A Nearly Forgotten Classic Study in Public Administration: Edward C. Banfield's Government Project

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.02053.x
• Date: 01 September 2009
• Published date: 01 September 2009
• Author: Kevin R. Kosar

Book Reviews 993

A Nearly Forgotten Classic Study in Public Administration:

Edward C. Banf‌i eld’s Government Project

Kevin R. Kosar is a contributing editor

to

Public Administration Review.

His writings

may be found at http://www.kevinrkosar.com.

E-mail: kevinrkosar@gmail.com

Kevin R. Kosar

Edward C. Banf‌i eld, with a foreword by Rexford G.

Tugwell, Government Project (Glencoe, IL: Free

Press, 1951). 272 pp. Available at http://www.

kevinrkosar.com/Edward-C-Banf‌i eld/.

Writing in the pages of this journal, Larry S.

Luton said of Herbert Kaufman’s  e Forest

Ranger, “It is regularly described as one

of the classics [in public administration] and remains

one of the most frequently cited case studies in public

administration. . . . A recent Google Scholar search

produced almost 200 legitimate hits for ‘Herbert

Kaufman forest ranger’” (2007, 167).

Would that the same could be said of Edward C.

Banf‌i eld’s marvelous case study Government Project

(1951). Like Casa Grande Valley Farms, Inc., the

New Deal experiment that is its subject, Government

Project is little remembered. My Google Scholar

search for “Edward C. Banf‌i eld government project”

produced a measly f‌i ve hits, not all of which were

legitimate, and the most recent was from a book