The myth of the bureaucratic paradigm

The Myth of the Bureaucratic Paradigm: What Traditional Public Administration Really Stood For

Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. Sydney Stein, Jr. Professor of Public Management University of Chicago

2nd REVISED DRAFT October 4, 2000

Abstract
For a decade, public administration and management literature has featured a riveting story: the transformation of the field’s orientation from an oldparadigm to a new one. While many doubt claims concerning a new paradigm — a “new public management” — no one questions that there was an old one. An ingrained and narrowly-focused pattern of thought, a “bureaucratic paradigm”, is routinely attributed to public administration’s traditional literature. A careful reading of that literature reveals, however, that the bureaucratic paradigm is, at best, acaricature and, at worst, an demonstrable distortion of traditional thought, which exhibited far more respect for law, politics, citizens, and values than the new, customer-oriented managerialism and its variants. In failing to contest the revisionists, public administration as a profession has been unduly careless of its own traditions, deserting vital and significant insights and acquiescing incalumnies that, even if they have a grain of truth, disfigure a fine intellectual heritage. The result is an intellectual rootlessness and an analytical negligence that allow vague, anti- or pseudo-democratic ideas to flourish and basic issues of responsible management to go unaddressed.

The Myth of the Bureaucratic Paradigm: What Traditional Public Administration Really Stood For
Table ofContents

Introduction

1 2

What Is “The Traditional Paradigm?” Retrospective Views 2 Contemporaneous Views 5

Traditional Thinking: A Reconsideration 6 The Classical Period 6 Foundations 7 Early Textbooks 9 Consolidation 10 High Noon 12 Controversies 13 The Walter-Logan Act 13 Friedrich, Finer, and Administrative Responsibility 14 Death in the Afternoon 15 Voices from the Grave 15 Was ThereA “Traditional Paradigm”? 18 Conclusion References End Notes 18 20 27

The Myth of the Bureaucratic Paradigm: What Traditional Public Administration Really Stood For
By Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. University of Chicago We can safely pronounce that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration. Alexander Hamilton The student of administration must .. . concern himself with the history of his subject, and will gain a real appreciation of existing conditions and problems only as he becomes familiar with their background. Leonard D. White i

Introduction
For a decade, public administration and management literature has featured a riveting story: the transformation of the field’s orientation from an old paradigm to a new one. ii While manydoubt that there is a new paradigm iii — a “new public management” (Pollitt 2000) — no one doubts that there was an old one. Variously termed the “bureaucratic paradigm,” the “old orthodoxy,” the “old-time religion,” or simply “traditional public administration,” an ingrained and narrowly-focused pattern of thought is routinely attributed to public administration’s scholars and practitioners fromthe publication of Woodrow Wilson’s 1887 essay (Wilson 1887) until the 1990s, when the old habits and their brainchild, “bureaucracy,” iv began to crumble under the forces of global change. Ironically, the traditional paradigm now under attack was declared dead over 50 years ago by some of public administration’s own intellectual leaders. A profession that has abandoned its traditions can hardly beexpected to come to their defense. From my vantage point in an adjacent profession, the ritual denunciation of traditional thought seems odd. A careful reading of the traditional literature reveals that the “old orthodoxy” is, at best, a caricature and, at worst, an outright distortion of traditional thought. The old orthodoxy better depicts the views of the judges, legislators, increasingly...