Woodrow Wilson’s Contribution to Public Administration
Jennifer Reid
Southern New Hampshire University
Ryan Barr
7/4/2021
Woodrow Wilson was a professor of political science who strongly believed in an ideological basis for the study of public administration where administrators and bureaucrats alike should be able to perform their duties efficiently away from politics. He began teaching at the Bryn Mawr College for Women, which he resented. He explained to a colleague once that he had accomplished nothing in his thirty-one years. He decided to write and publish to assist with getting him where he felt he would be more rewarded and understood.
Wilson was one of the first political leaders who emphasized the need to increase the efficiency of the Government. Wilson argued that administration is the most obvious part of the Government and the least discussions happen around it. He argued that political science would be better served if the focus was on the neglected details of how the government is administered. He really pushed for an administration that would be based on principles of the administration; away from political matter. Wilson was concerned with the productivity in its most simplest form; adding politics only made it more difficult to push for reform.
Wilson’s major contribution would be that public administration was to be set aside. The government shouldn’t be run like a business but more executively based on service. He felt that public administration was outside the bubble of politics along with the general laws that directed them; therefore, those laws weren’t to be used with public administration. Wilson compared the administration to a machine that functions independently to the moods/personalities of its leaders.
References:
Wilson, Woodrow (1887) “The Study of Administration,” Political Science Quarterly, 2(June); reprinted 50(December, 1941).
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