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Expert Administrators in Popular Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

A. Lawrence Lowell
A. Lawrence Lowell
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Presidents, governors and mayors certainly cannot be experts in all the matters with which they are called upon to deal, nor, as a rule, are they thoroughly expert in any of them; and in fact this is generally true of officers elected to administer public affairs. We cannot, therefore, avoid the question whether they do, or do not, need expert assistance if the government is to be efficiently conducted. The problem is not new, for the world struggled with it two thousand years ago. The fate of institutions has sometimes turned upon it, and so may the great experiment we are trying today—that of the permanence of democracy on a large scale. Americans pay little heed to the lessons taught by the painful experience of other lands, and Charles Sumner expressed a common sentiment when he remarked sarcastically his thankfulness that they knew no history in Washington. Our people have an horizon so limited, a knowledge of the past so small, a self-confidence so sublime, a conviction that they are altogether better than their fathers so profound, that they hardly realize the difficulty of their task. We assume unconsciously, as a witty writer has put it, that human reason began about thirty years ago; and yet a candid study of history shows that the essential qualities of human nature have not changed radically; that men have little more capacity or force of character than at other favored epochs. Some improvement in standards has, no doubt, taken place, and certainly the bounds of human sympathy have widened vastly; but there has been no such transformation as to justify a confidence that the men of the present day can accomplish easily and without sacrifice what to earlier generations was unattainable.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , February 1913 , pp. 45 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1913

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References

1 Die Kaiserlichen Verwaltungsbeamten bis auf Diocletian. Otto Hirschfeld, 2d Ed. 1905Google Scholar. See especially the concluding chapter.

2 For the influence of the permanent officials see Prof. W. B. Munro's Municipal Government in Europe; and for the English cities see also the writer's Government of England, chap. xl.

3 A Municipal Program, pp. 80–82.

4 City Government in the United States, p. 191, et seq.

5 Mr. Ford C. MacGregor, in his City Government by Commission, lays down four essential features of the plan. First, a concentration of all power and responsibility in a small body, instead of dividing it between an executive and a legislative branch. Second, election at large and not by wards. Third, the fact that the members of the commission are the only elective officers of the city, with power to appoint all subordinate administrative officials. Fourth, the power to remove all such officials at will. None of these features is in the least inconsistent with the existence of permanent expert officials in charge of departments which are supervised but not directly administered by the members of the commission. In fact all these features, except the election at large, exist in the English cities where the administration by permanent officials prevails.

6 MacGregor, op. cit., pp. 38–39.

7 Ibid., pp. 43–44.

8 Mr.MacGregor, , City Government by Commission, p. 49Google Scholar, remarks: “It is probably now generally recognized that it is easier to secure professional and technical men by appointment than by popular election.”

9 One of the few direct encouragements in any American city charter to the use of experts in municipal government is to be found in the new charter of Boston, which provides that an appointment by the mayor shall not take effect unless the civil service commission of the State certifies that the appointee is an expert or a citizen qualified by his character and experience for the position. This is not a very long step, and makes no provision for the proper use of experts; but it was designed, by drawing attention to the need of them, to promote their selection, and it has not been without effect.

A very incisive discussion of the function of experts in municipal government is contained in the latest Baldwin Prize Essay by Arthur Dexter Brigham.

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