威尔逊-行政学研究(中英文原着全文)

行政学研究1[1][1]

伍德罗·威尔逊

我认为任何一门实用科学，在没有必要了解它时，不会有人去研究它。因此，如果我们需要以某种事实来论证这种情况的话；著名的行政学实用科学正在进入我国高等学校课程的事实本身；则证明我们国家需要更多地了解行政学。然而，在此无需说明，我们并非要调查高校教学计划来证明这一事实。目前人们称为文官制度改革的运动在实现了它的第一个目标之后，不仅在人事方面，而且在政府机构的组织和方法方面都必须为继续扩大改革努力，这是我们大家几乎都承认的事实，因为政府机构的组织和方法同其人事问题一样需要进行改进，这一点已经十分明显。行政学研究的目标在于了解：首先，政府能够适当地和成功地进行什么工作。其次，政府怎样才能以尽可能高的效率及在费用或能源方面用尽可能少的成本完成这些适当的工作。在这两个问题上，我们显然更需要得到启示，只有认真进行研究才能提供这种启示。

但是，我们在进入这种研究之前，需要做到下列几点：

l．考虑其他人在此领域中所做过的研究。即是说，考虑这种研究的历史。

2．确定这种研究的课题是什么。

3．断定发展这种研究所需要的最佳方法以及我们用来进行这种研究所需要的最清楚的政治概念。

如果不了解这些问题，不解决这些问题，我们就好像是离开

了图表或指南针而去出发远航。

一

行政科学是已在两手两百年前开始出现的政治科学研究的最新成果。它是本世纪，几乎就是我们这一代的产物。 它为什么姗姗来迟？它为什么直到我们这个忙的几乎注意不到它的世纪才出现？行政机关是政府最明显的部分，它是行动中的政府；它是政府的执行者，是政府的操作者，是政府的最显露的方面，当然，它的历程也和政府一样悠久。它是行动中的政府，人们很自然地希望看到政治学的论著者在系统思想史的很早时期即已引起对行动中的政府的注意，并激发他们进行仔细的研究。

但是，事与愿违。直到本世纪已经度过了它的最初的青春时期，并且已经开始长出独具特色的系统知识之花的时候，才有人将行政机关作为政府科学的一个分支系统地进行论述。直到今天，我们所拜读的所有的政治学论著者都仅仅围绕下列问题进行思考、争辩和论证：政府“构成方式”；国家性质，主权的本质和地位，人民的权力和君主的特权；属于政府核心内容的最深的含义及根据人性和人的目的摆在政府目标之前的更高目标。下列范围广泛的理论领域是存在激烈论战的中心地区：君主制对民主制进行攻击，寡头政治力图建立特权的堡垒，专制制度寻求使其所有竞争者投降的要求得以实现的机会。在这些理论原则的激烈斗争中，行政机关不能中断其自身的思考。经常出现的问题是：由谁制定法律以及制定什么法律？另一个问题是如何有启发性的、公平的、迅速而又没有摩擦地实施法律。这一问题被看做是“实际工作中的细节问题”，在专家学者们就理论原则取得一致意见后由办事人员进行处理。

政治哲学采取这种方向，当然不是一种意外现象，不是出于政治哲学家的偶然性偏爱或反常行为。正如黑格尔所说的，任何时代的哲学“都只不过是抽象思维所表现的那个时代的精神。”而政治哲学也和其它任何种类的哲学一样，只不过是举起了反映当代事务的一面镜子。在很早的时代，麻烦的事情几乎都出在政府结构方面。因此，结构问题就成为吸引人们思考的焦点。当时，在行政管理方面很少或完全没有遇到麻烦问题，至少没有引起行政官员注意的问题。那时候政府的职能很简单，因为生活本身就很简单。政府靠行政命令行事，驱使着人们，从来没有想到过要征询人们的意见。那时候没有使财政人员感到麻烦的公共收入和公债的复杂制度，因此也并不存在感到此种麻烦的财政人员。所有掌握权力的人员都不会对怎样运用权力长期茫然不解。唯一重大的问题是：谁将掌握权力？全体居民只不过是处于管辖之下的人群；财产的种类很少，当时农庄很多，但却没有股票和债券；牲口远比既得利益集团的数目多。 我曾经说过，这一切都是“早期时代”的真实情况。在相对较晚的时期，这些情况也基本上是真实的。人们无需追溯到上一个世纪去探寻目前贸易上的复杂性和使人困惑的商业投机行为是怎样产生的，也无需这样做来了解国家公债是怎样奇异地诞生的。毫无疑问，仁慈的贝斯女王2[2][2]曾经认为16世纪的垄断资本极难驾驭，要想不烫伤她的手指是不可能的。但是在19世纪庞大的垄断资本面前，已不再有人记得这些话了。当布莱克斯通3[3][3]“哀叹地说，公司企业既无躯体可让你敲打，又无灵魂可供你谴责时，他早在整整一个世纪之前就预见到了这种令人遗憾现象的准

2[2][2] 这是伊丽莎白女王的爱称。——译者

3[3][3] 即威廉·布莱克斯爵士 (Sir Williamin Blackstone:1723—1780)，英国著名法学家和政治活动家。

确时间。经常扰乱工业社会的老板和工人之间的长期冲突，在黑死病和劳工法出现之前就已开始存在了。但是在我们的这个时代到来之前，它们从来没有像今天这样显示不祥之兆。简言之，如果在以往许多世纪中可以看到政府活动方面的困难在不断聚集起来，那么在我们所处的世纪则可以看到这些困难正在累积到顶点。

这就是当前必须认真和系统地调整行政工作使之适合于仔细试验过的政策标准的原因。我们现在所以正产生一种前所未有的行政科学，原因也在这里。关于宪政原则的重要论战甚至到现在还远没有得出结论，但是在实用性方面它们已不再比行政管理问题更突出。执行一部宪法变得比制定一部宪法更要困难得多。

下面是巴奇霍特先生对于行政管理中新旧方式之间的差别所做的生动而独辟蹊径径的描述：“从前，当一个专制君主想统治一个边远省份时，他便派出一名骑着高头大马的总督，其他人则骑在矮小的马匹上；如果这位总督不派某些人回来汇报他正在作些什么，君主便很少听到这位总督的信息，不可能采取重大的监督措施，信息的来源是普通的谣传和临时性的报告。如果可以肯定这个省份管理得不好，将前一任总督召回，另派一位总督接替他的职位。在文明国家，程序则与此不同：人们在想要进行统治的省份中建立一个机构，要求该机构书写和抄录文件，每天向圣彼得堡的首脑机关递交八份报告。如果在首都没有人进行汇总工作，对省里人的工作进行“检查”，看他是否作得正确，在省里也不可能有人作汇总工作。这种作法的后果是加给各种首脑机构大量的阅读资料和繁重的工作。只有具备最大的先天能力，经过最有效的训练，具有最坚决、最有持久性的勤奋精神的人才有可能完成这些工作。”

没有任何一种政府职责现在没有变得复杂起来，它们当初曾经是很简单的，政府曾经只有少数支配者，而现在却有大批的支配者。大多数人以前仅仅听命于政府，现在他们却指导着政府。在有些国家，政府曾经对朝廷唯命是从，而现在却必须遵从全民的意见。

并且全民的意见正在稳步地扩展成为一种关于国家职责的新观念。与此同时，政府的职能日益变得更加复杂和更加困难，在数量上也同样大大增加。行政管理部门将手伸向每一处地方以执行新的任务。例如政府在邮政事务方面的效用、廉价服务和成就，使政府较早地实现了对电报系统的控制。或者说，在收购或建造电报和火车路线方面，即使我们的政府并不遵循欧洲各国政府走过的道路，但却没有任何人会怀疑我们的政府必须采取某种方式，使自己能够支配各种有支配力的公司。除旧有的国家铁路委员会之外，政府又新设立了全国铁路特派员，这意味着行政管理职能的一种非常重要而巧妙的扩充。不管州政府或联邦政府决定对各大公司有什么样的权力，都必须小心谨慎和承担责任，这样做会需要许多智慧、知识和经验。为了很好完成这些事情必须对其认真研究。而这一切，正如我所说过的那样，还仅仅是那正向政府机构敞开着的许多大门中的一小部分。关于国家以及随之而来的关于国家职责的观念正在发生引人注目的变化，而“关于国家的观念正式行政管理的灵魂”。当你了解国家每天应该作的新事情之后，紧接着就应该了解国家应该如何去做这些事情。

这就是为什么应该有一门行政科学的原因，它将力求使政府不走弯路，使政府专心处理公务减少闲杂事务，加强和纯洁政府的组织机构，为政府的尽职尽责带来美誉。这就是为什么会有这一门科学的原因之一。

但是这门科学是在什么地方成长起来的呢？肯定不是在海洋的这一边。在我们的行政实践中不可能发现很多公平的科学方法。市政府中的污浊气氛、州行政当局的幕后交易，以及在华盛顿政府机构中屡见不鲜的杂乱无章、人浮于事和贪污腐化，都使我们决不相信到目前为止，关于建立良好行政管理的任何明确观念已在美国广泛流行。没有，美国的学者们迄今为止并没有在这门科学的发展中发挥很重要的作用。行政学的博士都产生在欧洲。这门科学并不是我们的创造，它是一门外来的科学，很少使用英国式或美国式的语言规则。它所使用的仅仅是外国腔调。它表述的只是与我们的思想迥然不同的观念。它的目标、事例和条件，几乎都是以外国民族的历史、外国制度的惯例和外国革命的教训为根据的。它是由法国和德国的教授们发展起来的，因此，其各个组成部分是与一个组织严密的国家的需要相适应的，并且是为了适应高度集权的政府形式而建立起来的。因此，为了与我们的目的相符，对它必须进行调整，使之适合于权力高度分散的政府形式建立起来。如果我们要应用这种科学，我们必须使之美国化，不只是从形式上或仅仅从语言上美国化，而是必须在思想、原则和目标方面从根本上加以美国化。它必须从内心深处认识我们的制度，必须把官僚主义的热病从血管中加以排除，必须多多吸入美国的自由空气。这一显然如此容易使一切政府都能得到好处的科学，为什么首先是在欧洲受到重视呢？在欧洲跟在英国和美国不同，其政府长期以来属于垄断性；而在美国，其政府长期以来只是享有一种公共性质的授权。如果有人想要找到一种解释，他毫无疑问将会发现其原因是双重的：首先，在欧洲，正因为政府不依赖国民的同意，它所要做的更多的工作是统治；其次，想使政府保持垄断地位的愿望，使那些垄断者对于发现尽可能不激怒民众的统治方法深感兴趣。此外，这些垄断者人数甚少，便于迅速采取各种手段。 对于这种情况稍做较深入的观察将会是很有教益的。当然，在提到欧洲政府时，我并没有把英国包括在内。英国并没有拒绝随着时代潮流进行改革。英国只不过是通过程度缓慢的宪政改革，缓和了从一个贵族享有特权的政体演化成具有民主权力的体制这种转变的严厉程度。这种改革并没有阻碍革命，而是把它限制在采取和平途径的范围之内。然而大陆各国长期以来拼命反抗一切改革，他们希望通过缓和专制政府的粗暴程度改变革命的方向。他们希望通过这

