Looking for Meaning in the Alabama Lectures' Book Series: An Epitaph for an Old Friend of Public Administration after 57 Years

• Published date: 01 May 2009
• Date: 01 May 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.01998.x
• Author: Mordecai Lee

Looking for Meaning in the Alabama Lectures’ Book Series 531

Looking for Meaning in the Alabama Lectures’

Book Series: An Epitaph for an Old Friend

of Public Administration after 57 Years

Mordecai Lee is a professor of

governmental affairs at the University of

Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is the author

of

Bureaus of Eff‌i ciency: Reforming

Local Government in the Progressive

Era

(Marquette University Press, 2008),

Institutionalizing Congress and the

Presidency: The U.S. Bureau of Eff‌i ciency,

1916–1933

(Texas A&M Press, 2006),

and

The First Presidential Communica-

tions Agency

: FDR’s

Off‌i ce of Government

Reports

(SUNY Press, 2005).

E-mail: mordecai@uwm.edu

Hindy Lauer Schachter, Editor

Mordecai Lee

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Retrospective

Book Review:

Epitaph for an

Old Friend

of Public

Administration

 is essay analyzes and reviews the signif‌i cance of the

Alabama Public Administration Lecture Series, one of

the most distinguished and long-lasting platforms in

public administration. Based on guest lectures that were

delivered annually to University of Alabama graduate

students in public administration, the series began in

1944 and concluded in 2000. During those 57 years,

most of the lectures were published as books, usually by

the University of Alabama Press.  e last book of the

series will be published in 2009.  is article examines

the series as a whole and asks, what does the series

tell us about public administration? What does it tell

us about how our f‌i eld got to where it is now?  ese

questions are important because the books present a

running conversation on the important subjects of public

administration.  e article shows that the lecture series

of‌f ers a history of the f‌i eld, ref‌l ecting the topics that were

considered important by leading thinkers in their times.

The Alabama Public

Administration Lecture

Series and the published

versions of those lectures have

been one of the most prestigious

platforms for our discipline.

Beginning with the f‌i rst volume

published in 1945, which

contained the text of the 1944

lectures, to the termination of

the lecture series in 2000, at least 37 books originated

from the lectures.1 Table 1 provides a bibliography of

the series, as best as could be reconstructed.2

 e published versions of the lectures provide a

unique record of the preoccupations of public

administration over time.  erefore, a review of the

entire published series gives us an opportunity to

examine developments in our profession over more

than half a century, from the end of World War II

to the new millennium.  at is the purpose of this

limited inquiry. Its scope is the published lectures. In

only a handful of cases, I note the name of a lec-

turer whose lectures were not ultimately published.

 erefore, a related but distinctly dif‌f erent topic

that is not covered here would be a retrospective of

the unpublished lectures.  is reviewer hopes that

another researcher will pursue that topic. It would be

a welcome contribution to American public adminis-

tration history.

Context, Origins, and Demise

 e genealogy that led to the birth of the book series

began with New Deal relief programs in Alabama,

which begat a public administration contract with the

University of Alabama (UA), which begat the universi-

ty’s Bureau of Public Administration, which begat the

Southern Regional Training Program (SRTP), which

begat the lecture series, which begat the book series.

 e reason this history is so linear is that one person is

the common thread in these unfolding and sequential

developments.

In the beginning, there was

Roscoe Martin. Son of a Texas

public school teacher and su-

perintendent, he received his

bachelor’s and master’s degrees

in political science from the

University of Texas (at the time,

the sole campus was in Austin)

(Harris and Cooper 1972,

1341). His 1925 thesis was on

Alan Magayne-Roshak, UWM Photo Services

 e published versions of the

[Alabama Public Administration

Lecture Series]…provide

a unique record of the

preoccupations of public

administration over time.

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