John A. Rohr

Public administration as an American profession originated in the early twentieth century with urban reformers advocating the application of scientific and business practices to rehabilitate corrupt city governments. That approach transformed governance in the United States but also guaranteed recurrent debate over the proper role of public administrators, who must balance the often contradictory demands of efficiency and politically defined notions of the public good. Currently the business approach holds sway. Legitimated by Al Gore's National Performance Review, the New Public Management movement promotes entrepreneurs over civil servants, performance over process, decentralization over centralization, and flexibility over rules. John Rohr demurs, arguing that the movement goes too far in downplaying the distinctively American challenges arising from the separated powers principle. Consequently, the NPM alienates public management from its natural home - a nation-state established within a constitutional order. According to Rohr, ""nothing is more fundamental to governance than a constitution; and therefore to stress the constitutional character of administration is to establish the proper role of administration as governance that includes management but transcends it as well."" This is not a novel argument for Rohr, who was recognized in 1999 by the Louis Brownlow Committee of the National Academy of Public Administration for his lifetime contributions on the ""constitutional underpinnings"" of public administration. But this new version of his rule-of-law critique directly addresses the NPM's excesses, framed convincingly as a comparative study of cases found in four countries spanning three centuries. The first half of the book examines the linkages between constitutions and administrations in France, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The second half of the book examines American cases in three categories: separation of powers, individual rights, and federalism. American administrative law, Rohr concludes, has structured safeguards to protect the integrity of administrative decision-making while also holding it accountable. He summarizes his findings from the case studies by saying that the constitutional role of American civil servants comes not only from specific American experiences but also from the very nature of civil service.

This text encourages civil servants to reflect on specific constitutional principles and events and learn to apply them to the decisions they make. It includes 20 articles which seek to legitimate public service by grounding its ethics in constitutional practice.

Recalling Tocqueville's exhortation for the French to ""look to America"" for a better understanding of their own government, this book reveals how much can be learned about American constitutionalism from a close study of French governance.

Recalling Tocqueville's exhortation for the French to ""look to America"" for a better understanding of their own government, this book reveals how much can be learned about American constitutionalism from a close study of French governance.

"Ethics and Public Administration" refutes the arguments that administrative ethics cannot be studied in an empirical manner and that empirical analysis can deal only with the trivial issues in administrative ethics. Within a theoretical perspective,the authors qualify their findings and take care not to over-generalise results. The findings are relevant to the practice of public administration. Specific areas addressed include understanding public corruption, ethics as control, and ethics as administration and policy

"Ethics and Public Administration" refutes the arguments that administrative ethics cannot be studied in an empirical manner and that empirical analysis can deal only with the trivial issues in administrative ethics. Within a theoretical perspective,the authors qualify their findings and take care not to over-generalise results. The findings are relevant to the practice of public administration. Specific areas addressed include understanding public corruption, ethics as control, and ethics as administration and policy

In 1887, the centennial year of the American Constitution, Woodrow Wilson wrote that it is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one. The context for Wilson's comment was an essay calling for sound principles of administration that would enable government officials to run a constitution well. Wilson and his fellow civil-service reformers had a profound influence on the development of American administrative institutions. Unfortunately, the reformers paid more attention to the exigencies of running a constitution than to the Constitution itself. They and their intellectual progeny developed a theory of administration that was at odds with the theory of the Constitution. As a result, we find ourselves living today in what we often call an administrative state--a state seemingly bereft of legitimating principles grounded in the political thought of the framers of the Constitution. In To Run a Constitution, John A. Rohr takes seriously two basic premises: de Tocqueville's belief that citizens are corrupted by obeying powers they believe to be illegitimate, and the view that, despite present political sentiment, the administrative state is here to stay. The book focuses on the important question of whether the administrative state, an abiding presence in American politics, can be justified in terms of the American constitutional tradition. In addressing this question, Rohr goes beyond considerations of case law to examine the principles of the Constitution both at its founding and in its subsequent development. Reying on the normative character of political foundings, Rohr analyzes three significant founding periods: 1) the founding of the Republic, 1787-1795; 2) the foundin of public administration, 1883-1899; and 3) the founding of the administrative state, 1933-1941. He judges the last two foundings by the first in developing his argument that the modern administrative state can be justified in terms of the kind of government the framers of the Constitution envisaged. On the eve of the bicentennial of the Constitution, Rohr's argument advances a new, normative theory of public administration that is intended to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, in accordance with the oath of office taken by public administrators. It is critical reading for scholars in the fields of public administration, political science, and constitutional studies.