种作法来完善他们的国家机器，从而消灭一切令人讨厌的摩擦；通过这种作法，以及对被统治者利益的关心，来使政府的措施变得温和，从而使一切起阻碍作用的仇恨得到和解；他们还殷勤而及时通过这种作法来向一切经营事业的阶层提供帮助，从而使国家本身变成一切勤劳人民所不可缺少的东西。最后，他们还给予人民以宪法和公民权利。但是，即使在这些措施之后，他们还是得到许可，以变成家长的身分继续行使其专制权力。他们使自己变得极有效率，从而变得不可缺少；工作极其稳妥，从而不引人注意；极端开明，从而不会受到轻率的质询；极端仁慈，从而不会引起怀疑；极端强大，从而难以对付。所有这一切都需要进行研究，而他们已对此作了认真的研究。

当时，在大洋的这边，我们在政府工作方面却没有碰到重大的困难。作为一个新的国家，并且在其中每一个人都有住房并可找到有报酬的工作，加之政府奉行自由主义原则和在实际的政治活动中运用不受限制的技能。因而长期以来，在行政计划和行政手段方面，我们并没有感到需要给以特别注意。我们自然而然地很少注意欧洲出版界送到我们图书馆中的许多书籍的用处和意义，这些书籍对于处理政府事务的方式和手段进行了深入的研究和艰苦的考察。我们的政府如同一个身强力壮的小伙子一样，其机能已经得到发展，身材已经长大，但在动作方面却变得笨拙了。其精力和年龄的增长，都已和其所具有的生活技能不相适应。它得到了力量，但却不具备相应的行为。因此，跟欧洲诸国相比，虽然我们在机构发展的顺利和健康状况方面的优越性是很大的，但我们现在却面临着需要进行更加仔细的行政调整和需要具有更加丰富的行政知识的时刻。跟大洋彼岸的诸国相比较，我们正处于一种特别不利的地位。我将努力解释清楚这方面的理由。

通过对当代世界上一些主要国家的制度史的分析判断，可以说在现存最充分发展的政治体制中，政府经历过三个发展时期，其它所有政治体制也是如此。这三个时期中的第一个是绝对统治者时期，是行政系统与绝对统治相适应的时期；第二个时期是制定宪法废除绝对统治者并用人民的控制取而代之的时期。在这一时期中，由于对这些高级目标的关切，因而对行政管理有所忽视；第三个时期是拥有最高权力的人民在使他们掌握权力的新宪法的保障下，着手发展行政管理工作的时期。

有一些现在行政实践方面成为表率的政府，在现代政治的曙光照临之时，它们的统治者依然享有绝对权力却同时又很开明。在那里除了瞎子之外，所有人都很清楚地知道，正当说来统治者只不过是被统治者的仆人。在这样的政府当中，行政管理是按照为促进公共福利的目的而组织起来的，并且具有仅仅完成单一意志所规定的任务才可能具有的那种简便和效率。

举例来说，普鲁士就属于这种情况。在那里，行政管理已得到最深入的研究，并且几乎达到了最完善的程度。斐特烈大帝的统治虽然是严厉而武断的，但他仍然真诚地宣称仅仅把自己看成是国家的主要仆人，把他的巨大机构看成是一个公共信托机关。正是他本人，在他父亲所奠定的基础之上，开始建立普鲁士的公共办事机构，并且使之成为极其认真为公众服务的机构。他那同样专断的继承人——威廉·斐特烈三世，在斯坦因4[4][4]的鼓励下，设计了许多内容更广泛的组织特征，把这一工作更往前推进了一步，奠定了今天普鲁士行政管理工作的坚实基础和具体形式。几乎所有令人赞叹的管理体制都是在国王的首创之下发展起来的。

现代的法国行政管理及其均匀划分行政区域和秩序井然地将办公机关分成等级，如果不是在计划上至少是在实践上来自同样的起因。法国的大革命时期——制宪会议时期——是宪法的“撰写”时期，还不能说成是宪法的“制定”时期。大革命预示着一个发展宪法时期的到来——法国进入了我上面所说的三个时期的第二个时期——但革命本身却并没有创立这样一个时期。大革命中断和动摇了专制主义，但并没有把它摧毁。继法国君主之后，拿破仑行使着这些君主所曾经拥有的不受限制的权力。

因此，由拿破仑所重新建立的法国行政管理，是我所要列举的第二个例子。这种管理在宪政时代的曙光到来之前，通过极权统治者的个人意志使行政机制达到完善。从来不曾有过一种共同的和大众化的意志能够做出像拿破仑下令所做出的那种安排。这些安排作得是如此简明，它们打破了地区偏见；如此合乎逻辑，在其影响方面符合大众的选择。这些安排是可以由制宪会议颁布的，但是只有通过一个专制君主的无限权力才能够确立起来。共和八年5[5][5]的行政制度是严厉无情的，然而又是彻底和完备的。并且从很大程度上说，这是已经被推翻了的专制主义的一种复归。 另一方面，有一些国家在它们的行政管理受到自由理论的影响之前，就已经跨入了制定宪法和进行民众改革的时期。在这些国家中，行政管理的改进处于迟滞和半途而废的状态。一旦当某个国家开始从事制定宪法的事业之时，它将会发现要停止这一工作，并为公众建立一个能手而又经济的行政管理机关是极端困难的。这种对宪法进行修修补补的工作，看来似乎是永无止境的。所制定的常规性宪法很难在持续十年的时间内不作修改和补充，因此详细论证行政4[4][4] 即海因里希·弗里德里希·卡尔·斯坦因男爵：普鲁士政治家，行政法学家，倡导自由主义改革，曾出版名著《行政学》。——译者 5[5][5] 共和八年即1801年9月至1802年9月。共和历是法国大革命时采用的历法，使用于1793——1806年间，以1792年9月22日为共和元年元旦，一年十二个月各有专名。——译者

管理的时刻一直姗姗来迟。

当然，说到这里，我们的例证便是英国和我们自己的国家。在安茹王朝时代，当宪法生活还没有因“大宪章”而生根发芽的时候，由于亨利二世精明、勤奋和进取，并且有不折不挠的精神和愿望，开始自觉而有力地展开了法制和行政改革。在英国也跟在其它国家一样，国王的首创性似乎注定要按照自己的意志来铸就政府发展方向。但是，轻举妄动而又犹豫不定的理查德6[6][6]以及软弱而卑鄙的约翰7[7][7]却并不像他们的先人那样是实现这种计划的人物。在他们在位的年代里，行政管理的发展被有关宪法的斗争所取代了。在任何一位具备实践天才或者开明胸怀的英国君王替国家的行政机关设计出精确而持久的模式之前，“议会”已经扮演了国王的角色。

因此，英国民族长期而成功地研究了抑制行政权力的艺术，因而却经常忽视了改善行政方法的艺术。他们在更多的程度上是训练自己去控制而不是加强政府。他们较关心的是使政府变得公正、温和而不是使它变得简捷、有秩序和高效率。英国和美国的政治史不是一部发展行政管理的历史，而是一部关心立法工作的历史——不是改进政府组织，而是制定法律和政治评论的历史。因此，我们正处在这样一个时期，即对于我们这个长时期背着制定宪法的种种习惯的包袱的政府来说，它的健康迫切需要有关行政管理的研究和创造来加以保护。从建立基本原则的角度来说，制定宪法的时期实际上已经结束，但是我们却无法摆脱它的影响。当我们应该进行创造的时候，我们却继续进行政治评论。我们已经到达了我前述的三个时期中的第三个时期——即这样一个时期：人民经过前一时期与专制权力的斗争，为自己赢得了宪法，他们必须发展行政管理以与这种宪法相适应。可是，我们对于这种新时期的工作却毫无准备。

尽管从政治自由的角度，特别是从政治实践的艺术和才干的角度说，我们拥有巨大的优势。然而却有那样多的国家在行政组织和行政艺术方面都走在我们前面。当我们对于这种事实感到极度惊讶时，上述情况为这种惊讶提供了唯一的解释。例如，为什么我们才刚刚开始纯洁我们那足足腐败了50年的行政机构？如果认为是奴隶制度使我们迷失了方向，那就只不过是重复我所曾经说过的老话——即我们制度中的缺陷耽误了自己。

当然，一切通情达理的选择都将会是支持英国和美国的政治道路，而不是支持任何欧洲国家的道路，我们决不会为了学会普鲁士的行政管理技巧，而愿意具有普鲁土的经历。而且普鲁士特殊的行政管理制度将会把我们彻底闷死。与其变得缺乏独立精神和循规蹈矩，不如毫无训练和自由自在要好得多。虽则如此，但却无法否认还有更好的情况，那就是既具有自由精神而同时又具有非常熟练的实践能力。就是这种理由更为充足的选择，强迫我们去探寻有哪些因素可能会阻碍和耽误我们引进这种非常值得羡慕的行政管理科学。

那么，究竟有些什么因素正起着阻碍作用呢？

重要的是人民主权。对于民主国家来说，组织行政管理要比君主国家困难得多。正是我们以往最心爱的政治成功的完美性本身困扰着我们。我们把公众舆论捧上了帝王的宝座，而在公共舆论的统治下面，我们如果要想使主权者在执行任务的熟练技巧方面或者在使政府职能达到完美的平衡状态方面，接受任何速成的训练，那是不可能的。也正是我们充分地实现了人民的统治这一事实本身，使得“组织”这种人民统治的工作变得更加困难了。总而言之，为了取得任何进展，我们必须对于叫做公共舆论的由民众组成的君主进行训练和劝说——这跟影响叫做国王的单一君主比较起来，是一桩可行性极小的工作。一个单一的统治者有可能采纳某一个简单的决策并且立即加以执行。他只可能有一种意见，并且他将使这种单一的意见包含在单一的命令之中。可是另一种统治者即全体人民却可能具有一大堆不同的意见。他们不能简单地在任何事情上取得一致。进步必须通过妥协，通过把不同的意见调和起来，通过一系列反复修改的计划和非常直截了当的原则的抑制作用才能够取得。这就需要有贯穿了许多年中的持久不断的决心，需要有体现在一整套修正方案中的断断续续的命令。

在政府工作方面如同在道德领域一样，最最困难的事情莫过于取得进步了。在过去，这种现象的原因在于，作为统治者的单一的个人通常都是自私、无知而又胆怯的，或者是愚蠢的——尽管偶尔也有个别聪明人。而在今天，原因则在于，统治者是许多人，是人民，并没有我们可以与之说话的单一的耳朵，他们是自私、无知、胆怯、固执或者是愚蠢的，并且这是一种由数以千计的人群所构成的自私、无知、固执和胆怯——尽管其中有数以百计的人是聪明的。在以往，改革者的有利条件是统治的思想有一个确定的发生地，即它存在于一个人的头脑之中，因而这种思想是可以弄清楚的。虽然这也是改革者的不利条件，这个头脑并不勤于学习或者仅仅学习了很少的东西，或者这个头脑处于某个人的影响之下，而这个影响者只是让它学习一些错误的东西。而今天，情况与此相反，改革者却被下述事实弄得处于迷茫之中，那就是统治者的思想并没有确定的发生地，而只不过是存在于千百万个投票人的大多数头脑之中；改革者还被下述事实所困扰着，即这种统治者的思想也同样是被“宠物”所影响的，这种宠物并不是人，仍然只不过是事先就抱有的意见，也就是种种偏见，但它却并不因此就失去这个词旧有的真正含义。偏见是不可以靠理性思考的，因6[6][6] 即狮心王理查一世（1157—1199）。——译者

