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“The Public Interest” in Administrative Decision-Making: Theorem, Theosophy, or Theory?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Glendon A. Schubert Jr.
Glendon A. Schubert Jr.
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Extract

Textbooks in public administration customarily conclude with a section on administrative responsibility. The charitable inference is that this location betokens the saving of the best till last, rather than the appendage of an afterthought. Herbert Kaufman might explain it as the preoccupation of the past generation of political scientists with the legitimation of the efficient exercise of administrative power to subserve the goals of the social state, with a consequent sublimation of the emerging problem of the control of large, professionalized bureaucracies. However that may be, it does seem clear that, with the exception of administrative decisions which adversely affect “civil liberties,” most political scientists have been content to let lawyers and defenders of the free enterprise system worry about the restraint of administrative action.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1957 , pp. 346 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1957

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References

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3 Ibid., p. 18.

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7 Waldo, op. cit., ch. 6.

8 Dean Leys has insisted that any coincidence between his concept of discretion and Freud's must be entirely coincidental. (Letter to the writer, February 27, 1956).

9 Leys, op. cit., p. 19.

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16 Redford, op. cit., pp. 229–230. Italics in the original.

17 Ibid., p. 233.

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27 Ibid., p. 20. Italics supplied.

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29 For further illumination on this issue, consult: McClosky, Herbert, “The Fallacy of Absolute Majority Rule,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 11, p. 637 (1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Kendall, Willmoore, “Prolegomena to any Future Work on Majority Rule,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 12, p. 694 (1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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35 Ibid., pp. 50–51.

36 Appleby, Paul, Policy and Administration (University, Alabama, 1949), pp. 43–44Google Scholar.

37 The phrase is borrowed from the late Mr. Justice Jackson's dissenting opinion in Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 319 U. S. 157, 179 (1944).

38 Truman, op. cit., pp. 448–449.

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45 Ibid., pp. 548–549, 551. The same view is expressed by Pfiffner, and Presthus, , Public Administration (N. Y., 1953), p. 530Google Scholar, who say that “his feeling for the public interest is an emotive force, bound up with the administrator's personal code of values, which will often, in turn, reflect the dominant egalitarian values of our society. The public interest, in this sense, is a democratic ideal which exerts a varying degree of influence on official behavior.”

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47 Monypenny, Phillip, “A Code of Ethics for Public Administration,” George Washington Law Review, Vol. 21, p. 429 (1953)Google Scholar. He has also said that a code would be “useful in reducing to systematic statement the highest standards of perception and devotion which are active within an agency and securing their general adoption.” “A Code of Ethics as a Means of Controlling Administrative Conduct,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 13, p. 187 (1953)Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., p. 441

49 Cardozo, Benjamin N., The Nature of the Judicial Process (New Haven. 1921), pp. 66–67, 174–175Google Scholar.

50 Monypenny, op. cit., p. 435.

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52 See, for instance, Arnow, Kathryn Smul [Committee on Public Administration Cases], The Consumers' Counsel and the National Bituminous Coal Commission, 1937–1938 (C.P.A.C., rev. 1950)Google Scholar.

53 Long, Norton, “Power and Administration,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 9, p. 260 (1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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