The United States of America as Rechtsstaat: State and Administrative Law as Key to Understanding the Administrative State

• Author: Jos C. N. Raadschelders
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12763
• Published date: 01 May 2017
• Date: 01 May 2017

458 Public Administration Review • May | June 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 3, pp. 458–465. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12763.

Jos C. N. Raadschelders is professor

of public administration and associate

dean for faculty development at the John

Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio

State University, and affiliated with the

Institute of Public Administration, University

of Leiden, The Netherlands. His research

interests include the nature of the study

of public administration, comparative

government, administrative history, and civil

service systems. He is author and editor of

multiple books and peer-reviewed articles.

From 2006 to 2011, he served as managing

editor of

Public Administration Review

.

E-mail: raadschelders.1@osu.edu

Stephanie Newbold and David H. Rosenbloom ,

eds., The Constitutional School of American

Public Administration ( New York/Milton Park :

Routledge , 2016 ). 255 pp. $78.92 (cloth), ISBN:

9781466567252; (eBook), ISBN: 978315438962 .

T he editors of this volume have assembled

a number of pieces published in the past

35 years that provide evidence for the existence

of a Constitutional School in the study of American

public administration. What makes this collection

important is that it shows how, in the past 40+ years,

scholars of public administration slowly fleshed out

such a constitutional perspective of government ’ s

role and position in society in a study that, until the

1960s, was mainly caught in a rather technocratic,

instrumentalist, and logistic mode in response to

social and political pressure to produce “usable”

knowledge (i.e., policies and actions that show

immediate results, and thus prove that the study of

public administration is a worthwhile endeavor).

This volume showcases articles written by public

administration scholars who recognize how vital it

is to legitimize administrative action on the basis of

an explicit and clear normative foundation. They

generally find that attention to the legal context of

administration is not standard in the study of public

administration. It seems to me that there are at least

three reasons why (national) state and administrative

law tend to be overlooked. First, public administration

scholarship is focused on the recent past and the

future. Second, many take the political-administrative

institutional superstructure for granted, believing it

is firmly in place and does not need any tweaking,

so that we only need to focus on operational issues.

Third, governments are expected to solve problems

preferably yesterday; in other words, there is a very

short-term focus when it comes to results.

The volume contains a total of 13 articles published

earlier in Public Administration Review ( PA R ) (8

articles) , Administration & Society ( A&S ) (2 articles),

Review of Public Personnel Administration ( RoPPA )

(2 articles), as well as the Blacksburg Manifesto . Each

is preceded by a brief introduction by (mostly) the

original author(s). I will not review the content of

these earlier published pieces, since they have been

through peer review. Instead, in this essay, I will reflect

upon those pieces to make the case that education

and research in state and administrative law must be a

standard element in public administration education

and research and that the study can ill afford to

predominantly focus on the operational, day-to-day,

activities. So, this is not a standard book review, but

rather an essay with reflections that were prompted

when reading the draft text of the book that one of

PAR ’s book review editors, Danny Balfour, sent me.

Having not seen a print proof, I can only refer to

chapters in the volume. I have organized this essay

around several angles that together provide for a

framework to assess this volume. But first a few brief

remarks about the objectives of the editors.

The Constitutional School and Its Program

In Federalist 27 and 68 , both referenced in

Stephanie Newbold ’ s 2010 PAR article (Chapter 1

in this volume), Alexander Hamilton was very clear

about the relation between people as citizens and

their government: government would be trusted

and obeyed as a function of the goodness of its

administration. In his words (#68): “…the true test

of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to

produce good administration” (Wills 1982 , 347). The

administrative state Dwight Waldo ( 2007 [1948])

wrote about had yet to emerge, but a century later,

it was clear, at least to some, that government and its

bureaucracy were vital in guiding society through the

rapid changes wrought about by industrialization,

urbanization, and rapid population growth. While as

early as the 1820s, Hegel had hailed the career civil

service as the new guardians of democracy, it was

clear toward the end of that century that civil servants

played a pivotal role in policy and lawmaking. In

the words of Bismarck: “With bad laws and good

civil servants … one can still govern, with bad civil

Danny L. Balfour , Editor

Jos C. N. Raadschelders

The Ohio State University

The United States of America as Rechtsstaat :

State and Administrative Law as Key to

Understanding the Administrative State