7[7][7] 即指无地王约翰（1199—1216）。——译者

为它们不是理性的产物。

在任何地方，当尊重舆论被当作政府的最高原则时，其实际改革必然是缓慢的，并且一切改革都必然是充满妥协的。因为在任何地方，只要存在着公共舆论，它就必然起统治作用。这是当前半个世界所承认的公理，甚至在俄国这个公理现在也将会被人们所信奉。任何人如果想要在一个现代立宪制的政府中实行某种改革，他就必须首先教育他的公民同胞，使之感到需要有“某种”改革。在这之后，他必须说服他们愿意进行他所主张的那种改革。他必须首先使得公共舆论愿意听取意见，紧接着就务必作到使舆论愿意听取正确的意见。他必须鼓动舆论，使之起而寻求某种意见。然后经过安排，把正确的意见摆在舆论前进的道路上。

第一步与第二步相比较几乎是同样困难。对于舆论来说，掌握它的人总是占绝对优势的，而要改变舆论则几乎是不可能的。各种制度在第一代人看来，只不过是似乎可以实现某种原则的权宜之计。下一代则把它尊崇为有最大可能实现这一原则的近似办法。而再下一代则把它崇拜为这一原则本身。几乎并不需要三代人就酿成了这种神化现象；作孙子的常把他祖父犹疑不定的试验看成是大自然固有结构的一个不可分割的部分。

即使我们对于全部政治历史有清楚的洞察力，并且能够从那些经过完善训练的人士头脑中产生出一些有关政府的稳定、无误、温和的明智准则；在这些准则当中一切合理的政治学说都将得到最后的解决，“国家是否将按照这些准则行事？”这就是问题之所在。人们的大多数是极端缺乏哲学头脑的。而今天，人们的大多数却拥有投票权。一个真理在被那些每天在一大清早就跑去上班的人们认识之前，必须首先表现得不只是清楚而且还要平易。并且在这同一批人下定决心照此行事之前，必须表明如果不照此行事就将产生重大而且有切肤之痛的不便之处。

还有哪一个地方，其缺乏哲学头脑的人群的大多数在其构成上比美国还要五花八门呢？为了弄清楚这种国家公众的思想情况，不仅要了解作为旧日主要民族的美国人的思想，并且还要了解爱尔兰人、德国人和黑人的思想。为了替一种新学说找到立足之地，必须去影响各种各样的思想。这些思想由各个种族的模式所铸成，来自产生于各种环境中的偏见，被许许多多各种不同的民族的历史所扭曲，几乎受到地球上每一个温暖或寒冷、开放或封锁地区的影响。 对于行政学研究的历史以及特殊困难的条件就谈论这么多。当我们已经进入这一领域时，我们必须在这样的困难条件下展开研究工作。现在的问题是，这种研究的题材是什么，以及这一研究所特有的目的又是什么呢？ 二

行政管理的领域是一种事务性的领域，它与政治领域的那种混乱和冲突相距甚远。在大多数问题上，它甚至与宪法研究方面那种争议甚多的场面也迥然不同。行政管理作为政治生活的一个组成部分，仅在这一点上与企业办公室所采用的工作方法是社会生活的一部分以及机器是制造品的一部分是一样的。但是行政管理却同时又大大高出于纯粹技术细节的那种单调内容之上，其事实根据就在于通过它的较高原则，它与政治智慧所派生的经久不衰的原理以及政治进步所具有的永恒真理是直接相关联的。

行政管理研究的目的就在于把行政方法从经验性实验的混乱和浪费中拯救出来，并使它们深深植根于稳定的原则之上。

正是根据这种理由，我们必须把现阶段的文官制度改革看作只不过是为达到更完善的行政改革的一部序曲。现在我们正在改进任命方法，我们必须继续更适当地调整行政职能，并且规定一些有关行政组织与行政活动的更好办法。因此，文官制度改革只不过是为我们所要进行的工作做一种思想准备。它将通过树立公共机关受到公众信任的神圣尊严，使官场生活中的道德气氛得到再造。它还通过使机关变得公正不阿的办法，开辟一条机关事务有条有理的道路。通过端正机关工作的动机，文官制度改革有可能使机关改进其工作方法。

请允许我对我已说过的行政管理的范围略加扩充。需要注意的最重要的一点是这样一条真理，它有幸已经被我们的文官制度改革家作了如此广泛的坚决宣传。这条真理是行政管理置身于“政治”所传有的范围之外。行政管理的问题并不是政治问题，虽然行政管理的任务是由政治加以确定的，但政治却无需自找麻烦地去操纵行政管理机构。 这是高层权力的区划界限，著名的德国学者们坚持这一观点并认为是理所当然的事情。例如布隆赤里8[8][8]就叮嘱我们要把行政管理与政治和法律同样地区别开来。他说，政治是“在重大而且带普遍性的事项”方面的国家活动，而“在另一方面”，“行政管理”则是“国家在个别和细微事项方面的活动。因此，政治是政治家的特殊活动范围，而行政管理则是技术性职员的事情”。“政策如果没有行政管理的帮助就将一事无成”，但行政管理并不因此就是政治。然而我们在采取这一立场时并不需要求助于德国人的权威，很幸运的是行政和政治的这种区别现在已是极为明显，并不需要作进一步的讨论。

还有另外一种区别必须把它写进我们的结论里去，这虽然只不过是政治与行政之间区别的另一个侧面，但却是很不容易发觉的。我指的是“宪法问题”和行政管理问题之间的区别，也就是那种必须适合宪法原则所作的政府调整和8[8][8] 布隆赤里(Johenn Kaspar Bluntohi. 1806—1881)，德国政治学家，主张政治与行政二分法的早期代表人物之一。

那种仅仅为了灵活适应上的方便，对于可以改变的目标所作的政府调整这两者之间的区别。

在任何一个进行实际工作的各种各样的政府部门之中，要想弄清楚究竟什么事情是行政管理，又不卷入为数众多的易于混淆的细节和细微的易于迷惑的界限之中，并不是容易的事情。没有一条用以区别行政和非行政职能的界限可以从政府的这个部门划到那个部门，而不用像翻山越岭那样，要跨过其高度使人昏眩的分界群峰和穿过由法律规章所组成的稠密丛林，并且随时随地碰到的都是一些“如果”和“但是”，“既然”与“无论如何”之类的词语，直到这些界限在不习惯于这一类调查方法，并且不熟悉使用进行逻辑识别的经纬仪的人们的眼里变得完全辨别不清时为止。一大堆行政管理工作都是“无声无息地”在世界大部分地区进行着，而这些行政管理工作现在是一会儿被政治“管理”、－会儿被宪法原则弄得混乱不堪。

这种容易产生混乱的状态，也许可以说明尼布尔9[9][9]的这样一种说法。他说：“自由绝对是更多地取决于行政管理而不是取决于宪法”。乍看起来这种说法似乎基本上是正确的。显然在有关自由的具体实施方面，其方便条件的确更多地是取决于行政安排而不是宪法保障，虽然只有宪法保障才能维护自由的存在。但是（再仔细思考一下）即使只分析到这里，难道这种情况就是真实的么？自由并不存在于简易的职能行动之中，正如同智慧并不存在于安适与活力之中一样，而安适和活力是与一个强壮的人的四肢活相联系的。存在于人的心目中或宪法中起支配作用的各种原则，才是自由或者奴役状态的最活跃的原动力。因为依赖和屈服并没有带着锁链，它们都是从慈父船体贴入微的政府每一个改善工作条件的计划中体现出来的，因而它们并不因此就会转变为自由。自由并不能在远离宪法原则的情况下生存下来，而且任何一种行政管理，不管它的方法是多么完善和自由，只要它是以不自由的统治原则为基础的，那它就不可能给予人们以一种比赝品式的自由更多的东西。

对于宪法和行政职能二者在管辖范围之间的差别有了清楚的认识之后，理应不会再留下产生误解的余地，并且有可能提出某些基本上可以确定的标准来，而上述清楚的认识是能够建立在这种标准之上的。公共行政就是公法的明细而系统的执行活动。一般法律的每一次具体实施都是一种行政行为。例如，有关捐税的征收和增加，罪犯的处以绞刑，邮件的运输和投递，陆海军的征募和装备等等，、显然都属于行政行为。然而指导这些应予进行的工作的一般性法律，却显然是在行政管理之外和行政管理之上的。

有关政府活动的大规模计划并不属于行政管理范围。因此，宪法所要认真过问的只是政府用以控制一般性法律的那些手段，我们的联邦宪法遵循这一原则。其表现方式是对于即使是最高层次的纯粹执行机关也不置一词，而是对联邦总统做出规定。因为他是要参与行使政府的立法和决策的，只是对最高司法部门的那些法官做出规定，因为他们的职责在解释和保卫宪法原则，而不涉及那些仅仅陈述这些原则的人们。

这并不完全是“意志”与相应“行动”之间的区别，因为行政官员在为了完成其任务而选择手段时，应该有而且也的确有他自己的意志，他不是而且也不应该是一种纯粹被动的工具。这是一般决策和特殊手段之间的区别。

的确，在下述这个问题上行政研究侵犯了宪法的领域——或者至少是侵犯了那种似乎属于宪法的领域。从哲学的角度看，行政学的研究与适当分配宪法权力的研究密切相关。为了获得办事效率，必须找到一种极为简便的安排。通过这种安排，可以使官员准确无误地承担责任。必须找到不给权力带来损害的最佳分权方式，找到不会导致责任模糊的最佳责任分担方式。而这种分权问题，当其被引入政府的高层和根本职能这一范围时，就显然是一个重要的宪法问题了。如果行政学之研究能够找到作为这种分权办法之基础的最佳准则，那么它就等于为宪法研究做出了不可估量的贡献。我坚信在这个问题上面，孟德斯鸠的意见并不是最后的结论。

跟在其它制度之下相比较，也许在民主制度下面，找出分权的最佳准则显得尤为重要。因为在民主制度之下，官员们为许多主人服务；而在其它制度下面，他们仅仅为少数人服务。一切统治者对其臣仆都是怀疑的，而作为主权者的全体人民也完全符合这一规律，决不例外。但是人民的怀疑怎样才能通过具有“知识”而得以减少呢？如果这种怀疑仅仅由于提高明智的警惕性就能够加以澄清，那它将是完全有益的；如果这种警惕性能够通过对责任进行准确无误的分配而有所加强，那它也将完全是善良的。无论是在私人或公众的头脑中，怀疑这种思想本身绝对是健康的东西。在人生一切关系当中，“信赖就是力量”，并且正如合同宪法改革者的任务在于创造信赖条件一样，行政管理组织者的任务也在于使行政管理与职责分明这一条件相适应，因为职责分明能够保证人们产生信赖感。

