Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

The Traditional Model of Public Administration 19
belong the spoils’. After an election in which a new party was elected – and this
applied to elections from the local level to the Presidency – every administrative
job from the top to the bottom could be filled by an appointee from the winning
party. This system reached its nadir in the 1830s during the presidency of
Andrew Jackson, who said once (White, 1953, p. 318):
The duties of all public offices are, or at least admit of being made, so plain and simple
that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance. Offices
were not established to give support to particular men at the public expense. No individual
wrong is, therefore, done by removal, since neither appointment to, nor continuance
in office is a matter of right. He who is removed has the same means of obtaining a living
that are enjoyed by the millions who never held office.
In other words, there is no specific expertise involved in public administration,
nor is there any reason that the administration of government should persist
when its political complexion changes. The benefits of public office – patronage,
direct financial benefits – rightly belong to the successful party in an election.
Jackson thought there were advantages in making the administration more
egalitarian and democratic: ‘I can not but believe that more is lost by the long
continuance of men in office than is generally gained by their experience.’
Presumably, by changing officeholders whose loyalties were clearly to the
party, much could be gained, perhaps even reduced corruption. It could even be
argued that political accountability was enhanced in ‘reaction to a sense that
government had not been sufficiently responsive to changes in the electoral will’
(Romzek, 1998, p. 196). This egalitarian philosophy fit well with the American
distrust of government, but had major drawbacks (Mosher, 1982, p. 65):
Among the consequences of the spoils system run rampant, were: the periodic chaos which
attended changes of administration during most of the nineteenth century; the popular association
of public administration with politics and incompetence; the growing conflicts
between executive and legislature over appointments, which led in 1868 to the impeachment
trial of an American president; and the almost unbelievable demands upon presidents – and
upon executives of state and local governments as well – by office-seekers, particularly
following elections. Such a system was neither efficient nor effective. Citizens did not know
where they stood when government administration was, in effect, a private business in
which government decisions, money and votes were negotiable commodities.
Eventually, the inherent problems of earlier forms of administration led to
changes in the latter part of the nineteenth century and to the reforms associated
with the traditional model of administration. Pre-modern bureaucracies were
‘personal, traditional, diffuse, ascriptive and particularistic’ where modern
bureaucracies, exemplified by Weber, were to become ‘impersonal, rational,
specific, achievement-oriented and universalistic’ (Kamenka, 1989, p. 83).
Earlier practices now seem strange because of the very success of the traditional
model of administration. Professional, non-partisan administration is so familiar
to us that it is hard to imagine that any other system could exist.