Public Administration, Efficiency & Effectiveness
- Jon Johnson
- Oct 29
- 9 min read
When I hear the President’s Administration talk about refocusing public administration to focus on “efficiency and effectiveness” I hear an administration that speaks my language. Efficiency and effectiveness are core principles of public administration that informed me of my practices as a civil servant and continue to guide me today in supporting federal programs. I also recognize influences from past administrations, and it is clear which models the current administration is drawing from to drive its desired changes. This short analysis aims to explain what I hear, what I see, and what I anticipate these efforts may lead to.
Three major phases of public service
Debates over how government should be organized and managed began with the founding of the country. Alexander Hamilton argued for a strong executive and professional administration in Federalist 70, Thomas Jefferson argued for a limited government and localized administration in Notes on the State of Virginia, and James Madison argued for a balance between strong government and safeguards against tyranny in Federalist 10, 51, and 57.
Phase 1 – “Code of Deference”
From George Washington to John Quincy Adams (1776-1829) the government’s political order was based on “a Code of Deference”[1] whereby despite not having a king, the country could defer to the country’s natural aristocracy; those with accomplishments in the military, education, business, of through family pedigree. This makes sense as our nation’s founders deserved the initial deference when establishing the republic.
The government had a limited number of Departments at its founding. The Departments of State, Treasury, War, Navy, and Attorney General were what existed, and these departments grew from 3,905 to 10,415 civil servants between 1802 and 1826.[2] In 1829 the government added the US Post Office in 1829 which also increased the civil servant staff roles. The fulfillment of federal positions at the countries founding when early settlers were establishing themselves as the country’s population more than tripled between the first recorded census in 1790 (3.9M) and 1829 (12M).[3][4] The population growth and limited economic opportunity led to difficult conditions for many, and the government did not have the initial capacity to be capable of responding to the challenges facing the citizenry.
This led to a contentious election contest between John Quincy Adams, Harvard educated son of the 2nd President of the United States and career diplomat, and Andrew Jackson, a lawyer, frontiersman, and successful general from Tennessee[5]. In 1824 there were 4 candidates for election (Adams, Jackson, Henry Clay, and William Crawford). Andrew Jackson won a plurality of the popular and electoral vote; however, nobody had a majority of the Electoral College vote. The vote had to be settled in the US House of Representatives, and Hery Clay asked his supporters to back Adams, which resulted in Adam’s election (and Clay’s was then named Secretary of State).[6] Jackson didn’t like it (would you?), referring to it as ‘the corrupt bargain’, and was matched up once again with Adams for the election of 1828 with the results of Jackson winning both the popular and electoral college vote overwhelmingly. (Sound familiar?)
Phase 2 – “The Spoils System”
President Jackson’s administration thought the prior administration to be corrupt and began investigating actions of members of the civil service, and he was not wrong as there were clear signs of corruption. Common custom was to leave the previous appointees in the offices through which they served. Jackson viewed this as part of the problem, so he began implementing reforms that would replace these appointees through attrition and leveraging prior legislation[7] to remove 10% of the civil servants or about 1000 of the 10,000 civil servants employed. In the House debates on civil service reform a Jackson supporter in the house stated “They see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belong the spoils” in filling federal positions that advance the initiatives driven by the executive.
As a result of an elite-driven bureaucracy with the perception of holding a special class in society (that they sought to preserve), “The Spoils System” became the norm in public administration to disrupt an embedded bureaucracy and decrease their influence, a condition of public administration that lasted through 14 administrations (Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincon, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, and Authur) and ended with the Pendleton Act of 1883.
Phase 3 – Civil Service Reform
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 established the conditions for a ‘merit-based’ system to fill the roles for government positions and made it illegal to fire or demote government employees for political reasons. Initially applied to only 10% of the federal workforce the Pendleton Act would eventually expand to cover most federal employees, conditions through which the civil service would function through today.
The principles for this functional role for civil service in state administration can best be attributed to Woodrow Wilson (politician, academic, university administrator and 28th President of the United States who. While a PhD student at John Hopkins Wilson wrote The Study of Administration[8] that argued for, among other things, the efficient and effective execution of state administrative functions for the civil service. By applying “business-like” methods of Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management[9] to the Bureaucratic Management Theory of Max Weber and the role of bureaucracy[10], Wilson argued for an independent bureaucracy decoupled from politics and re-established an elite professionalized class that applied ‘modern’ management practices that was separate from the political government. In Wilson’s view the political government sets the tasks and broad goals of the administration, and the professional public administrators carry out and implement them with efficiency.
What Wilson also argued that the bureaucracy should ‘govern independently from the elected branches of government.’[11] In doing so, he walls off the founding principles of consent of the governed and the separation of powers.’[12] Wilson advocated for a ‘trained bureaucracy that has the expertise and the will to oppose popular opinion when they deem necessary…that expertise is a title to rule,’[13] This was Wilson’s recipe for an efficient and effective administration of the state; expert rule for the sake of the public interest.
This was the governing principle as the country entered and emerged from the Great Depression through World War II. Public initiatives and public works were attempts to lift the country from the conditions and expanded the administrative state, which were amplified as the country help end war in Europe. At Wilson’s election in 1913 the executive branch consisted of 388,000 executive branch employees. This count almost tripled to 936,000 in 1939 (at the start of WWII) and grew to 2,930,000 at the end of the war in 1944[14]. (* The federal employee count in 2024 is 4,000,000 – including defense and civil service and excluding the US Post Office)[15].
