Federalist No. 72: What Happened to the Public Service Ideal?

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Date	01 December 2011
Published date	01 December 2011
DOI	http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2011.02474.x

James L. Perry is Distinguished Profes-

sor at Indiana University Bloomington

and World Class University Distinguished

Professor at Yonsei University in Seoul,

South Korea. He is the coeditor of Motiva-

tion in Public Management: The

Call of Public Service (2008). Dr. Perry

is a fellow of the National Academy of

Public Administration. His current research

interests include public service motivation,

performance pay, and job security.

E-mail: perry@indiana.edu

What Happened to the Public Service Ideal? S143

James L. Perry

Indiana University Bloomington and Yonsei University

Federalist No. 72 is an oft-neglected defense of the

president’s reeligibility for election. However, the paper

goes well beyond this issue to basic models of human

nature and motivation. James L. Perry’s essay confronts

this broad issue as a guide to “a public service ethic.” Like

other authors in this special issue, Perry reads broadly

through the Federalist Papers in search of a deeper

def‌i nition of public service motivation as a balance

between the potency of passion and the limits of reason.

Controlling passion was no doubt important to the

founders, but it may have drowned out the greater good

envisioned in public service commitments to acting on

behalf of the people.

Federalist No. 72 focuses on a narrow issue:

whether the chief magistrate—subsequently

called the president—should be permitted

to serve without term limits, or whether he should

be subject to term limits specif‌i ed in the Constitu-

tion.  e issue is framed as one of “reeligibility”:

should the chief magistrate be eligible for reelec-

tion or unlimited terms as long as citizens voted to

return him to of‌f‌i ce? Alexander Hamilton of‌f ers a

detailed accounting of the advantages and disadvan-

tages of limiting the tenure of the chief executive.

 e insights that he of‌f ers about the mind-set of the

founders, however, go well beyond the narrow issue

of reeligibility. During the course of his arguments

about the chief executive, Hamilton revealed a good

deal about his view of the

administrative psyche.

What models of human nature

and human motivation can

we glean from Hamilton’s

arguments in Federalist No.

72? This is the first of sev-

eral questions that I take up

in this essay. In rethinking

The Federalist Papers for the

twenty-first century, I seek

first to establish Hamilton’s

original position and then

to assess how his models of human nature have

held up in the nearly 225 years since he wrote

Federalist No. 72. Has anything changed to alter

the viability of Hamilton’s model? How should we

modify administration for the twenty-first century?

The essay will conclude with revised language for

Federalist No. 72 to articulate the importance of a

public service ethic and how to reinforce it across

federal administration.

Hamilton’s Vision of Administration: What

Does Federalist No. 72 Tell Us?

 e focus of Federalist No. 72 was on the chief mag-

istrate and whether his duration in of‌f‌i ce should be

limited. Hamilton came down squarely against term

limits for the chief magistrate.

Hamilton built his argument that any form of

term limits on the chief magistrate was pernicious

on three premises. His f‌i rst premise rested on the

motivational consequences of imposing rules about

terms. He contended that term limits dimin-

ished inducements for good behavior.  e second

premise—that term limits reduced the wisdom that

comes with experience—mixed motivation- and

cognition-based arguments. Finally, term limits

risked banishing people from positions when their

presence could be of critical importance for the

public interest.  is disadvantage touched on the

potential negative ef‌f ects that

removing an incumbent would

have on the conf‌i dence of

citizens, who would see the

removal of an incumbent as

irrational.

Although commentators

frequently refer to the spare

administrative apparatus that