Teaching public administration historically

Abstract

The American field of public administration and management has a history of neglecting history. As Gaus (1930) observed nearly a century ago, the story of how our field developed is “richer by far than we allow our students to see” (p. 138). Decades later, Durant (2014) asked: Why doesn’t the political economy that influences what and how we study interest us anymore? Why is our research largely “cross-sectional analyses and shorter-term longitudinal ones” rather than using history, context, and contingency to account for how and why things happen as they do (p. 10)? As we see the field today, it has made great strides in refining the use of the scientific method to demonstrate causal or quasi-causal relationships between and among important variables in administrative practice. But, as Gaus (1947) put it, we are not taking time seriously: “that part of science which describes and interprets why particular activities are undertaken by government and the problems of policy, organization, and management that result from such origins” (pp. 9–10). Perhaps it is time for another reminder of the importance of the historical context and capacity of public administration—of the political, economic, social, and cultural forces and trends in which public administration has been practiced and studied and by which it has been, and is still being, fundamentally shaped. And this reminder is twofold, one that refers not only to our need for historical context, and one that looks at why we need it: scholars, practitioners, and students alike.