Debates on the premises of how government should function emerged with the public sector growth immediately after World War II. Although the basis for measures around quality assurance and quality control, limitations with scientific management became evident as it wasn’t as scientific as it claimed, led to increased costs, and was to ridged to be effectively efficient.[16]
Herbert Simon – Administrative Behavior
Herbert Simon was an organizational theorist who argued the case for efficiency with the real world constraints public administrators face when making decisions. As much as people wanted civil servants to make economically optimal decisions, constraints on time, information, and resources make this often unachievable[17]. He thought it wise to understand these constraints in practical decision making for an effective public sector with efficiency remaining the goal.
In Administrative Behavior[18] Herbert Simon defined efficiency as “choosing the alternative that produces the largest result for the given application of resources.” Simon thought organizations should be efficient with achieving desired ends with minimal means. He recognized that public sector executives cannot achieve perfect but rather should make “optimal” decisions based on available information and under the constraint of time and resources. Whether a decision was good enough would be based on how well those decisions achieved their intended goals given real world constraints, an iterative approach to federal programs.
To Simon, efficiency is the core value of an administrator, and that public administration should be based on the science of rational decision-making that is grounded in logic, empiricism, and measurable outcomes. Administrators should make decisions based on evidence and rational analysis, and in this dynamic, politics, or the political class, sets the values and goals through which administration should find the most efficient and effective means. His call for public administration to be ‘value-neutral’ and based on scientific approaches to achieving those ends.
Dwight Waldo – The Administrative State
This view was actively debated in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Dwight Waldo wrote in The Administrative State[19], Dwight Waldo argued that public administration is inherently political and value-laden, and not a purely technical or neutral process. He further argues that efficiency should not be the highest value of public administration because it does not talk about what ends are being achieved. Instead, Waldo argues that democratic effectiveness should be what is sought. In other words, public administration must serve democratic values such as equality, participation, and justice as the highest value sought, even if doing so is less ‘efficient’.
One could argue that these three thinkers are who set the conditions for how public administration would function, through an elite class of specialists that are above the politics of the day, operating and functioning with the public interests expressly in mind, and simultaneously saying what public interests should be. Programs would be built and executed under the same principles of efficiency, and measures and analysis will be used to determine government’s effectiveness.
C. Northcote Parkinson – Parkinson’s Laws
What of the outcomes of these conditions set forth by Wilson and Waldo? What of the incentive structure for the civil service? What results from those incentives?
C. Northcote Parkinson[20], a British Army officer, Navy historian, and academic certainly drew his conclusions about the fundamental nature of bureaucracy by observing the growth of the British state after WW II. He made some simple observations eventually arriving at Parkinson’s Law[21] in which he asserts:
1. “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” (not efficient, but observably true); and
2. “The role of a bureaucrat is to increase the number of subordinates, decrease the number of rivals, while making work for each other.” (* See Author’s Aside at the end)
Are current conditions the results of Weber, Wilson, and Waldo’s purpose of the “Administrative State” built over time and protected through the application of bureaucratic practices of Parkinson’s Law to achieve the desired growth in the spirit of ‘public interest’? I think this administration certainly thinks so. Their goal is obviously to recalibrate and refocus public administration, keeping the premises of an efficient and effective administrative state, but more closely tied to the purpose, mission, and functions of the Executive Branch agencies, who receive their charge from the Executive branch of government.
These are the dynamics we see playing out today that are rooted in the populist/progressive arguments of the past. The only question is where it will go, and what it will result in. I am personally excited for the prospects of an efficient and effective, merit-based, functionally focused administrative state.
***
(* Authors Aside: Parkinson’s Law in action was something that I was exposed to while a contracting officer and program manager at the General Services Administration. This landed with me as I watched how policy and their associated work initiatives were justified, rolled out, with whom involved, for whom intended, and with what stated ends in mind. Although some may feel Parkinson himself, or my mention of his work, may be an unfair characterization of what is demanded of federal agencies under the conditions they are placed in and the incentive structure that exists, GSA’s use and justifications for allocating their Acquisition Services Fund appeared to me often straight out of his 1955 Economist essay. Government agency teams in acquisition offices and program offices, as well as private sector manufactures, distributors, and contract holders alike are all too familiar with the perpetual data calls associated with one initiative or another from GSA – making work for all involved.
Also interesting as GSA-centric interests are using an Administration to advance their own goals consistent with Parkinson’s Law as they call for a monopoly on government buying that they held before the establishment of the Office of Management and Budget in 1970 and Office of Federal Procurement Policy in 1974.
Consider for yourself whether C. Northcote Parkinson, and his Laws, have any relevancy for the conditions we find ourselves in today. My views are limited by my experiences, so I could not rightly say the same evidence exists at other agencies throughout the government.)
[7] Removals in Jacksonian America Through the Nineteenth Century | Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[17] CONCEPTUAL REVIEW OF HERBERT SIMON'S DECISION-MAKING THEORIES AND ITS APPLICABILITY IN CONTEMPORARY ORGANISATIONS
[18] Simon, H. A. (1947). Administrative behavior; a study of decision-making processes in administrative organization. Macmillan.
[19] Waldo, D. (2007). The Administrative State: A Study of the Political Theory of American Public Administration (1st ed.). Routledge.
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