那么。请允许我说，巨大的权力和不受限制的自由处置权限在我看来似乎是承担责任的不可缺少的条件。在碰到优良或恶劣的行政管理的时候，必须能够较容易地对公众的注意力加以诱导，使之对于一个人究竟应该是加以颂扬或谴责做出判断。只要权力并不是不负责任的，那它就绝没有危险性。如果权力被加以诱导，使得许多人各享有一分，那它就很容易受到监督和接受质询。如果一个人为了保持其职务，必须取得公开而且真正的成功。并且如果与此同时，他感觉到自己已被授予以任意处置的巨大自由权力时，那么他的权力越大，他就越不可能滥用此种权力，他就会更加9[9][9] 此处指贝托尔德·格奥尔格·尼布尔(Berthold—Georg Nlebubr. 1776—1831)，德国历史学家。

受到鼓舞，更加头脑清醒和更加被这种权力所激励。而他的权力越小，他就会感到他的职位无疑是既模糊又不引人注意的，他就越容易堕落到不负责任的状态之中去。

就在这一点上，我们便很显然地进入到了一个问题更为重大的领域之中，这问题便是公共舆论与行政管理之间的正常关系。

官员们值得信任的品德应该向什么人披露呢？官员们关心公众究竟是不是为了取得他所应得的颂扬和加速晋升呢？或者仅仅是为了做给他机关里的上级看的呢？人民是否应该动员起来解决行政纪律问题，正如同他们已经动员来解决宪法原则问题一样呢？这类问题显然毫无疑问是立足于本文全部研究内容中最基本问题就是：在行政管理活动当中，群众舆论将起什么作用？

准确的答案似乎是：公共舆论将起权威性评判家的作用。

但是,舆论权威所赖以形成并显示出来的“手段”是什么呢；在组织行政管理工作方面，我们美国所特有的困难并不在于失去自由的危险，而是在于不能够或不愿意把自由的要素和它的偶然因素分别开来。我们的成就已经被我们那种令人烦恼的错误弄成值得怀疑的东西了，这错误就是试图通过投票作过多的事情。自治并不意味着对每桩事情都要插上一手，正如同操持家务并不意味着一定要用自己的双手去做饭一样。在管理炉灶与炉火方面，应授予炊事员很大的自由处置的权力。

在一些国家，对于舆论所应有的特权还应进行教育，舆论还没有习惯于按照自己的方式办事。我们这个国家，关于公共舆论的范围这一问题是更有可能得到解决的。在找们这里，公共舆论已经广泛觉醒并且特别注意无论如何都要按自己的方式行事。当你看到一位德国的政治科学教授为了向他的同胞进言；“请你没法对国家大事发表一点意见”，因而写下整整一本书的时候，你会觉得这是十分动人的事情。而对于一个如此谦逊的公众，我们至少可以预见到，他们在认识到自己受到强制，“无”极考虑和讲话的事情上一定会是很温顺和听话的。这种公众可能是反应迟钝的，但却决不会是爱管闲事的。它在试图教导他人之前必然会先同意接受他的教导，它所受的政治教育必然走在它的政治行动之前。而在努力指导我们本国的公众舆论时，我们所要对付的是这样一位学生，他习惯于认为自己早已受到过十分充足的训练。

问题在于应该使公众舆论具有效力，而我们又免遭它的好管闲事之苦。当公众评论直接关注政府的日常琐事和政府对日常工作方法的选择时，它当然会像是一个笨拙讨厌的家伙，像是一个乡下人在操纵一部难以驾驶的机器。但是无论是在政治还是在行政方面，当对制定基本政策的更为巨大的力量进行监督时，公众的批评则是完全安全而且有益的，是完全不可缺少的。应该让行政学研究会发现一些最佳方法，这些方法能够给予公众评论这种控制监督的权力，同时使之与一切其它的干扰活动分离。

但是，在行政学研究已经告诉人民应该期望与要求什么样的行政管理，以及怎样实现他们的要求时，它的全部任务是否就已经完成了呢？难道不应该前进一步为公共服务机关培训后备人员吗？

当前在我们这个国家，有一种普及政治教育的值得赞叹的运动正在进行之中。在缺乏一个师资配备良好的政治科学讲座的条件下，没有一所有威望的大学可以兴办下去。这样～种时刻即将到来，即通过这种方式进行的教育只能够达到某种深度。它将会使对政府的明智的批评大量增加，但决不会培育出一大批能干的行政管理人员；它将为发展对政府的一般原则的准确理解做好准备，但是它却不一定会对管理政府的技能有所促进。这是一种有可能培养出立法人员、但却不能培养出行政官员的教育。如果我们要想改进这种作为政府推动力量的公众舆论，我们就必须准备一批更好的官员以充当政府的“工具”。如果我们要添置新的锅炉并且加大推动我们政府机器的炉火，我们就必须使旧的轮子、接头、阀门和皮带等，在新力量的推动下尽可能不发出嘎吱嘈杂的声音。无论哪里要补充动力或需要进行调整，我们就必须安上新的运转部件。为了建立民主制度必须对文职机关的人员进行竞争性考试，这些人员已为接受技术知识方面的各种形式的考试做了充分的准备。一支在技术上受过训练的文官队伍不久即将成为不可缺少的因素。

我认为一支经过特殊训练的文官队伍，在接受任命、进入完善的组织机构、摆在适当的级别上和接受特有的纪律之后，在许多深谋远虑的人看来，似乎包含了一些综合起来足以形成一个讨厌的官僚阶层的因素——形成一个独特的、难结社性的团体、他们的感情与那种进步而且具有自由思想的人民相去甚远，他们心`胸狭窄，充满着乖僻的文牍主义式的卑劣行径。可以肯定，这样一个阶层在美国必然会是百分之百令人讨厌的和有害的。任何旨在培育这样一个阶层的措施，对我们说来都将是反动而且愚蠢的措施。

但是如果害怕产生出一个像我在这里研究结果指出的那样的跋扈而且反对自由的官僚阶层，那就等于完全忽视了我所希望坚持的原则。这种原则是：美国行政管理必须在一切方面都对公众舆论有敏锐的反应。在任何情况下，我们都必须有一支受过充分训练的、以良好行为进行服务的官员，显然是一种工作上的需要。但是当你探讨过究竟什么是良好的行为时，那种担心这样、一个阶层将会具有某种反美因素的疑虑便会烟消云散。因为很显然这一问题的答案是显而易见的，良好行为就对其为之服务的政府的政策具有坚定而强烈的忠诚。那种政策在各方面都绝没有官僚作风的

污点，决不是出自常任文官的创造，而是那种直接而且必须要对公共舆论负责的政治家的杰作。只有当一个国家的全部行政机关与人民、人民领袖以及其普通工作人员的共同政治生活隔离的时候，官僚制组织才可能生存10[10][10]。官僚制组织的动机。目标、政策和标准必然是官僚性的。我们规定所有的部都必须是真正为民众服务的，因而对于在真正为民众服务的部长领导下履行任务的官员们，要想指出他们无耻的独断专横的任何实例，看来是很困难的。而另一方面，要举出其它的正面例子则将是很容易的。例如在普鲁士斯坦因的影响下；一个具有真正公共精神的政治家，其领导方式可以把自负而且敷衍塞责的机关变成公共政府的具有公正精神的工具。

我们的理想模式是通过某种方式建立一个有文化教养和自立精神的文官制度，它完全能够有理智有力量地展开活动，同时与公众的思想保持着非常紧密的联系。这种方式就是选举和经常性的公开协商，它可以彻底排除武断和阶级态度。

三

当对行政学研究的题材和目标作了某种程度的考察以后，那么关于最适合于这种研究的方法以及对于它最有用的观点是什么，我们将得出怎样的结论呢？政府与我们是如此接近，是我们每天都习惯于与之打交道的这样一个庞然大物，因此我们就难以看出有对它进行任何哲学上研究的必要。或者如果展开了这种研究的话，也难以看出这种研究的准确目的。我们用脚走路的时间已经过于长久，现在再研究走路的技巧是为时已晚。我们是一个讲求实际的民族，生来就是如此灵巧，经过若干世纪的实验性的训练，我们是如此擅长于自我管理，以致我们几乎不再有能力去发现我们可能正在采用的某一特定制度的缺陷。其原因正是因为我们太容易学会使用任何一种制度了。我们并不研究治国的艺术，我们却治理着国家。但是仅仅依靠没有经过训练的办事天才，是不能把我们从行政管理方面可悲的严重失误中拯救出来的。虽然我们是有着悠久传统和经过了反复选择的民主主义者，我们却依然是相当不成熟的民主主义者。民主虽然有着古老的历史，但是要把它在现代观念和条件

之上组建起来，还依然是一件未竟事业。民主国家要准备肩负起行政管理方面的无数重担，这是工业和贸易时代的需要，正在非常迅速地积累起来。如果不对政府进行比较研究，我们就不能使自己从下面这种误解中解放出来，即认为在民主国家其行政管理跟非民主的国家相比较，是建立在一个根本不同的基础之上的。

在经过这样一番比较研究之后，我们便可以充分地给予民主这样一种荣誉，即对于影响公共福利的一切重大问题，它是用辩论的方式最后加以决定的，它是在大多数人意志的基础之上建立其政策框架的。但是对于一切政府，我们却只可能找到一种进行良好行政管理的规则。在与行政管理职能有关的各个方面，一切政府都具有很强的结构方面的相似性。不仅如此，如果各种政府想成为同样有用和有效率的政府，他们就“必须”在结构上有高度相似之处。不管在动机、服务、能力方面的差距是如何巨大，一个自由人和奴隶一样，具有同样的生理器官，同样的活动要素。君主国家和民主国家，尽管其他方面彼此有根本上的差别，然而实际上却都有许多相同的工作需要加以照管。

当前，我们完全可以适当地强调一切政府之间的这种实际上存在的相似性，因为在像我们这样的国家里，现在正处于这样的时代：滥用权力现象很容易被一种勇敢、机警、喜欢打听而又善于侦察的公共舆论和一种坚定的大众化的自主性给予揭露和加以制止，这种公共舆论和自主性是前所未有的。我们在认识这一点上显得很迟钝，而要认识这一点是很容易的。不妨设想一下在美国建立一种个人独裁政府的情景，这就如同设想要建立一种全国性的对雷斯的崇拜一样。我们的想象力是太现代化了，我们不适宜于崇拜丰功伟绩。

除了适当强调之外，我们还有必要认识到所有相类似的政府，它们在行政管理方面的合法目标也是相同的。这是为了使人们不至于在下述的观点面前吃惊：以为我们是在外国的行政管理制度当中寻求教训和启发。这是为了使人们免除这样一种忧虑，即我们有可能会盲目地引进某些与我们的原则不相符合的东西。那种对把外国制度移植到我们国家的意图进行指责的人肯定是盲目地步入歧途，这是不可能的，外国制度完全没有在这里生长的可能。但是，如果有某种符合我们要求，可以加以利用的外国的发明创造，我们为什么不加以利用呢？我们以一种外来的方式应用它们是不会有危险的。我们引进了大米，但我们却不用筷子吃饭。我们的全部政治词汇都是从英国引进的，但我们却从其中淘汰了“国王”和“贵族”。除开建立在个人基础之上的联邦政府的活动以及联邦最高法院的某些职能之外，我们究竟做过一些什么样的组织工作呢？

