Frank P. Sherwood

The Half-Century's "Great Books" in Public Administration

It is nearly 50 years ago that I took my first class in Public Administration. Thus, the publication of this anniversary issue of the Public Administration Review provides a special occasion for personal reflection. While there is an obvious downside to such longevity, the sense of personal involvement in the formative years of a discipline is exciting. The people and the ideas that have achieved center stage are real, compelling, and pivotal to the world within which I have constructed a life.

Executive Personnel Systems in the States

In 1963 California became the first state to institute an executive personnel system. The experience in the states since that time has been an evolving one; but the history of this movement has been given relatively little attention. The concept of an executive personnel system gained particular attention in 1955, with the publication of the Second Hoover Commission report recommending administrative reforms in the national government. At that time a Senior Civil Service was proposed. I It was to be small, generalist, and highly mobile. Great emphasis was placed on the recruitment of top quality people and their utilization where most needed within the national government. The proposition encountered a veritable buzz saw in Congress. In effect, such an elite corps was considered un-American, and an appropriations rider killed even limited attempts by the Eisenhower Administration to fashion a system within existing authorities.2 Twenty-three years later, the U.S. government established its Senior Executive Service, an event which has overshadowed the experience of the states with executive personnel systems. Yet four states (California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Wisconsin) preceded the national government in providing separate status to upper level officials. By 1987 the number had grown to 12, with new systems having been authorized in New Jersey and Tennessee in 1986. This study is concerned with the nature of these systems. Its purpose is primarily descriptive, namely to expand the base of information about experience in the states.

The American Public Executive in the Third Century

To be sure, the idea of the political leader having executive responsibilities for governmental performance is not altogether revolutionary. Presidents have in particular gained notoriety for their ability to make things happen in the nation. But involvement in a foreign policy dispute, a war, a landmark piece of domestic legislation, or a political drama tends more frequently to shape the way in which we remember a President. With the exception of a few cabinet officers and a handful of mayors, who operated during the first 150 years, executive performance in government excited little attention.

Performance Budgeting in Los Angeles

> Probably no major administrative technique has won so wide an interest and acceptance in a short time as has performance budgeting. Its advocates have foreseen such happy consequences as more rational legislative-executive relations, administrative decentralization without loss of responsibility, more sharply drawn alternatives for program selection, and a clearer picture of costs which can spotlight inefficiency and point out cheaper routes to stated goals. Here, the predictions about performance budgeting are examined alongside its achievements in Los Angeles, New York State, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, and Cincinnati.

Dealing with Dominance: The Center's Role in an Increasingly Unbalanced System

Though we have spent nearly a quarter of a century giving advice to others in various types of foreign aid programs, it is curious that much of what we have talked about abroad has never had a market at home. Take the general problem of relationships among our nearly 40,000 general purpose governments in the United States. Clearly, we have moved a long way from the days of dual federalism-in which at least the working assumption was that the national government stood separate from the others. It asked nothing of the states and their subordinate units; and it gave very little on its part. For the purposes of this paper, it is unimportant to press the point further. At some point in the hazy past, the governments of the United States became a system, defined as a set of highly interdependent relationships among organizations. Clearly, too, the nature of the system was centerperiphery, to use the label of Donald Schon -that is, the national government assumed an increasing centrality in the system, largely because of the expansion of grants-in-aid. The national government as center assigned new tasks to the periphery and allocated resources to support the accomplishment of those tasks.