Rethinking Public Administration’s Roots in Pragmatism

• DOI: 10.1177/02750740022064597
• Author: Keith F. Snider
• Date: 01 June 2000
• Published date: 01 June 2000
• Subject Matter: Articles

ARPA
Snider / June
R
2000
ETHINKING ROOTS IN PRAGMATISM
RETHINKING PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION’S
ROOTS IN PRAGMATISM
The Case of Charles A. Beard
KEITH F. SNIDER
Naval Postgraduate School
This article portrays the pragmatism of Charles S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey as an
insignificant influence during the early years of American public administration. The mainstream
thinking during that time was exemplified by the ideas of Charles A. Beard, an influential figure in
the early era of the field. Beard’s writings illustrate the way public administration ignored impor-
tant aspects of pragmatism in favor of practical attitudes and focus on apolitical efficiency. As a
result, administrative orthodoxy developed in opposition to pragmatism, which explains the aban-
donment and misinterpretation of Mary Parker Follett’s ideas. Equipped with the recognition that
public administration has never really given pragmatism a chance, scholars and practitioners may
be led to consider its possibilities in a contemporary administrative context.
“Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (“Silver Blaze,”
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894)
Around the turn of the 20th century, pragmatism gained such prominence
through the ideas of well-known writers such as William James and John Dewey
that it became, as Commager (1950) put it, “almost the official philosophy of
America” (p. 97).1 This period, of course, is also what we in American public
administration commonly recognize as the founding era of our field of study.2
One might expect then, at first blush, that pragmatism would have influenced
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful criti-
cisms and helpful suggestions in the development of this article.
Initial Submission: June 1, 1998
Accepted: November 29, 1999
AMERICAN REVIEW OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Vol. 30 No. 2, June 2000 123-145
© 2000 Sage Publications, Inc.
123

---

124
ARPA / June 2000
the field’s early development in important ways; and indeed, a few writers (e.g.,
Stever, 1986) have given their views of the significance of this influence.
In this article, I present a different perspective of pragmatism as “the dog that
didn’t bark” at public administration’s founding. The purpose is to document the
circumstances surrounding this “curious incident” and to highlight it as an
important aspect of the field’s history. Using the writings of Charles A. Beard to
represent the main ideas of early administrative writers, I show that the early
field neglected critical points of the pragmatism of James and Dewey, with pro-
found consequences.
Pragmatism offered, as we shall see, a perspective that integrated thought and
action, and hence, avoided fact-value and ends-means dualisms. If such a per-
spective had indeed influenced the founding, then public administration could
have developed along much different lines. For example, the politics-
administration separation might not have occupied such a central position in
early public administrative thought (Goodnow, 1900). Nor might Herbert
Simon, many years later, have considered drawing a distinction between ele-
ments of fact and value in his Administrative Behavior (1947). Nor might we
today be concerned with a gap between administrative theory and practice (see
the symposium on this subject in the June 1998 issue of Administrative Theory &
Praxis). Thus, an understanding of what was missed at the founding through this
neglect of pragmatism, and why it was missed, can give important insights into
both the origins of the field and its subsequent development. But this topic is
more than a mere point of historical interest; rather, it has relevance for the field
today. Specifically, such a new understanding of public administration’s roots
may give theorists and practitioners a new way of thinking about pragmatism,
enabling them to consider it a guiding perspective in the contemporary adminis-
trative setting.
Public Administration’s
Taken-for-Granted Heritage in Pragmatism
In recent years, several writers (e.g., Fox & Miller, 1996; Wamsley et al.,
1990) have sought to reconstruct the field to bring about a resolution to its well-
documented problematic issues—the identity crisis, the legitimacy issue, the
theory-practice gap—all of which are generally attributed to modernism’s past
dominance of mainstream administrative ideas. Some theorists (McSwite,
1996; Miller & King, 1998) see pragmatism as holding promise for such a
reconstruction.
Ironically, there exists within the field a certain heritage in or way of thinking
about pragmatism that may actually hinder such efforts. Such a legacy has arisen
in the following way. The neglect of pragmatism at the founding may be
obscured to many in the field by text references to early public administration as
“pragmatic” (e.g., Mosher, 1975, p. 4), with no accompanying explanation as to

---

Snider / RETHINKING ROOTS IN PRAGMATISM
125
how this might relate to the ideas of James and Dewey. Unless one is a student of
pragmatism, one quite naturally may assume a relationship and thereby also pre-
sume historical ties between contemporary public administration and pragma-
tism. This issue has added significance when one considers that the word prag-
matism is a label now “remarkably devoid of content,” as George Will put it
(1998). In common usage, it has come to mean mere practicality or expedience.
As a consequence, many in public administration may believe that they have a
heritage in pragmatism and that this heritage means simply “doing what works.”
Such a perspective effectively disables pragmatism as a basis for contempo-
rary reconstruction projects, for why should practitioners and theorists wish to
consider pragmatism as an alternative to the administrative mainstream as long
as they take for granted that it refers simply to the practical outlook that has
always characterized the field? Thus, to affirm pragmatism’s legitimacy in pub-
lic administration, it is important to understand how and why it came to be
missed at the time of the founding.
An objective of this article, then, is to add to the kind of enabling historical
perspective lacking in a field “enthralled with modernity” (Adams, 1992). But
rather than an antimodern project, this article is more a response to postmodern-
ist calls for renewed attention to history (Kildeff & Mehra, 1997). As Miller and
King (1998, p. 52) have pointed out, the postmodernist activity of reflective his-
torical analysis (or deconstruction, in which writers reveal the origins of a field’s
problematical conditions in implicit assumptions and taken-for-granted habits
of practice) need not destroy meaning. Rather, it may expand possibilities for
meaning through the creation of opportunities to reconstruct the field on an
alternative basis—one more suited to the current needs of the field.3
OVERVIEW
This article begins with a brief review of the essential elements of pragma-
tism as expressed by its most well-known, turn-of-the-century proponents. The
next section surveys the literature of the history of ideas in public administration
to review how the field’s intellectual historians regard pragmatism’s influence
during the founding period. The focus then turns to the administrative thought of
the period to show the absence of influences of pragmatism. The discussion cen-
ters on Beard, an exemplar whose ideas typified public administrative thinking
during this time. The article describes the constrained, operational outlook that
Beard embraced and that excluded important features of the pragmatism of phi-
losophers such as James and Dewey. This account also helps explain why the
ideas of a later pragmatist, Mary Parker Follett, were excluded from the adminis-
trative mainstream. The article concludes with comments and suggestions for
contemporary scholars who may be seeking the kind of reconstruction of the
field referred to above.

---

126
ARPA / June 2000
PRAGMATISM AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS
In such a brief space, I can provide only a sketch of some important aspects
of pragmatism. The purpose of this review is to provide a sufficient foundation
for subsequent discussions of pragmatism’s influence in early public
administration.
Pragmatism arose from a perceived need to reconcile two diverging trends in
19th-century philosophy (Stumpf, 1966, pp. 402-404). One trend can be charac-
terized as scientific, empirical, probabilistic, objective, utilitarian, secular, and
democratic. This trend, influenced by Darwinism, portrayed humans as mere
elements in universal biological or mechanical processes. The other inclination,
described as idealist, rationalist, romantic, and transcendental, gave people a
central place in the universal scheme. The mind’s ability to reason, as well as its
moral and religious sensibilities, provides purpose and gives meaning to life.
Rorty (1982) has described the schism between these trends according to how
each viewed Truth
To be on the transcendental side was to think that natural science was not the last
word—that there was more Truth to be found. To be on the empirical side was to
think that natural science—facts about how spatio-temporal things worked—was
all the Truth there was. (p. xv)
The pragmatist philosophers—Charles S. Peirce (generally regarded as pragma-
tism’s first proponent), James, and Dewey—attempted to...