Woodrow Wilson on the History of Government

• Author: Jos C. N. Raadschelders
• Published date: 01 November 2002
• Date: 01 November 2002
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/009539902237277
• Subject Matter: Articles

ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002Raadschelders / WOODROW WILSON ON HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT

Fromthe days of independence well into the 1920s, much of the American study of govern-

ment was defined as the study of political, constitutional, and institutional history.The his-

torical and comparative perspectiveof Woodrow Wilsonon government is illustrative of late

19th-century public administration scholarship, which is characterizedby a) notions of the

organic state and b) the awarenessof an emerging administrative state and its centralizing

tendencies. In this article the meaning of Wilson’sThe State for the development of adminis-

trative history and for his philosophy of governance is explored.Is he one of the founders of

American administrative history? Is there more continuity or is there more change in his

ideas about governance?

WOODROW WILSON ON

THE HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT

Passing Fad or Constitutive Framework

for His Philosophy of Governance?

JOS C. N. RAADSCHELDERS

The University of Oklahoma

1. INTRODUCTION

For whatever it is worth, in a recent ranking of U.S. presidents

Woodrow Wilson placed sixth (Ridings & McIver, 1997). Not bad for an

academic turned politician; quite unusual, in fact. He is certainly remem-

bered by most citizens for being the president who only reluctantly

entered his country into the Great Warand for his advocacy of a league of

579

AUTHOR’SNOTE: I am grateful to Paul van Riper for graciouslyproviding me with a copy

of his 1990 American Society for Public Administration publication. William (Bill) L.

Andrewwas so kind to alert my attention to eight reviews not mentioned in the The Papers of

WoodrowWilson. I also would like to thank GregoryJ. Jungman for collecting references in

the 1954-1999 period to Wilson’sstudy of 1889 and subsequent editions. An earlier version

of this article was presentedat the Convention of the Southern Political Science Association,

Savannah, Georgia, November 3-7, 1999.

ADMINISTRATION& SOCIETY, Vol.34 No. 5, November 2002 579-598

DOI: 10.1177/009539902237277

© 2002 Sage Publications

nations. He received the Nobel Peace Prize for that in 1919. Few citizens

will know that since the Second WorldWar scholars of public administra-

tion parade him as one of the founders of the study of public administra-

tion. His 1887 article on the study of public administration was not quoted

until the 1930s, and not until after 1945 did it acquire something of a hal-

lowed status (Van Riper, 1983, p. 479). Presenting Wilson as a founder

may haveserved attempts to legitimize claims to scientific status and inde-

pendence of the study of public administration and is at least a good exam-

ple of reconstructed logic. When Wilson wrote his famous article, its line

of thought was not particularly unusual. Various people at the time had

thought about what it was that American government needed, and Gar-

field’s assassination served as the proverbial drop in the bucket.

Wilson’s life and work is often lookedupon in retrospect. One conse-

quence is that the context of time and space in which he worked has faded

and is not taken into consideration. Another consequence of looking retro-

spectivelyis that change, rather than continuity, is noticeable. Much of the

literature on Wilson emphasizes how his early Hamiltonian beliefs in

strong central government changed to a more appreciativeattitude toward

Jefferson’s notions of self-governance (thus courting the Democratic

South) once he aspired to and acquired political office (e.g., Cook, 1998,

p. 43; Turner,1990, p. 78). Most of the American people do not see beyond

Wilson the president, and understandably so. Many American scholars of

government do not look beyond Wilsonthe author of the 1887 article and

his Ph.D. thesis on congressional government and continue to call him a

founder of the study of public administration, as well as one of the main

early authors defending a separation of politics from administration. This

is much less understandable, because in the past 25 years several studies

havebeen published that do place the meaning of Wilson’s 1887 article for

the origins of the study and for the infamous dichotomy in perspective

(Martin, 1988; Marion, 1990; Rabin & Bowman, 1983; Stillman, 1973;

Van Riper, 1983, 1984; Walker, 1990). It seems that at the most general

level, Wilson the president overshadows Wilson the academic. At a more

specific level, Wilson the founder of the study overshadows Wilson the

administrative historian. We shall see whether or not the accolades that

public administration has bestowed upon him has concealed his true

importance.

In this article I hope to demonstrate how important it is to balance our

retrospective understanding of Wilson with a more developmental per-

spective, pretending to be back in time and unaware of what lies ahead.

Indeed, if we forget about Wilsonas governor of New Jersey (1910-1912)

580 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002