Glimpsing an Alternate Construction of American Public Administration

• Author: Mordecai Lee
• Published date: 01 July 2013
• Date: 01 July 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095399711433405
• Subject Matter: Articles

Administration & Society

45(5) 522 –562

© 2012 SAGE Publications

DOI: 10.1177/0095399711433405

aas.sagepub.com

433405AAS45510.1177/00953997

11433405LeeAdministration & Society

© 2012 SAGE Publications

1University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, USA

Corresponding Author:

Mordecai Lee, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Suite 6000,

161 West Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53203-2602, USA.

Email: mordecai@uwm.edu

Glimpsing an

Alternate Construction

of American Public

Administration:

The Later Life of

William Allen, Cofounder

of the New York Bureau

of Municipal Research

Mordecai Lee1

Abstract

Founded in 1907, the New York Bureau of Municipal Research was central

to the emergence of American public administration. But in 1914, its Board

sided with Frederick Cleveland against William Allen, deciding to guaran-

tee Rockefeller funding by eliminating Allen’s publicity and controversy-

generating orientation. Allen quit, then founded the Institute for Public

Service. He maintained it for nearly 50 years, producing a steady output

of reform suggestions. This article recounts Allen’s largely unknown post-

1914 career. Increasingly an outsider, his later career presents a glimpse of

an alternate history of public administration, distinctly different from the

path the field actually chose.

Keywords

New York Bureau of Municipal Research, Institute for Public Service, William

H. Allen, public administration history, publicity

Article

Lee 523

The New York Bureau of Municipal Research (NYBMR) was founded in

1907 and codirected by the trio of William Allen, Henry Bruère, and Frederick

Cleveland (“The ABCs”). Tevelow (2000) credited the concept of the new

institution to Allen, as his “brainchild” (p. 38). The story of the Bureau has

been well covered in histories of American public administration and political

development (Dahlberg, 1966; Finegold, 1995; Kahn, 1997; McDonald, 2010;

Schachter, 1989, 2000, 2011; Stillman, 1998; Stivers, 2000, 2006; Williams,

2002, 2003). One of the factors contributing to its seminal status was its unique

blend of Allen’s social activism and Cleveland’s accounting orientation. Allen

felt that reforming government required mobilizing public opinion through

noisy agitation and publicity, whereas Cleveland saw government as a machine

that needed to be finer tuned by experts and specialists. For as long as it lasted,

theirs was a combustible synergy of in-house and out-of-house strategies,

good cop and bad cop, accomplishing efficiency through eye-glazing and

incremental improvements versus using blunt instruments of democracy by

publicly calling out corruption and then channeling the resulting civic wrath.

One of the trademarks of Allen’s role in the Bureau was a mass-mail publica-

tion called Efficient Citizenship. These were intended for relatively lay audi-

ences, not public administration professionals. The purpose of the mailings

was to educate the citizenry with seemingly objective information, expose

maladministration in government, and then trigger civic activism to press for

the reforms indicated by that issue. Allen’s formula for successful agitation

and communication included small postcard size (so a recipient would not

have to open an envelope to see the contents), brightly colored paper to attract

attention, and arresting headlines on the same side as the address and postage

(Schachter, 1997).

In some respects, the romantic view of the NYBMR in public administra-

tion’s history is because, up to the 1914 crisis, it truly was all things to all

(academic) people, with efforts to increase democracy and civic participation

side-by-side with government by experts and fact-based research. This has

given it a near mythological status in public administration’s history, of a brief

era of near-perfection in the pursuit of good government.

But these two strains of Progressive reform were too antithetical to last

long. This led to a titanic struggle, well covered in the literature, in 1914

between Allen and Cleveland over the modus operandi of the bureau. Allen,

the idealist, was strongly in favor of continuing the Bureau’s high-profile,

publicity-oriented, and democratic approach by involving the citizenry in

reform (Recchiuti, 2007; Rubin, 1994; Schachter, 1997). Cleveland, more the

technocrat, saw the reform movement as a way to place a professionalized

524 Administration & Society 45(5)

government of experts beyond the reach of mass democracy (Lee, 2011). (By

now, Bruère had left.) The deciding factor was money. John D. Rockefeller,

Sr., offered the Bureau a commitment of a stable and generous cash flow,

but—due to his earlier infamy as a predator and monopolist in the oil

busi ness—was only interested in doing good when it was noncontroversial,

neutral politically, and not confrontational to the privileged beneficiaries

of the status quo (Roberts, 1994). Efficient Citizenship’s format, tone, and con-

tents embodied just about everything that Rockefeller sought to avoid any link

to. The newsletter was practically the embodiment of controversy and agitprop.

This was the last thing that a millionaire seeking to change his image would

want to be identified with. His conditions “effectively stripped the Bureau of

its watchdog role” (Finegold, 1995, p. 61). Essentially, he was asking the

Bureau to recant Allen’s doctrine and engage only in dull (at least to the news

media) apolitical reform. Cleveland, with the majority of the board, took the

money and ran. Allen was out (Kahn, 1997). At age 40, what now?

In retrospect, Cleveland’s win was a major intellectual and philosophical

fork in the road. The reorganized NYBMR continued to influence the govern-

mental research movement as the heir of its pre-1914 preeminence. It was the

prototype of the right way to go. As a result, public administration as a profes-

sion and as an academic discipline emerged largely as an embodiment of these

seminal choices: technocracy over idealism, insider status over agitation,

expertise over vox populi, and administrative autonomy over politics. In the

larger sense, public administration chose to side with the economic status quo

of the privileged, moneyed, and corporate-based power of the economic elite.

Major social change and redistribution of economic power was not of interest.

Public administration was a tool of the power elite, not its adversary.

As the loser, Allen’s post-NYBMR 50-year career roughly presents a

glimpse of an alternate history of American public administration. His life’s

work embodied a “road not travelled” by the discipline, presenting in a rela-

tively tangible outline what the field could have been. Given that history is

written by winners, Allen’s later career has understandably been largely

ignored, mischaracterized, or given short shrift. For example, Allen continues

to be depicted as the heavy in the fight over his controversial survey of the

University of Wisconsin (Cook, 2007). In another instance, Recchiuti (2007)

stated that Allen’s Institute for Public Service (IPS) was “short-lived” (p. 123).

In fact, it existed until 1962. What if Allen had won in the showdown over

NYBMR? Given the bureau’s influence on the nascent profession of public

administration, what impact would Allen’s leadership have had on the agenda,

scope, and shape of public administration?