只要我们能够从根本原则上认识其在环境条件方面的全部根本差别，我们就能够完全和有益地引进他们的行政科学。我们仅需要用我们的宪法把它加以过滤，只需要把它放在批判的文火上烘烤，把其中的外国气体蒸馏掉。

我知道，在某些忠心耿耿的爱国主义者头脑中存在着一种深深的恐惧，认为研究欧洲制度可能会使人认为某些外国方法比某些美国方法要优越一些。这种恐惧是不难理解的，但是这种看法不会得到任何一个阶层的同意。

尤其有必要强调的是应该因此排除一切成见，这些成见反对行政研究中向除了本国之外的一切地方去寻求启示，10[10][10] 这里所说的官僚制组织一词采用的是德国社会学家M·韦伯的专门术语（Bureaucracy）。——译者

因为在整个政治学的领域里，我们在使用历史比较法时，似乎没有任何领域要比行政学这一领域更为安全的了。也许形式愈新颖，我们就研究得愈出色。我们将会以更快的速度了解我们自己方法中的特点。如果采取拿我们自己跟自己比较的方式，我们就将永远无法了解我们自己的缺点和优点。我们对于自己制度的表现和程序是太习惯了，因而不能够发现它的真正意义。也许甚至英国的制度也与我们自己的太相象了，因而不能用来作为最有用的例证。总的说来，最好是选择与我们自己完全不同的环境气氛，极其认真地考察例如法国和德国的那些制度。通过这种“媒介物”去观察我们自己的制度，我们就将会像那些在观察我们时不带成见的外国人所能看到的那样去观察我们自己。如果我们只是知道我们自己，那么我们就是一无所知。

应该指出的是，正是上述已划分清楚了的行政和政治的区别界限，使得在行政学领域中使用比较方法是可靠的。当我们研究法国和德国的行政制度时，由于我们明知自己并不是在探求“政治”准则，因而当法国或德国人向我们解释其行政实践时，我们不需要注意他们就宪法和政治原因方面所做的撒胡椒面式的解释。如果我看到一个杀气腾腾的人在敏捷地磨着一把刀子，我可以借用他磨刀的方法而用不着借用他可能用刀子犯谋杀罪的动机。同样，如果我见到一个彻底的君主主义者很好地管理着某一个公共机关，我可以学习他的办事方法，而无需改变我作为共和主义者的特点。他可以为他的国王效劳，而我却将继续为民众服务。但是我却希望能像他为其统治者服务那样为我的统治者服务。只要在思想上保持这种区别界限——也就是说，只要把研究行政学作为使我们的政治易于付诸实践的一种手段，作为使针对所有人的民主政治在行政管理方面实施到每一个人的一种手段——那么我们就会立足于完全安全的基础之上，并且我们就能够学习外国制度必然教给我们的东西而不犯错误。这样，我们便为比较研究方法设计出来了一个可进行调节的砝码。这样，我们便可以对外国政府进行解剖学的观察，而不用害怕会把它们的任何疾病传染到我们的血管中来，可以详细解剖外国制度而不用害怕血液中毒。

我们自己的政策应该成为一切理论的试金石。作为美国行政科学之基础的原则，应该是在实质上有包含民主政策的原则。并且，“为了适合美国人的习惯，一切普遍性理论作为理论来说，应该不仅是在公开的论证中，并且在我们的思想上，都有节制地限制在特定背景的范围内——以免那些仅仅按图书馆标准来说可以称得上是满意的意见，将会被教条式地加以运用，仿佛它们按实际政治的标准来说也一定同样是令人满意的。首先需要进行的是试验性的实践而不是教条式的设计。那些不仅被其它国家的肯定性经验所认可，并且也与美国习惯相契合的种种安排，必须毫不犹豫地优先从理论上进行完善。简而言之，稳重而且实际的法国才应该放在首位，而把闭门造车式的理论摆在次要的地位。世界的“作什么”永远应该由美国式的“如何作”所支配。

我们的职责在于。给“联邦”组织、给系统之中的系统，提供尽可能最好的生活。使得集镇、城市、郡县、各州以及联邦政府的日子都过得同样充实，同样在健康方面有保证，使上述每一方都毫无疑问能够保持自己主人翁的地位，而又使得一切单位都既彼此独立又相互合作，把独立和相互帮助结合起来，这是一个足以使最优秀的人物都向往的伟大而又重要的任务。

地方自治与联邦自治之间的这种交叉关系是一个崭新的概念。这与德意志的帝国联邦结构并不相同。那里的地方政府还不是充分的地方“自治”政府。在那里每一个地方，官僚都很忙碌。他们的效率来自“团体精神”，来自想表现对于上级权力的阿谀奉承的服从，或者从最好的角度说，来自易受感动的良心的土壤。他肯效力，但不是为民众，而是为一个不负责任的部长。我们面前的问题是，要使政府官员经常感兴趣的是尽他的才智做最大的努力，用他的良心做最大的服务，不仅为他的上级而且为他的社会尽力。我们的政府及其各级政府怎样才能通过给予政府官员大量生活费用补助，来使这种服务引起他最普遍的兴趣？怎样才能通过发展他的前程，使这种服务成为他最珍视的兴趣？怎样才能通过提高他的营养和培养他的性格，使这种服务成为他最崇高的兴趣呢？并且，我们怎样才能够使得地方单位以及全国都同样达到这种程度呢？

如果我们解决了这个问题，我们就将再度掌握世界的航向。现在有一种倾向——难道不存在这样一种倾向吗？——一种现在还很模糊、但是已经在稳步地增加影响，并且显然预定是要取得支配地位的倾向。这倾向首先是出现在像大不列颠帝国这类有许多部分所组成的联邦，而最后则是出现在一些大国本身，将会出现具有在可以允许的限度内实行分权的广泛联盟来取代集权化。这是一种走向美国式类型的倾向——一种为了追求共同目标而建立政府与政府之间联系的趋势，这种联系是建立在诚信的平等和光荣的隶属基础之上的。到处都有类似的公民自由的原则在促进类似的政府手段的发展。如果对政府管理方式和手段的比较研究将会使我们提出一些建议，使得上述各种政府在行政管理方面实际上把公开性和活力结合在一起，并且准备接受一切严肃的得到广泛支持的公众批评，那么这种比较研究就将使自已有资格进入政治研究的最高级和最有成果的重大分支学科的行列之中。我满怀信心地希望这种研究将会从这样的建议中成长起来。

The Study of Administration

Woodrow Wilson

November 1, 1886

An Essay

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I suppose that no practical science is ever studied where there is no need to know it. The very fact, therefore, that the eminently practical science of administration is finding its way into college courses in this country would prove that this country needs to know more about administration, were such proof of the fact required to make out a case. It need not be said, however, that we do not look into college programmes for proof of this fact. It is a thing almost taken for granted among us, that the present movement called civil service reform must, after the accomplishment of its first purpose, expand into efforts to improve, not the personnel only, but also the organization and methods of our government offices: because it is plain that their organizations and methods need improvement only less than their personnel. It is the object of administrative study to discover, first, what government can properly 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. On both these points there is obviously much need of light among us; and only careful study can supply that light.

Before entering on that study, however, it is needful:

I. To take some account of what others have done in the same line; that is to say, of the history of the study.

II. To ascertain just what is its subject-matter.

III. To determine just what are the best methods by which to develop it, and the most clarifying political conceptions to carry with us into it.

Unless we know and settle these things, we shall set out without chart or compass. I.

The science of administration is the latest fruit of that study of the science of politics which was begun some twenty-two hundred years ago. It is a birth of our own century, almost of our own generation.

Why was it so late in coming? Why did it wait till this too busy century of ours to demand attention for itself? Administration is the most obvious part of government; it is government in action; it is the executive, the operative, the most visible side of government, and is of course as old as government itself. It is government in action, and one might very naturally expect to find that government in action had arrested the attention and provoked the scrutiny of writers of politics very early in the history of systematic thought.

But such was not the case. No one wrote systematically of administration as a branch of the science of government until the present century had passed its first youth and had begun to put forth its characteristic flower of the systematic knowledge. Up to our own day all the political writers whom we now read had thought, argued, dogmatized only about the constitution of government; about the nature of the state, the essence and seat of sovereignty, popular power and kingly prerogative; about the greatest meanings lying at the heart of government, and the high ends set before the purpose of government by man’s nature and man’s aims. The central field of controversy was that great field of theory in which monarchy rode tilt against democracy, in which oligarchy would have built for itself strongholds of privilege, and in which tyranny sought opportunity to make good its claim to receive submission from all competitors. Amidst this high warfare of principles, administration could command no pause for its own consideration. The question was always: Who shall make law, and what shall that law be? The other question, how law should be administered with enlightenment, with equity, with speed, and without friction, was put aside as "practical detail" which clerks could arrange after doctors had agreed upon principles.

That political philosophy took this direction was of course no accident, no chance preference or perverse whim of political philosophers. The philosophy of any time is, as Hegel says, "nothing but the spirit of that time expressed in abstract thought"; and political philosophy, like philosophy of every other kind, has only held up the mirror to contemporary affairs. The trouble in early times was almost altogether about the constitution of government; and consequently that was what engrossed men’s thoughts. There was little or no trouble about administration,-at least little that was heeded by administrators. The functions of government were simple, because life itself was simple. Government went about imperatively and compelled men, without thought of consulting their wishes. There was no complex system of public revenues and public debts to puzzle financiers; there were, consequently, no financiers to be puzzled. No one who possessed power was long at a loss how to use it. The great and only question was: Who shall possess it? Populations were of manageable numbers; property was of simple sorts. There were plenty of farms, but no stocks and bonds: more cattle than vested interests.

I have said that all this was true of "early times"; but it was substantially true also of comparatively late times. One does not have to look back of the last century for the beginnings of the present complexities of trade and perplexities of commercial speculation, nor for the portentous birth of national debts. Good Queen Bess, doubtless, thought that the monopolies of the sixteenth century were hard enough to handle without burning her hands; but they are not remembered in the presence of the giant monopolies of the nineteenth century. When Blackstone lamented that corporations had no bodies to be kicked and no souls to be damned, he was anticipating the proper time for such regrets by a full century. The perennial discords between master and workmen which now so often disturb industrial society began before the Black Death and the Statute of Laborers; but never before our own day did they assume such ominous proportions as they wear now. In brief, if difficulties of governmental action are to be seen gathering in other centuries, they are to be seen culminating in our own.

This is the reason why administrative tasks have nowadays to be so studiously and systematically adjusted to carefully tested standards of policy, the reason why we are having now what we never had before, a science of administration. The weightier debates of constitutional principle are even yet by no means concluded; but they are no longer of more immediate practical moment than questions of administration. It is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one.

