Discuss the Woodrow Wilson’s views on Public Administration.

 Woodrow Wilson's views on Public Administration:

For Wilson, an important arena in serious need of reforms was American Public Administration. He developed his doctoral thesis into his first book, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics, comparing the American presidential form of government with parliamentary form of government. He concluded that only reforms could instill greater efficiency and accountability in the American system. In 1887, the Political Science Quarterly published Wilson's The Study of Administration, reputed to be a classic text on public administration. Wilson began this Article citing a keen observation the practical science of administration found its rightful place in college curriculum only recently.

This late realisation “to know more about administration” could be attributed to the ubiquitous feeling of “taken for granted among us” for years. The on-going civil service reform movement, therefore, aimed to get rid of systemic inefficiency and mounting costs through improvement in government organisation and methods, and government personnel. Hence, the objective of administrative study was “to discover, first, what government can property and successfully do, and, secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either of money or of energy.

Administration may be expressed as government in action. Being the most inevitable part of government, it is as old as government itself. It represents the executive branch characterised by ever growing responsibilities both complex and cumbersome. Successful execution of government functions depends on:

(1) Prior wisdom, knowledge, and experience.

(2) Robust planning.

(3) Professionalism.

(4) Strong organisation devoid of corruption.

(5) sense of duty.

Given the vast expanse and sheer complexity of government work, Wilson opined the science of administration was the need of the hour like never before.

The science of administration did not originate in the US. In Wilson's words, “(i]t is not of our making; it is a foreign science, speaking very little of the language of English or American principle. It employs only foreign tongues; it utters none but what are to our minds alien ideas. Its aims, its examples. its conditions, are almost exclusively grounded in the histories of foreign races, in the precedents of foreign systems, in the lessons of foreign revolutions".

The roots of this science were traced to Europe, particularly France and Germany. Rule by the government had been a recurrent political norm in Europe for mainly 2 reasons, Firstly, government could be wide- spread because it was independent of popular consent. Secondly, monopolists wishing to keep a monopoly over government used such means that would attract least resistance. Even if ‘government’ were a defining feature of Europe. Wilson argued that a government passed through tree periods of growth

(1) Absolute rule by absolute rulers with an administrative system.

(2) Constitutional government formed by the people and a much neglected administrative system.

(3) Sovereign government contingent upon administration construed on the basis of the new constitution that was the source of its power.

The science of administration, wherever adopted, was tailored to the needs of respective states run by highly centralised forms of government. In the US, the science was customised to meet the demands of a complex and multi-form State and extremely decentralised forms of government. The science had to be Americanised in terms of language, thought, principle, and aim so that “It must learn our constitutions by heart, must get the bureaucratic fever out ofits veins; must inhale much free American.

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