Essential History for Public Administration offers public affairs faculty and students a concise introduction to crucial elements of American history, creating a foundation for stronger discussion of current conditions in governance and management. It is designed as a brief supplemental text for use in public affairs courses rather than as a replacement for core assigned readings. The premise of the book is that enhanced knowledge of the history of the public sector can help students of public affairs design and manage successful programs.

Originally published in 1972, Gladden argues that, when more and more attention is being given to the history of particular activities, to specialist as opposed to general history, there is a case for attempting to redress the balance between government and administration. This book offers an investigation of the administrative context of earlier ages and raises the suspicion that administration, like human nature, may not have varied very much since human society began. It is an attempt to provide a highly selective introductory history of this vast subject, with special emphasis on its public aspects, including chapters on Medieval Europe, the Middle East, Early American Civilizations and more.

Bureaucracy, confusing paperwork, and complex regulations—or what public policy scholars Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan call administrative burdens—often introduce delay and frustration into our experiences with government agencies. Administrative burdens diminish the effectiveness of public programs and can even block individuals from fundamental rights like voting. In AdministrativeBurden, Herd and Moynihan document that the administrative burdens citizens regularly encounter in their interactions with the state are not simply unintended byproducts of governance, but the result of deliberate policy choices. Because burdens affect people’s perceptions of government and often perpetuate long-standing inequalities, understanding why administrative burdens exist and how they can be reduced is essential for maintaining a healthy public sector. Through in-depth case studies of federal programs and controversial legislation, the authors show that administrative burdens are the nuts-and-bolts of policy design. Regarding controversial issues such as voter enfranchisement or abortion rights, lawmakers often use administrative burdens to limit access to rights or services they oppose. For instance, legislators have implemented administrative burdens such as complicated registration requirements and strict voter-identification laws to suppress turnout of African American voters. Similarly, the right to an abortion is legally protected, but many states require women seeking abortions to comply with burdens such as mandatory waiting periods, ultrasounds, and scripted counseling. As Herd and Moynihan demonstrate, administrative burdens often disproportionately affect the disadvantaged who lack the resources to deal with the financial and psychological costs of navigating these obstacles. However, policymakers have sometimes reduced administrative burdens or shifted them away from citizens and onto the government. One example is Social Security, which early administrators of the program implemented in the 1930s with the goal of minimizing burdens for beneficiaries. As a result, the take-up rate is about 100 percent because the Social Security Administration keeps track of peoples’ earnings for them, automatically calculates benefits and eligibility, and simply requires an easy online enrollment or visiting one of 1,200 field offices. Making more programs and public services operate this efficiently, the authors argue, requires adoption of a nonpartisan, evidence-based metric for determining when and how to institute administrative burdens, with a bias toward reducing them. By ensuring that the public’s interaction with government is no more onerous than it need be, policymakers and administrators can reduce inequality, boost civic engagement, and build an efficient state that works for all citizens.

Public administration is commonly assumed to be a young discipline, rooted in law and political science, with little history of its own. Likewise, teaching and scholarship in this field is often career oriented and geared either toward the search for immediately usable knowledge or guidelines and prescriptions for the future. Although most administrative scientists would acknowledge that their field has a history, their time horizon is limited to the recent past. Raadschelders demonstrates that public administration has in fact a long-standing tradition, both in practice and in writing; administration has been an issue ever since human beings recognized the need to organize themselves in order to organize the environment in which they lived. This history, in turn, underlines the need for administrators to be aware of the importance and contemporary impact of past decisions and old traditions. In seeking to go beyond the usual problem-solving and future-oriented studies of public administration, this volume adds greatly to the cognitive richness of this field of research. Indeed, the search for theoretical generalizations will profit from an approach that unravels long-term trends in the development of administration and government."Raadschelders approaches public administration history from a dual perspective, as trained historian and professor of public administration.... The volume is appropriately called a aehandbook' in view of its methodical listing of the literature on administrative history, together with summaries of numerous authors' principal theories. The second chapter is an essay on sources in the field, including an extended bibliography.... These parts of the book alone make it useful to scholars in the field.... Raadschelders is helpful in other ways as well. The third and fourth chapters offer a highly sophisticated discussion of methodological problems encountered in writing administrative history, including the issue of perceiving 'stage

Public administration scholars and practitioners are increasingly concerned with the need to broaden the field's scope beyond particularistic accounts of administration in given countries. This title brings together seminal readings in comparative, development public administration and contemporary public management scholarship.

First published in 1972, the object of this work is to provide a history of public administration from earliest times up to the present day. The survey, necessarily selective, is broadly based, ranging from the prehistoric cave-dwellers to twentieth-century administration. Viewpoints are varied to bring in the several levels and spheres of operation; namely, directional and personnel, organizational and technical, biographical and theoretical. The work is in two volumes. Volume One covers the main civilizations of the Middle East, India, China and the West up to the eleventh century A.D. Volume Two, continuing the same field, extends its scope to include the civilizations of pre-Columbian America, the colonial empire and international administration. At a time when the scope of public administration is continually expanding, and more research is being carried out into administrative problems, much can be learned from the administrative lessons of the past. Dr. E.N. Gladden, a retired civil servant, has designed this work to integrate a vast and diverse subject.

Originally published in 1972, Gladden argues that, when more and more attention is being given to the history of particular activities, to specialist as opposed to general history, there is a case for attempting to redress the balance between government and administration. This book offers an investigation of the administrative context of earlier ages and raises the suspicion that administration, like human nature, may not have varied very much since human society began. It is an attempt to provide a highly selective introductory history of this vast subject, with special emphasis on its public aspects, including chapters on Medieval Europe, the Middle East, Early American Civilizations and more.