Here is Mr. Bagehot’s graphic, whimsical way of depicting the difference between the old and the new in administration:

In early times, when a despot wishes to govern a distant province, he sends down a satrap on a grand horse, and other people on little horses; and very little is heard of the satrap again unless he send back some of the little people to tell what he has been doing. No great labour of superintendence is possible. Common rumour and casual report are the sources of intelligence. If it seems certain that the province is in a bad state, satrap No. I is recalled, and satrap No. 2 sent out in his stead. In civilized countries the process is different. You erect a bureau in the province you want to govern; you make it write letters and copy letters; it sends home eight reports per diem to the head bureau in St. Petersburg. Nobody does a sum in the province without some one doing the same sum in the capital, to "check" him, and see that he does it correctly. The consequence of this is, to throw on the heads of departments an amount of reading and labour which can only be accomplished by the greatest natural aptitude, the most efficient training, the most firm and regular industry.

(Essay on Sir William Pitt. [All footnotes WW’s.])

There is scarcely a single duty of government which was once simple which is not now complex; government once had but a few masters; it now has scores of masters. Majorities formerly only underwent government; they now conduct government. Where government once might follow the whims of a court, it must now follow the views of a nation.

And those views are steadily widening to new conceptions of state duty; so that, at the same time that the functions of government are everyday becoming more complex and difficult, they are also vastly multiplying in number. Administration is everywhere putting its hands to new undertakings. The utility, cheapness, and success of the government’s postal service, for instance, point towards the early establishment of governmental control of the telegraph system. Or, even if our government is not to follow the lead of the governments of Europe in buying or building both telegraph and railroad lines, no one can doubt

that in some way it must make itself master of masterful corporations. The creation of national commissioners of railroads, in addition to the older state commissions, involves a very important and delicate extension of administrative functions. Whatever hold of authority state or federal governments are to take upon corporations, there must follow cares and responsibilities which will require not a little wisdom, knowledge, and experience. Such things must be studied in order to be well done. And these, as I have said, are only a few of the doors which are being opened to offices of government. The idea of the state and the consequent ideal of its duty are undergoing noteworthy change; and "the idea of the state is the conscience of administration." Seeing every day new things which the state ought to do, the next thing is to see clearly how it ought to do them.

This is why there should be a science of administration which shall seek to straighten the paths of government, to make its business less unbusinesslike, to strengthen and purify its organization, and to crown its duties with dutifulness. This is one reason why there is such a science. But where has this science grown up? Surely not on this side the sea. Not much impartial scientific method is to be discerned in our administrative practices. The poisonous atmosphere of city government, the crooked secrets of state administration, the confusion, sinecurism, and corruption ever and again discovered in the bureaux at Washington forbid us to believe that any clear conceptions of what constitutes good administration are as yet very widely current in the United States. No; American writers have hitherto taken no very important part in the advancement of this science. It has found its doctors in Europe. It 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. It has been developed by French and German professors, and is consequently in all parts adapted to the needs of a compact state, and made to fit highly centralized forms of government; whereas, to answer our purposes, it must be adapted, not to a simple and compact, but to a complex and multiform state, and made to fit highly decentralized forms of government. If we would employ it, we must Americanize it, and that not formally, in language merely, but radically, in thought, principle, and aim as well. It must learn our constitutions by heart; must get the bureaucratic fever out of its veins; must inhale much free American air.

If an explanation be sought why a science manifestly so susceptible of being made useful to all governments alike should have received attention first in Europe, where government has long been a monopoly, rather than in England or the United States, where government has long been a common franchise, the reason will doubtless be found to be twofold: first, that in Europe, just because government was independent of popular assent, there was more governing to be done; and, second, that the desire to keep government a monopoly made the monopolists interested in discovering the least irritating means of governing. They were, besides, few enough to adopt means promptly.

It will be instructive to look into this matter a little more closely. In speaking of European governments I do not, of course, include England. She has not refused to change with the times. She has simply tempered the severity of the transition from a polity of aristocratic privilege to a system of democratic power by slow measures of constitutional reform which, without preventing revolution, has confined it to paths of peace. But the countries of the continent for a long time desperately struggled against all change, and would have diverted revolution by softening the asperities of absolute government. They sought so to perfect their machinery as to destroy all wearing friction, so to sweeten their methods with consideration for the interests of the governed as to placate all hindering hatred, and so assiduously and opportunely to offer their aid to all classes of undertakings as to render themselves indispensable to the industrious. They did at last give the people constitutions and the franchise; but even after that they obtained leave to continue despotic by becoming paternal. They made themselves too efficient to be dispensed with, too smoothly operative to be noticed, too enlightened to be inconsiderately questioned, too benevolent to be suspected, too powerful to be coped with. All this has required study; and they have closely studied it.

On this side the sea we, the while, had known no great difficulties of government. With a new country in which there was room and remunerative employment for everybody, with liberal principles of government and unlimited skill in practical politics, we were long exempted from the need of being anxiously careful about plans and methods of administration. We

have naturally been slow to see the use or significance of those many volumes of learned research and painstaking examination into the ways and means of conducting government which the presses of Europe have been sending to our libraries. Like a lusty child, government with us has expanded in nature and grown great in stature, but has also become awkward in movement. The vigor and increase of its life has been altogether out of proportion to its skill in living. It has gained strength, but it has not acquired deportment. Great, therefore, as has been our advantage over the countries of Europe in point of ease and health of constitutional development, now that the time for more careful administrative adjustments and larger administrative knowledge has come to us, we are at a signal disadvantage as compared with the transatlantic nations; and this for reasons which I shall try to make clear.

Judging by the constitutional histories of the chief nations of the modern world, there may be said to be three periods of growth through which government has passed in all the most highly developed of existing systems, and through which it promises to pass in all the rest. The first of these periods is that of absolute rulers, and of an administrative system adapted to absolute rule; the second is that in which constitutions are framed to do away with absolute rulers and substitute popular control, and in which administration is neglected for these higher concerns; and the third is that in which the sovereign people undertake to develop administration under this new constitution which has brought them into power.

Those governments are now in the lead in administrative practice which had rulers still absolute but also enlightened when those modern days of political illumination came in which it was made evident to all but the blind that governors are properly only the servants of the governed. In such governments administration has been organized to subserve the general weal with the simplicity and effectiveness vouchsafed only to the undertakings of a single will.

Such was the case in Prussia, for instance, where administration has been most studied and most nearly perfected. Frederic the Great, stern and masterful as was his rule, still sincerely professed to regard himself as only the chief servant of the state, to consider his great office a public trust; and it was he who, building upon the foundations laid by his father, began to organize the public service of Prussia as in very earnest a service of the public. His no less absolute successor, Frederic William III, under the inspiration of Stein, again, in his turn, advanced the work still further, planning many of the broader structural features which give firmness and form to Prussian administration to-day. Almost the whole of the admirable system has been developed by kingly initiative.

Of similar origin was the practice, if not the plan, of modern French administration, with its symmetrical divisions of territory and its orderly gradations of office. The days of the Revolution—of the Constituent Assembly—were days of constitution-writing, but they can hardly be called days of constitution-making. The revolution heralded a period of constitutional development,-the entrance of France upon the second of those periods which I have enumerated,-but it did not itself inaugurate such a period. It interrupted and unsettled absolutism, but it did not destroy it. Napoleon succeeded the monarchs of France, to exercise a power as unrestricted as they had ever possessed.

The recasting of French administration by Napoleon is, therefore, my second example of the perfecting of civil machinery by the single will of an absolute ruler before the dawn of a constitutional era. No corporate, popular will could ever have effected arrangements such as those which Napoleon commanded. Arrangements so simple at the expense of local prejudice, so logical in their indifference to popular choice, might be decreed by a Constituent Assembly, but could be established only by the unlimited authority of a despot. The system of the year VIII was ruthlessly thorough and heartlessly perfect. It was, besides, in large part, a return to the despotism that had been overthrown.

Among those nations, on the other hand, which entered upon a season of constitution-making and popular reform before administration had received the impress of liberal principle, administrative improvement has been tardy and half-done. Once a nation has embarked in the business of manufacturing constitutions, it finds it exceedingly difficult to close out that business and open for the public a bureau of skilled, economical administration. There seems to be no end to the tinkering of constitutions. Your ordinary constitution will last you hardly ten years without repairs or additions; and the time for administrative detail comes late.

Here, of course, our examples are England and our own country. In the days of the Angevin kings, before constitutional life had taken root in the Great Charter, legal and administrative reforms began to proceed with sense and vigor under the impulse of Henry II’s shrewd, busy, pushing, indomitable spirit and purpose; and kingly initiative seemed destined in England, as elsewhere, to shape governmental growth at its will. But impulsive, errant Richard and weak, despicable John were not the men to carry out such schemes as their father’s. Administrative development gave place in their reigns to constitutional struggles; and Parliament became king before any English monarch had had the practical genius or the enlightened conscience to devise just and lasting forms for the civil service of the state.

The English race, consequently, has long and successfully studied the art of curbing executive power to the constant neglect of the art of perfecting executive methods. It has exercised itself much more in controlling than in energizing government. It has been more concerned to render government just and moderate than to make it facile, well-ordered, and effective. English and American political history has been a history, not of administrative development, but of legislative oversight,-not of progress in governmental organization, but of advance in law-making and political criticism. Consequently, we have reached a time when administrative study and creation are imperatively necessary to the well-being of our governments saddled with the habits of a long period of constitution-making. That period has practically closed, so far as the establishment of essential principles is concerned, but we cannot shake off its atmosphere. We go on criticizing when we ought to be creating. We have reached the third of the periods I have mentioned,-the period, namely, when the people have to develop administration in accordance with the constitutions they won for themselves in a previous period of struggle with absolute power; but we are not prepared for the tasks of the new period. Such an explanation seems to afford the only escape from blank astonishment at the fact that, in spite of our vast advantages in point of political liberty, and above all in point of practical political skill and sagacity, so many nations are ahead of us in administrative organization and administrative skill. Why, for instance, have we but just begun purifying a civil service which was rotten full fifty years ago? To say that slavery diverted us is but to repeat what I have said—that flaws in our constitution delayed us.

Of course all reasonable preference would declare for this English and American course of politics rather than for that of any European country. We should not like to have had Prussia’s history for the sake of having Prussia’s administrative skill; and Prussia’s particular system of administration would quite suffocate us. It is better to be untrained and free than to be servile and systematic. Still there is no denying that it would be better yet to be both free in spirit and proficient in practice. It is this even more reasonable preference which impels us to discover what there may be to hinder or delay us in naturalizing this much-to-be-desired science of administration.

What, then, is there to prevent?

Well, principally, popular sovereignty. It is harder for democracy to organize administration than for monarchy. The very completeness of our most cherished political successes in the past embarrasses us. We have enthroned public opinion; and it is forbidden us to hope during its reign for any quick schooling of the sovereign in executive expertness or in the conditions of perfect functional balance in government. The very fact that we have realized popular rule in its fullness has made the task of organizaing that rule just so much the more difficult. In order to make any advance at all we must instruct and persuade a multitudinous monarch called public opinion,-a much less feasible undertaking than to influence a single monarch called a king. An individual sovereign will adopt a simple plan and carry it out directly: he will have but one opinion, and he will embody that one opinion in one command. But this other sovereign, the people, will have a score of differing opinions. They can agree upon nothing simple: advance must be made through compromise, by a compounding of differences, by a trimming of plans and a suppression of too straightforward principles. There will be a succession of resolves running through a course of years, a dropping fire of commands running through the whole gamut of modifications.

