The New Amateur in Public Administration

The history of public administration in the United States is a record of compromise between conflicting principles. The oldest and most bitterly-contested of the many clashes between antagonistic points of view is that between the principle of the spoils system on the one hand and the merit principle on the other. Stripped of eulogistic verbiage, these principles present two diametrically opposed objectives—the former that administration shall be the happy hunting ground of the spoilsman, the latter that administration shall be a non-political service where “efficiency is king.” For a century at least, with the possible exception of the early days of the national administration, the advocates of the spoils system held a dominant position in the struggle, compromising only where a tradition of service protected a public office from partisan control. By 1870, however, the movement for civil service reform had gained strength and the following three or four decades witnessed a determined drive for the adoption of the merit system. The reaction to the spoils system principle, once begun, has continued ever since. Today, administration, by virtue of its sweeping powers over individual liberty and property, has come into closer contact with the citizen than ever before, and this fact is serving to accelerate the movement in favor of the merit principle in the public service.