL

SCIENCE

REVIEW

talent from outside the service, laymen's participation, ready access for those affected by decision-making, and effective presidential control of administration, which, in turn, "creates the conditions for effective control from the Congress." Redford's discussion of the public interest will not satisfy definitional demands, nor yet will he concede that the concept is mystical or mythical. The concept cannot "be either escaped or canalized in a definition .... It signifies rationality and fraternity but it comprises also the balancing of claims, a certain priority for generally-shared needs and interests, an effort 'to trace things as far as possible before acting,' a continuing machinery for decision upon claims of interest and response to the organic and ideological developments in society." The public interest treatment is crucial to the argument of the book. It underlies an analysis, valuable in itself, of societal and governmental arrangements that by design or chance tend to maximize the probabilities that the public interest (if such there be) will prevail. But, perhaps inevitably, the argument for the existence of a public interest will reassure the faithful rather than convert the doubtful, for Redford does not start from the skeptics' premises and there is therefore no common meeting ground. A quest for the ideals of public administration is concerned with the ought as well as the is. By descriptive and prescriptive analysis, Redford has advanced our ability to explain observable contrasts in the distinction with which administrative responsibilities are discharged. This he could not have done by converting oughts into noughts. JAMES W. FESLER. Yale University. History of the United States Civil Service. BY PAUL P. VAN RIPER. (Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson and Company. 1958. Pp. xvii, 588. $7.50.) In this ambitious volume, Professor Van Riper has made a significant contribution to the growing library of works on American administrative history. This work, inspired some twenty years ago by the late Leonard D. White, reflects in its approach and thoroughness the guiding hand of the author's great mentor. It is in the main a straight chronological record, from the early days of the Washington administration to 1958. Replete with facts, illustrations, and quotations, it is well organized and smoothly if not excitingly written. The tremendous amount of research and reading, apparently carried on over much of the past two decades, is clearly reflected not only in the text but also in the helpful bibliographical notes appended to most of the chapters and in the abundance of supporting footnotes. It will be a useful addition to the growing armory of teachers, scholars, and students concerned with the development of public personnel administration or the history of public administration generally. The subject matter of the book is somewhat less sweeping than its title suggests. It is essentially a history of personnel administration in the Federal government with emphasis on the civil service reform movement and, in more

This content downloaded from 207.30.63.143 on Sat, 4 Jan 2014 13:36:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions