The Becoming of the Policy Maker
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0095399719890301 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Author | Roy L. Heidelberg |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2019
Article
Administration & Society
2020, Vol. 52(8) 1239 –1267
The Becoming of the
© The Author(s) 2019
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Policy Maker
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399719890301
DOI: 10.1177/0095399719890301
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Roy L. Heidelberg1
Abstract
This essay explores the development of the term “policymaker” by
reviewing major periodicals from 1870 until 1940, with particular focus upon
the period of 1920 to 1940. Events of this period provide insight into the
conditions under which “the policymaker” emerges as a concept. Although
“policymaker” is today a commonplace, this was not always so, as a simple
overview of the term’s usage indicates. In fact, the term itself was virtually
unused until about 1940 in both periodicals and academic journals. This
essay contends that the idea and identity of the policymaker take shape
alongside the development of the administrative state, a contention explored
through a consideration of how the policymaker develops in the context of
debates about education policy and about executive requirements in the
period of 1920 through 1940. The essay concludes with a consideration of
the policymaker as a modern political identity.
Keywords
policymaker, administrative state, Brownlow Committee, education
Introduction
In 1920, the term “policy maker”1 was virtually unused. Today it is a common-
place in political discourse, yet it is not always clear what the role of the poli-
cymaker is when the term is used. Sometimes the policymaker appears as a
1Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA
Corresponding Author:
Roy L. Heidelberg, Louisiana State University, 2053 Business Education Complex, Baton
Rouge, LA 70803, USA.
Email: royh@lsu.edu
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Administration & Society 52(8)
legislator, an official designated through elections to decide on what occurs
within a jurisdiction; sometimes the policymaker appears as an advocate, a
person whose focus upon an issue and advocacy leads to change. The policy-
maker is even referred to independent of human agency, as in the case of the
atomic bomb, which has itself been described as a policy maker (Brodie, 1948).
The term itself does not refer to a specific function or role. Instead, as the
conclusion of this study suggests, the idea of the policymaker is best under-
stood as a modern political identity that emerges from practical attempts to
develop the modern administrative state. As such the connection between
the becoming of the policy maker and public administration, understood as
the set of activities that constitute the modern state, is perhaps obvious.
Public administration is itself an essential project in making the modern
state, and part of that process entailed the development of an agent, which
we have come to know as the policymaker. As an initial point of evidence,
one need only turn to the document widely cited as sparking the discipline
of public administration, Woodrow Wilson’s 1887 essay titled “The Study of
Administration.” Wilson’s use in this essay of the term “policy making,” an
idea that would come to play an important part in the development of the
kind of state and government that Wilson and his progressive compatriots
envisioned, is considered the first formal entry of the term in the English
language (see the Oxford English Dictionary entry of “policy-
making”). Thus, the term policymaking is born alongside a call to develop a
study of administration that would serve the specific context of the United
States. Whether or not this fact has any importance is open to interpretation,
but it is the contention of this essay that it does. Policy making, the policy
maker, and the administrative state are all born of a common endeavor,
which is to arrange a body politic that satisfies the demands of governing
with the values of popular sovereignty, and the present study considers this
development in the particular context of U.S. political culture. Bringing to
light the role of the policy maker as it becomes a modern political identity
can help us to understand what is specific about the institutional arrange-
ment that Dwight Waldo (2007) named the administrative state.
If the term policymaker did not become commonly used until the mid-
20th century, then what term was used to designate that role? This is precisely
the point: There was not a role that suited a policymaker, as we understand it,
until the 20th century with the political and policy problems stemming from
theories of progressivism and the emergence of mass society, the very condi-
tions under which the administrative state took form through ideas and prac-
tices associated with Public Administration. These broad social forces shaped
and continue to shape the idea of the policymaker, though it would be inac-
curate to say that those social forces caused the policymaker. Moreover, we
Heidelberg
1241
cannot turn simply to the definition of policymaker to discover this, for the
definition is at once ambiguous and self-referential.2 The meaning of the term
exists somewhere in its evolving usage, and to witness this evolution we must
attend to the period when the political values of progressivism take form
through national institutions in the United States. That period is generally the
interwar period of 1920 through 1940, although the idea of the policymaker
really became cemented in the period during and immediately after World
War II. Nevertheless, the policymaker becomes a concept and a political
agent alongside the ascendance of a certain strain of Progressivism that
tended more toward statism than individualism. This strand of Progressivism
developed into the political movement of New Deal liberalism and influ-
enced the development of the administrative state in the United States.3
The focus of this study is on that period between the two great wars, 1920
to 1940, under the assumption that exploring the development of the idea of
the policymaker helps to show how the political project of Public Administration
took form. The concerns of early 20th century U.S. government include grow-
ing attention to the ways in which executive powers can be used to improve
the conditions for all. In the beginning, the term is used in a way that might
best be described as a floating signifier, a way of directing attention to some
activity but without a concrete understanding of any referent. This is most
evident in the discussion of the involvement of policy makers in education
reform, where the idea is expressed in the debates over universal, state-directed
education. By the late 1930s, however, there is a growing sense that some
identity must be assigned to these officials whose role in governing is increas-
ingly without doubt amid the expanding responsibilities of government. The
idea of a policymaker begins to appear in news periodicals concerning discus-
sions over executive power as well as political party interests. By the time of
the first major reorganization of government by the executive in the United
States in 1939, the notion of a “policy-determining official” as having specifi-
cally executive powers is enough of a concern to warrant debate over how
such an official would fit into the established administrative system.
This study focuses upon those two aspects in the development of the poli-
cymaker, fashioned here as education and executive requirements in the
United States. I show how the term evolved from an ambiguous signifier of
agency in the education context to a concern with retaining room for discre-
tion in an expanding administrative state and the related political problems
this raised. The relevance of this inquiry to Public Administration is primarily
justified by an absence. The idea of a policymaker is a common concept
despite the fact that many of the benchmark thinkers of Public Administration,
including Wilson, Frank Goodnow, and Leonard White (1939), do not refer-
ence “policy makers” in their work on Public Administration. By the late
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Administration & Society 52(8)
1930s, as executive reorganization coincides with an expanding administra-
tive state, the policy maker emerges prominently as a new political identity
associated with bringing into force the activities of administration. It was not
to administrators or civil servants that the concerns of administration turned.
When, as the Brownlow Report declares, the president needed help, the pol-
icy maker emerges as the agent to provide it. In short, the modern political
identity that I describe as the policy maker is a specific production of Public
Administration and the administrative state.
Research Approach
The focus of this essay is the period between 1920 and 1940, which, as will
be clear, precedes the ascendance of the policymaker as a political identity.
To investigate this, I focus upon the use of the term in journals indexed in
JSTOR, but the prompt for the inquiry was a simple search of the term in the
Google collection digitized books. Assuming this digitization of print mate-
rial is an adequate sample of the cultural usage of certain phrases and terms
(Michel et al., 2011), the striking observation about the term policymaker
(and the variants “policy-maker” and “policy maker”) is the relative rise in
use starting in 1940 (see Figure 1).4 Among the digitized books, the term
itself was virtually unused until the 1940s.
A JSTOR search...
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