In government, as in virtue, the hardest of things is to make progress. Formerly the reason for this was that the single person who was sovereign was generally either selfish, ignorant, timid, or a fool,-albeit there was now and again one who was wise.

Nowadays the reason is that the many, the people, who are sovereign have no single ear which one can approach, and are selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn, or foolish with the selfishness, the ignorances, the stubbornnesses, the timidities, or the follies of several thousand persons,-albeit there are hundreds who are wise. Once the advantage of the reformer was that the sovereign’s mind had a definite locality, that it was contained in one man’s head, and that consequently it could be gotten at; though it was his disadvantage that the mind learned only reluctantly or only in small quantities, or was under the influence of some one who let it learn only the wrong things. Now, on the contrary, the reformer is bewildered by the fact that the sovereign’s mind has no definite locality, but is contained in a voting majority of several million heads; and embarrassed by the fact that the mind of this sovereign also is under the influence of favorites, who are none the less favorites in a good old-fashioned sense of the word because they are not persons by preconceived opinions; i.e., prejudices which are not to be reasoned with because they are not the children of reason.

Wherever regard for public opinion is a first principle of government, practical reform must be slow and all reform must be full of compromises. For wherever public opinion exists it must rule. This is now an axiom half the world over, and will presently come to be believed even in Russia. Whoever would effect a change in a modern constitutional government must first educate his fellow-citizens to want some change. That done, he must persuade them to want the particular change he wants. He must first make public opinion willing to listen and then see to it that it listen to the right things. He must stir it up to search for an opinion, and then manage to put the right opinion in its way.

The first step is not less difficult than the second. With opinions, possession is more than nine points of the law. It is next to impossible to dislodge them. Institutions which one generation regards as only a makeshift approximation to the realization of a principle, the next generation honors as the nearest possible approximation to that principle, and the next worships the principle itself. It takes scarcely three generations for the apotheosis. The grandson accepts his grandfather’s hesitating experiment as an integral part of the fixed constitution of nature.

Even if we had clear insight into all the political past, and could form out of perfectly instructed heads a few steady, infallible, placidly wise maxims of government into which all sound political doctrine would be ultimately resolvable, would the country act on them? That is the question. The bulk of mankind is rigidly unphilosophical, and nowadays the bulk of mankind votes. A truth must become not only plain but also commonplace before it will be seen by the people who go to their work very early in the morning; and not to act upon it must involve great and pinching inconveniences before these same people will make up their minds to act upon it.

And where is this unphilosophical bulk of mankind more multifarious in its composition than in the United States? To know the public mind of this country, one must know the mind, not of Americans of the older stocks only, but also of Irishmen, of Germans, of negroes. In order to get a footing for new doctrine, one must influence minds cast in every mould of race, minds inheriting every bias of environment, warped by the histories of a score of different nations, warmed or chilled, closed or expanded by almost every climate of the globe.

So much, then, for the history of the study of administration, and the peculiarly difficult conditions under which, entering upon it when we do, we must undertake it. What, now, is the subject-matter of this study, and what are its characteristic objects? II.

The field of administration is a field of business. It is removed from the hurry and strife of politics; it at most points stands apart even from the debatable ground of constitutional study. It is a part of political life only as the methods of the counting house are a part of the life of society; only as machinery is part of the manufactured product. But it is, at the same time, raised very far above the dull level of mere technical detail by the fact that through its greater principles it is directly connected with the lasting maxims of political wisdom, the permanent truths of political progress.

The object of administrative study is to rescue executive methods from the confusion and costliness of empirical experiment

and set them upon foundations laid deep in stable principle.

It is for this reason that we must regard civil-service reform in its present stages as but a prelude to a fuller administrative reform. We are now rectifying methods of appointment; we must go on to adjust executive functions more fitly and to prescribe better methods of executive organization and action. Civil-service reform is thus but a moral preparation for what is to follow. It is clearing the moral atmosphere of official life by establishing the sanctity of public office as a public trust, and, by making service unpartisan, it is opening the way for making it businesslike. By sweetening its motives it is rendering it capable of improving its methods of work.

Let me expand a little what I have said of the province of administration. Most important to be observed is the truth already so much and so fortunately insisted upon by our civil-service reformers; namely, that administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics. Administrative questions are not political questions. Although politics sets the tasks for administration, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices.

This is distinction of high authority; eminent German writers insist upon it as of course. Bluntschli, for instance, bids us separate administration alike from politics and from law. Politics, he says, is state activity "in things great and universal", while "administration, on the other hand," is "the activity of the state in individual and small things. Politics is thus the special province of the statesman, administration of the technical official." "Policy does nothing without the aid of administration"; but administration is not therefore politics. But we do not require German authority for this position; this discrimination between administration and politics is now, happily, too obvious to need further discussion.

There is another distinction which must be worked into all our conclusions, which, though but another side of that between administration and politics, is not quite so easy to keep sight of: I mean the distinction between constitutional and administrative questions, between those governmental adjustments which are essential to constitutional principle and those which are merely instrumental to the possibly changing purposes of a wisely adapting convenience.

One cannot easily make clear to every one just where administration resides in the various departments of any practicable government without entering upon particulars so numerous as to confuse and distinctions so minute as to distract. No lines of demarcation, setting apart administrative from non-administrative functions, can be run between this and that department of government without being run up hill and down dale, over dizzy heights of distinction and through dense jungles of statutory enactment, hither and thither around "ifs" and "buts," "whens" and "’howevers," until they become altogether lost to the common eye not accustomed to this sort of surveying, and consequently not acquainted with the use of the theodolite of logical discernment. A great deal of administration goes about incognito to most of the world, being confounded now with political "management," and again with constitutional principle. Perhaps this ease of confusion may explain such utterances as that of Niebuhr’s: "Liberty," he says, "depends incomparably more upon administration than upon constitution." At first sight this appears to be largely true. Apparently facility in the actual exercise of liberty does depend more upon administrative arrangements than upon constitutional guarantees; although constitutional guarantees alone secure the existence of liberty. But—upon second thought—is even so much as this true? Liberty no more consists in easy functional movement than intelligence consists in the ease and vigor with which the limbs of a strong man move. The principles that rule within the man, or the constitution, are the vital springs of liberty or servitude. Because independence and subjection are without chains, are lightened by every easy-working device of considerate, paternal government, they are not thereby transformed into liberty. Liberty cannot live apart from constitutional principle; and no administration, however perfect and liberal its methods, can give men more than a poor counterfeit of liberty if it rest upon illiberal principles of government.

A clear view of the difference between the province of constitutional law and the province of administrative function ought to leave no room for misconception; and it is possible to name some roughly definite criteria upon which such a view can be built. Public administration is detailed and systematic execution of public law. Every particular application of general law is an act of administration. The assessment and raising of taxes, for instance, the hanging of a criminal, the transportation and

delivery of the mails, the equipment and recruiting of the army and navy, etc., are all obviously acts of administration; but the general laws which direct these things to be done are as obviously outside of and above administration. The broad plans of governmental action are not administrative; the detailed execution of such plans is administrative. Constitutions, therefore, properly concern themselves only with those instrumentalities of government which are to control general law. Our federal constitution observes this principle in saying nothing of even the greatest of the purely executive offices, and speaking only of that President of the Union who was to share the legislative and policy-making functions of government, only of those judges of highest jurisdiction who were to interpret and guard its principles, and not of those who were merely to give utterance to them.

This is not quite the distinction between Will and answering Deed, because the administrator should have and does have a will of his own in the choice of means for accomplishing his work. He is not and ought not to be a mere passive instrument. The distinction is between general plans and special means.

There is, indeed, one point at which administrative studies trench on constitutional ground—or at least upon what seems constitutional ground. The study of administration, philosophically viewed, is closely connected with the study of the proper distribution of constitutional authority. To be efficient it must discover the simplest arrangements by which responsibility can be unmistakably fixed upon officials; the best way of dividing authority without hampering it, and responsibility without obscuring it. And this question of the distribution of authority, when taken into the sphere of the higher, the originating functions of government, it is obviously a central constitutional question. If administrative study can discover the best principles upon which to base such distribution, it will have done constitutional study an invaluable service. Montesquieu did not, I am convinced, say the last word on this head.

To discover the best principle for the distribution of authority is of greater importance, possibly, under a democratic system, where officials serve many masters, than under others where they serve but a few. All sovereigns are suspicious of their servants, and the sovereign people is no exception to the rule; but how is its suspicion to be allayed by knowledge? If that suspicion could but be clarified into wise vigilance, it would be altogether salutary; if that vigilance could be aided by the unmistakable placing of responsibility, it would be altogether beneficent. Suspicion in itself is never healthful either in the private or in the public mind. Trust is strength in all relations of life; and, as it is the office of the constitutional reformer to create conditions of trustfulness, so it is the office of the administrative organizer to fit administration with conditions of clear-cut responsibility which shall insure trustworthiness.

And let me say that large powers and unhampered discretion seem to me the indispensable conditions of responsibility. Public attention must be easily directed, in each case of good or bad administration, to just the man deserving of praise or blame. There is no danger in power, if only it be not irresponsible. If it be divided, dealt out in shares to many, it is obscured; and if it be obscured, it is made irresponsible. But if it be centered in heads of the service and in heads of branches of the service, it is easily watched and brought to book. If to keep his office a man must achieve open and honest success, and if at the same time he feels himself entrusted with large freedom of discretion, the greater his power the less likely is he to abuse it, the more is he nerved and sobered and elevated by it. The less his power, the more safely obscure and unnoticed does he feel his position to be, and the more readily does he relapse into remissness. Just here we manifestly emerge upon the field of that still larger question,-the proper relations between public opinion and administration.

To whom is official trustworthiness to be disclosed, and by whom is it to be rewarded? Is the official to look to the public for his meed of praise and his push of promotion, or only to his superior in office? Are the people to be called in to settle administrative discipline as they are called in to settle constitutional principles? These questions evidently find their root in what is undoubtedly the fundamental problem of this whole study. That problem is: What part shall public opinion take in the conduct of administration?

The right answer seems to be, that public opinion shall play the part of authoritative critic.

But the method by which its authority shall be made to tell? Our peculiar American difficulty in organizing administration is not the danger of losing liberty, but the danger of not being able or willing to separate its essentials from its accidents. Our success is made doubtful by that besetting error of ours, the error of trying to do too much by vote. Self-government does not consist in having a hand in everything, any more than housekeeping consists necessarily in cooking dinner with one’s own hands. The cook must be trusted with a large discretion as to the management of the fires and the ovens.

In those countries in which public opinion has yet to be instructed in its privileges, yet to be accustomed to having its own way, this question as to the province of public opinion is much more ready soluble than in this country, where public opinion is wide awake and quite intent upon having its own way anyhow. It is pathetic to see a whole book written by a German professor of political science for the purpose of saying to his countrymen, "Please try to have an opinion about national affairs"; but a public which is so modest may at least be expected to be very docile and acquiescent in learning what things it has not a right to think and speak about imperatively. It may be sluggish, but it will not be meddlesome. It will submit to be instructed before it tries to instruct. Its political education will come before its political activity. In trying to instruct our own public opinion, we are dealing with a pupil apt to think itself quite sufficiently instructed beforehand.

The problem is to make public opinion efficient without suffering it to be meddlesome. Directly exercised, in the oversight of the daily details and in the choice of the daily means of government, public criticism is of course a clumsy nuisance, a rustic handling delicate machinery. But as superintending the greater forces of formative policy alike in politics and administration, public criticism is altogether safe and beneficent, altogether indispensable. Let administrative study find the best means for giving public criticism this control and for shutting it out from all other interference.

But is the whole duty of administrative study done when it has taught the people what sort of administration to desire and demand, and how to get what they demand? Ought it not to go on to drill candidates for the public service?

There is an admirable movement towards universal political education now afoot in this country. The time will soon come when no college of respectability can afford to do without a well-filled chair of political science. But the education thus imparted will go but a certain length. It will multiply the number of intelligent critics of government, but it will create no component body of administrators. It will prepare the way for the development of a sure-footed understanding of the general principles of government, but it will not necessarily foster skill in conducting government. It is an education which will equip legislators, perhaps, but not executive officials. If we are to improve public opinion, which is the motive power of government, we must prepare better officials as the apparatus of government. If we are to put in new boilers and to mend the fires which drive our governmental machinery, we must not leave the old wheels and joints and valves and bands to creak and buzz and clatter on as best they may at bidding of the new force. We must put in new running parts wherever there is the least lack of strength or adjustment. It will be necessary to organize democracy by sending up to the competitive examinations for the civil service men definitely prepared for standing liberal tests as to technical knowledge. A technically schooled civil service will presently have become indispensable. I know that a corps of civil servants prepared by a special schooling and drilled, after appointment, into a perfected organization, with appropriate hierarchy and characteristic discipline, seems to a great many very thoughtful persons to contain elements which might combine to make an offensive official class,- a distinct, semi-corporate body with sympathies divorced from those of a progressive, free-spirited people, and with hearts narrowed to the meanness of a bigoted officialism. Certainly such a class would be altogether hateful and harmful in the United States. Any measure calculated to produce it would for us be measures of reaction and of folly.

But to fear the creation of a domineering, illiberal officialism as a result of the studies I am here proposing is to miss altogether the principle upon which I wish most to insist. That principle is, that administration in the United States must be at all points sensitive to public opinion. A body of thoroughly trained officials serving during good behavior we must have in any case: that is a plain business necessity. But the apprehension that such a body will be anything un-American clears away the moment it is asked. What is to constitute good behavior? For that question obviously carries its own answer on its face.

Steady, hearty allegiance to the policy of the government they serve will constitute good behavior. That policy will have no taint of officialism about it. It will not be the creation of permanent officials, but of statesmen whose responsibility to public opinion will be direct and inevitable. Bureaucracy can exist only where the whole service of the state is removed from the common political life of the people, its chiefs as well as its rank and file. Its motives, its objects, its policy, its standards, must be bureaucratic. It would be difficult to point out any examples of impudent exclusiveness and arbitrariness on the part of officials doing service under a chief of department who really served the people, as all our chiefs of departments must be made to do. It would be easy, on the other hand, to adduce other instances like that of the influence of Stein in Prussia, where the leadership of one statesman imbued with true public spirit transformed arrogant and perfunctory bureaux into public-spirited instruments of just government.

The ideal for us is a civil service cultured and self-sufficient enough to act with sense and vigor, and yet so intimately connected with the popular thought, by means of elections and constant public counsel, as to find arbitrariness of class spirit quite out of the question. III.

Having thus viewed in some sort the subject-matter and the objects of this study of administration, what are we to conclude as to the methods best suited to it—the points of view most advantageous for it?

Government is so near us, so much a thing of our daily familiar handling, that we can with difficulty see the need of any philosophical study of it, or the exact points of such study, should be undertaken. We have been on our feet too long to study now the art of walking. We are a practical people, made so apt, so adept in self-government by centuries of experimental drill that we are scarcely any longer capable of perceiving the awkwardness of the particular system we may be using, just because it is so easy for us to use any system. We do not study the art of governing: we govern. But mere unschooled genius for affairs will not save us from sad blunders in administration. Though democrats by long inheritance and repeated choice, we are still rather crude democrats. Old as democracy is, its organization on a basis of modern ideas and conditions is still an unaccomplished work. The democratic state has yet to be equipped for carrying those enormous burdens of administration which the needs of this industrial and trading age are so fast accumulating. Without comparative studies in government we cannot rid ourselves of the misconception that administration stands upon an essentially different basis in a democratic state from that on which it stands in a non-democratic state.

After such study we could grant democracy the sufficient honor of ultimately determining by debate all essential questions affecting the public weal, of basing all structures of policy upon the major will; but we would have found but one rule of good administration for all governments alike. So far as administrative functions are concerned, all governments have a strong structural likeness; more than that, if they are to be uniformly useful and efficient, they must have a strong structural likeness.

A free man has the same bodily organs, the same executive parts, as the slave, however different may be his motives, his services, his energies. Monarchies and democracies, radically different as they are in other respects, have in reality much the same business to look to.

It is abundantly safe nowadays to insist upon this actual likeness of all governments, because these are days when abuses of power are easily exposed and arrested, in countries like our own, by a bold, alert, inquisitive, detective public thought and a sturdy popular self-dependence such as never existed before. We are slow to appreciate this; but it is easy to appreciate it. Try to imagine personal government in the United States. It is like trying to imagine a national worship of Zeus. Our imaginations are too modern for the feat.

But, besides being safe, it is necessary to see that for all governments alike the legitimate ends of administration are the same, in order not to be frightened at the idea of looking into foreign systems of administration for instruction and suggestion; in order to get rid of the apprehension that we might perchance blindly borrow something incompatible with our principles. That man is blindly astray who denounces attempts to transplant foreign systems into this country. It is impossible: they simply would not grow here. But why should we not use such parts of foreign contrivances as we want, if they be in any way

serviceable? We are in no danger of using them in a foreign way. We borrowed rice, but we do not eat it with chopsticks. We borrowed our whole political language from England, but we leave the words "king" and "lords" out of it. What did we ever originate, except the action of the federal government upon individuals and some of the functions of the federal supreme court?

We can borrow the science of administration with safety and profit if only we read all fundamental differences of condition into its essential tenets. We have only to filter it through our constitutions, only to put it over a slow fire of criticism and distil away its foreign gases. I know that there is a sneaking fear in some conscientiously patriotic minds that studies of European systems might signalize some foreign methods as better than some American methods; and the fear is easily to be understood. But it would scarcely be avowed in just any company.

It is the more necessary to insist upon thus putting away all prejudices against looking anywhere in the world but at home for suggestions in this study, because nowhere else in the whole field of politics, it would seem, can we make use of the historical, comparative method more safely than in this province of administration. Perhaps the more novel the forms we study the better. We shall the sooner learn the peculiarities of our own methods. We can never learn either our own weaknesses or our own virtues by comparing ourselves with ourselves. We are too used to the appearance and procedure of our own system to see its true significance. Perhaps even the English system is too much like our own to be used to the most profit in illustration. It is best on the whole to get entirely away from our own atmosphere and to be most careful in examining such systems as those of France and Germany. Seeing our own institutions through such media, we see ourselves as foreigners might see us were they to look at us without preconceptions. Of ourselves, so long as we know only ourselves, we know nothing.

Let it be noted that it is the distinction, already drawn, between administration and politics which makes the comparative method so safe in the field of administration. When we study the administrative systems of France and Germany, knowing that we are not in search of political principles, we need not care a peppercorn for the constitutional or political reasons which Frenchmen or Germans give for their practices when explaining them to us. If I see a murderous fellow sharpening a knife cleverly, I can borrow his way of sharpening the knife without borrowing his probable intention to commit murder with it; and so, if I see a monarchist dyed in the wool managing a public bureau well, I can learn his business methods without changing one of my republican spots. He may serve his king; I will continue to serve the people; but I should like to serve my sovereign as well as he serves his. By keeping this distinction in view,-that is, by studying administration as a means of putting our own politics into convenient practice, as a means of making what is democratically politic towards all administratively possible towards each,-we are on perfectly safe ground, and can learn without error what foreign systems have to teach us. We thus devise an adjusting weight for our comparative method of study. We can thus scrutinize the anatomy of foreign governments without fear of getting any of their diseases into our veins; dissect alien systems without apprehension of blood-poisoning.

Our own politics must be the touchstone for all theories. The principles on which to base a science of administration for America must be principles which have democratic policy very much at heart. And, to suit American habit, all general theories must, as theories, keep modestly in the background, not in open argument only, but even in our own minds,-lest opinions satisfactory only to the standards of the library should be dogmatically used, as if they must be quite as satisfactory to the standards of practical politics as well. Doctrinaire devices must be postponed to tested practices. Arrangements not only sanctioned by conclusive experience elsewhere but also congenial to American habit must be preferred without hesitation to theoretical perfection. In a word, steady, practical statesmanship must come first, closet doctrine second. The cosmopolitan what-to-do must always be commanded by the American how-to-do-it.

Our duty is, to supply the best possible life to a federal organization, to systems within systems; to make town, city, county, state, and federal governments live with a like strength and an equally assured healthfulness, keeping each unquestionably its own master and yet making all interdependent and co-operative combining independence with mutual helpfulness. The task is great and important enough to attract the best minds.

This interlacing of local self-government with federal self-government is quite a modern conception. It is not like the

arrangements of imperial federation in Germany. There local government is not yet, fully, local self-government. The bureaucrat is everywhere busy. His efficiency springs out of esprit de corps, out of care to make ingratiating obeisance to the authority of a superior, or at best, out of the soil of a sensitive conscience. He serves, not the public, but an irresponsible minister. The question for us is, how shall our series of governments within governments be so administered that it shall always be to the interest of the public officer to serve, not his superior alone but the community also, with the best efforts of his talents and the soberest service of his conscience? How shall such service be made to his commonest interest by contributing abundantly to his sustenance, to his dearest interest by furthering his ambition, and to his highest interest by advancing his honor and establishing his character? And how shall this be done alike for the local part and for the national whole?

If we solve this problem we shall again pilot the world. There is a tendency—is there not?— a tendency as yet dim, but already steadily impulsive and clearly destined to prevail, towards, first the confederation of parts of empires like the British, and finally of great states themselves. Instead of centralization of power, there is to be wide union with tolerated divisions of prerogative. This is a tendency towards the American type—of governments joined with governments for the pursuit of common purposes, in honorary equality and honorable subordination. Like principles of civil liberty are everywhere fostering like methods of government; and if comparative studies of the ways and means of government should enable us to offer suggestions which will practicably combine openness and vigor in the administration of such governments with ready docility to all serious, well-sustained public criticism, they will have approved themselves worthy to be ranked among the highest and most fruitful of the great departments of political study. That they will issue in such suggestions I confidently hope.

WOODROW WILSO

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