Government & Public Administration

400–337 BC

Shen Buhai and the Fa-Jia articulated an early abstract theory of administration and merit system

Figures of the Fa-Jia school emphasising merit, above all Shen Buhai, are credited with the greatest influence on Chinese administrative practice. Creel argues that Shen Buhai's writings contain the seeds of the civil service examination and an early theory of administrative technique. They stand as rare pre-modern examples of administration treated as a body of knowledge.

2nd century BC

Ancient China created the first highly centralised bureaucratic state and the earliest meritocratic civil service examinations

By the second century BC the Chinese state had instituted recruitment of officials through civil service tests, producing what is described as the earliest example of a meritocracy. Chinese administration was regarded as advanced relative to the rest of the world until the end of the 18th century. The model later influenced French and British bureaucratic reform.

1578

Akbar convened a symposium of philosophers discussing judicious administration and welfare schemes

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak's Ain-i-Akbari records a gathering of philosophers from various faiths held at Akbar's instance. The account refers to Charvaka law-makers who emphasised good work, judicious administration and welfare schemes. It is cited as evidence of indigenous Indian traditions of administrative thought.

18th century

Frederick William I of Prussia established professorates in Cameralism to train public administrators

The Prussian king created university chairs in Cameralism at Frankfurt an der Oder and the University of Halle to produce a new professional class of administrators. These institutions emphasised economic and social disciplines with the aim of societal reform. Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi became the best-known professor of the subject, making this one of the first formal training systems for state officials.

1847

Thomas Taylor Meadows argued in Desultory Notes that China's endurance rested on advancement by talent and merit

The British consul in Guangzhou published an influential account attributing the longevity of the Chinese empire solely to good government through promotion of men of talent and merit. The work helped transmit the Chinese examination model into British debates on civil service reform. It preceded the Northcote–Trevelyan Report by seven years.

late 19th century

France adopted civil service examinations based on general cultural studies

French bureaucracy, like the British, was shaped by admiration for the Chinese system, with Voltaire claiming the Chinese had perfected moral science and Quesnay advocating a Chinese-modelled political economy. The examinations adopted late in the century rested heavily on general cultural studies, a feature likened to the earlier Chinese model. This entrenched examination-based entry into the French state.

19th century

Women's civic clubs and the Settlement movement built voluntary networks that reshaped municipal administration

Upper-class women in the United States and Europe organised voluntary associations to mitigate the excesses of urbanisation and industrialisation, which grew into networks able to drive policy and administrative change. They secured cleaner streets, water and sewage, safer workplaces, playgrounds, libraries, juvenile courts and child labour laws. Settlement Houses in immigrant slums amplified the work, forming an alternative model of public administration.

1854

The Northcote–Trevelyan Report recommended recruitment by competitive examination on merit

Influenced by the ancient Chinese imperial examination, the report proposed that civil servants be recruited by competitive examination, hold a solid general education permitting inter-departmental transfer, and be promoted on achievement rather than preferment, patronage or purchase. Its adoption created Her Majesty's Civil Service as a systematic meritocratic bureaucracy. It became the template for professional civil services elsewhere.

1855

Lorenz von Stein founded the science of public administration as an integrating discipline

The German professor at Vienna rejected the prevailing view that public administration was merely a branch of administrative law. He taught that it drew on sociology, political science, administrative law and public finance, and that administrators must attend to both theory and practice. He argued it qualified as a science because its knowledge was generated and evaluated by the scientific method.

1887

Woodrow Wilson formally recognised public administration in "The Study of Administration"

The article asked what government can properly do and how it can do those things with the utmost efficiency at the least cost of money or energy. It is credited with founding public administration as a field of study in the United States. Wilson's separation of politics from administration shaped the discipline for decades.

1920s

Max Weber expanded the definition of bureaucracy to any rule-bound professional administration

The German sociologist defined bureaucracy as any system of administration conducted by trained professionals according to fixed rules, and viewed it as a relatively positive development. His theory of bureaucracy generated substantive theoretical interest in public administration. It remains the baseline conception of the modern administrative state.

1920s

Scholars of public administration answered Wilson's call with the first textbooks in the field

By this decade public administration had acquired a teaching literature, with distinguished contributors including Luther Gulick, Lyndall Urwick, Henri Fayol and Frederick Taylor. Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management argued that scientific analysis would identify the single best way to carry out an operation. His techniques passed from private industry into government organisations.

1930

The International Institute of Administrative Sciences was founded in Brussels as the oldest international public administration body

The IIAS was established in Brussels, Belgium, and remains the oldest organisation in the field. It gave public administration a permanent transnational institutional base. Its creation marked the field's emergence as an international professional community.

1930s

Settlement movement leaders shaped the New Deal welfare reforms and entered state administration

Leaders of the Settlement movement supported New Deal reforms including income for older people, unemployment insurance, aid for dependent children and people with disabilities, child labour prohibitions and limits on hours worked. Settlement reformers went on to serve as local, state and federal administrators: Jane Addams as a garbage inspector, Florence Kelley as chief factory inspector for Illinois, Julia Lathrop as first director of the Women's Bureau and Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor. Their careers embedded the settlement model inside government.

1937

The Brownlow Committee recommended creating the Executive Office of the President

A presidentially commissioned panel of political science and public administration experts proposed sweeping changes to the United States federal executive branch. Its central recommendation was a dedicated executive office serving the president directly. The report is a landmark case of academic public administration reshaping state machinery.

2000

Camilla Stivers recovered the settlement model by publishing Bureau Men and Settlement Women

The alternative, settlement-based model of public administration had been invisible or buried for roughly a century, ignored in the field's early literature. Stivers's book restored the contributions of women reformers such as Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop and Florence Kelley. Richard Stillman credits Addams with conceiving and spawning the modern welfare state.

1993–2001

Al Gore and the Clinton Administration reformed federal agencies using New Public Management approaches

The vice president adopted NPM methods in restructuring United States federal agencies. During the 1990s new public management became prevalent across the bureaucracies of the United States and the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent Canada. This marked the doctrine's transition from theory to governing practice.

late 1990s

Janet and Robert Denhardt proposed a new public services model in response to NPM

The Denhardts advanced an alternative to the dominance of New Public Management, restoring the citizen rather than the customer to the centre of administration. A later successor doctrine, digital era governance, emphasised reintegrating government responsibilities, needs-based holism and digitalisation of services. These models framed the debate over how states should organise public service delivery.

1986

Richard Elmore traced public management theory to policy analysis in a 1986 article

Writing in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Elmore attributed the roots of public management theory to policy analysis and set out four models, including the generic model. His framework became a standard reference point for the subsequent New Public Management debate. The models remain widely accepted at municipal, state and federal levels and across OECD nations.

mid-1980s

United States community programmes reframed policy goals around deinstitutionalisation and civil rights

Goals were expressed as independent living, community integration, inclusion, participation, deinstitutionalisation and civil rights, with the same public policy intended to apply to all citizens including those with disabilities. By the 1990s categorical state systems were strengthened and disability policy emerged as a distinct field within public policy curricula. The shift broadened the remit of public administration as a discipline.

late 1980s

David Osborne and Ted Gaebler proposed New Public Management in Reinventing Government

Their book advocated importing private sector models, organisational ideas and values to improve the efficiency and service orientation of the public sector. The approach split large bureaucracies into smaller agencies, encouraged competition between public bodies and private firms, and used economic incentives such as performance pay and user charges. It recast the public as customers rather than citizens, a shift critics saw as an inappropriate borrowing from business.

1970s

Minority and women members of ASPA organised the Conference on Minority Public Administrators and Section for Women

Stimulated by the upheavals of the 1960s, racial and ethnic minority and women members of the American Society for Public Administration organised to seek greater participation. This produced the Conference on Minority Public Administrators and the Section for Women in Public Administration. The professional body's internal structure was reshaped accordingly.

1968

The Minnowbrook Conference gave rise to the concept of New Public Administration

Convened at Syracuse University under the leadership of Dwight Waldo, the conference gathered younger scholars who challenged the doctrine they had inherited. They demanded more policy-oriented administrators organised around relevance, values, equity and change. The meeting is the founding event of the New Public Administration movement.

1963–64

The United States Congress gave administrators new duties through the Equal Pay Act and Civil Rights Act

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 imposed landmark new responsibilities on public administrators. Together with the civil rights and women's movements and the Vietnam War, they redirected the profession towards relevance, values, equity and change. This fed the new public administration movement and greater participation by women and minorities.

1946

Public administration scholarship expanded to include policymaking and policy analysis

After the Second World War the concept of public administration widened from implementation to the making and analysis of administrative policy, which was integrated into government decision-making bodies. Knowledge from psychology, anthropology and sociology was absorbed into the field. Key texts included Fritz Morstein Marx's The Elements of Public Administration in 1946 and Paul Appleby's Policy and Administration in 1952.

1944–57

Ludwig von Mises and Robert Merton documented bureaucracy becoming a term of abuse

In 1944 the Austrian economist von Mises, writing from his experience of the Nazi regime, observed that bureaucracy was always applied with an opprobrious connotation. By 1957 the American sociologist Merton suggested that bureaucrat had become an epithet. The reversal of Weber's positive assessment shaped public attitudes to administrative capacity.

1940s

Second-generation scholars challenged the politics–administration dichotomy

Beginning in this decade, scholars including Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick contested Wilson's separation of politics from administration, Gulick offering a fact–value dichotomy and a "seamless web of discretion and interaction". Gulick's generic theory of organisation stressed scientific method, efficiency, professionalism, structural reform and executive control, summarised in the acronym POSDCORB. Fayol's fourteen-point treatment of private management encouraged a single theory blurring public and private sectors.

1939

The American Society for Public Administration was founded as the leading professional body for the field

ASPA became the principal professional group for public administration in the United States. It went on to sponsor the journal Public Administration Review, founded in 1940. Together they provided the field's professional and scholarly infrastructure.

1939

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress enacted the Reorganization Act of 1939

Acting on the Brownlow Committee's recommendations, Roosevelt lobbied Congress to pass the Act, which produced Reorganization Plan No. 1. The plan created the Executive Office of the President, reporting directly to the president. It institutionalised central executive capacity in the American state.