Reorganizing the Executive Branch in the 20th Century: Landmark Commissions

Congressional research reportJun 10, 2002

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Reorganizing the Executive Branch

in the 20th Century:

Landmark Commissions

June 10, 2002

name redacted

Specialist in Government Organization and Management

Government and Finance Division

Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress

Reorganizing the Executive Branch in the 20th Century:

Landmark Commissions

Summary

This report studies the work and results of a number of 20th century commissions and

other similar bodies that have had executive organization and reorganization as

central to their mandate. For purposes of this report, these reorganization exercises

are referred to as “landmark commissions.”

Context for discussion of landmark commissions is provided by a review and

analysis of six crucial historical periods, such as the Progressive Era, in the evolution

of the executive branch. The selected landmark commissions, beginning with the

Keep Commission in 1905 and concluding with the National Performance Review

(1993-2000) are described and analyzed in chronological order.

Each commission and its work is founded on philosophical principles of

management, some of which are made explicit while others have to be interpreted

from texts and actions. The prevailing consensus on organizational management

principles changed considerably during the course of the 20th century and these

changing principles and assumptions are analyzed.

Highlighted is the current debate over which set of principles should form the

basis for future organizational design and management in the executive branch. The

debate, in its essence, is between those believing that the governmental and private

sectors are distinctive in their characteristics, based on legal theory, and ought to

kept separate (“constitutionalists”), and those who believe that the governmental and

private sectors are essentially alike and ought to be organized and managed

according to generic principles with an economic foundation (“entrepreneurs”).

The report concludes with a discussion of the future, if any, for the landmark

commission approach to organizational management in the executive branch.

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Evolving Theoretical Foundations

Of the Executive Branch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

The Federalist Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Organizational Management in the 19th Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Progressivism and Its Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Rise and Decline of Orthodoxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Heterodoxy: Deconstructing the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

New Public Management: Entrepreneurs Versus Constitutionalists . . . . . . 16

Landmark Commissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Keep Commission (1905-1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Administrative Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Organization, Support Staff, and Financing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Reports and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Results and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency (1910-1913) . . . . . . 25

Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Administrative Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Organization, Staff Support, and Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Reports and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Results and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Joint Committee on Reorganization (1921-1924) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Administrative Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Organization, Staff Support, and Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Reports and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Results and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Reorganization Authority (1930-1933) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

President’s Committee on Administrative Management (Brownlow

Committee), 1936-1937 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Administrative Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Organization, Support Staff, and Financing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Reports and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Results and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Reorganization Authority: 1939, 1945 Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

First Hoover Commission (1947-1949) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Administrative Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Organization, Staff Support, and Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Reports and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Results and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Reorganization Act of 1949 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Second Hoover Commission (1953-1955) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Administrative Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Organization, Staff Support, and Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Reports and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Results and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Study Task Forces on Executive Reorganization (1953-1968) . . . . . . . . . . 64

President’s Advisory Council on Executive Organization(Ash Council)

(1969-1970) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Administrative Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Organization, Staff Support, and Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Reports and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Results and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

President’s Reorganization Project (1977-1979) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Administrative Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Organization, Staff Support, and Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Reports and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Results and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Reorganization Act of 1977 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control(Grace Commission)

(1982-1984) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Administrative Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Organization, Staff Support, and Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Reports and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Results and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Reorganization Act of 1984 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

National Performance Review (1993-1997) National Partnership for

Reinventing Government (1997-2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Administrative Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Organization, Staff Support, and Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Reports and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Results and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

The Future of Reorganization Commissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Reorganizing the Executive Branch in the

20th Century: Landmark Commissions

Introduction

The 20th century was rich in changes to the institutions and processes that together

comprise the American administrative state. This very richness of subject matter,

however, calls for some generalizations to help explain the events and trends that

occupied the attention of successive Congresses, scholars, and generations of

practitioners. In its effort to develop such statements of generality this report will

study the work and results of a number of commissions and other similar bodies that

have had executive organization and reorganization as part of their mandate. For

purposes of this report, these reorganization exercises are referred to collectively as

“landmark commissions.”

Viewing landmark commissions sequentially and exploring the philosophical

norms and values guiding their work is only one of several possible approaches to

the extensive subject of executive branch organization in the recently completed

century. The landmark commission approach clearly emphasizes institutional issues

and will concentrate on structural changes resulting from the commissions’

recommendations and subsequent implementation. It is recognized, however, that

the term “reorganization” covers much more than structural changes. Laws may be

passed to achieve policy or enforcement objectives and indirectly reorganize internal

department and agency structure in the process. This was certainly the case when

Congress passed the Inspectors General Act of 1978, an act that altered the internal

structure of agencies and the behavior of agency officials. This broad definition of

the term reorganization, however, will be largely avoided to facilitate attention to the

successive landmark commissions as guideposts through this century of

administrative management.

Context for discussion of landmark commissions in the 20th century is provided

by a review and analysis of six crucial periods in the evolution of the organization

of the executive branch of government:

the Founders and the political theory that informed their

organizational decisions in 1789;

the interplay of the President and Congress in executive

organizational management during the 19th century;

the Progressive Movement of the 20th century’s first decades and its

continuing legacy;

the rise and decline of “orthodoxy” in organizational management

of the executive branch;

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the interregnum period (1972-1992) with its doctrinal heterodoxy;

and

the emergence of a New Public Management paradigm and its

critics.

The selected landmark commissions of the recently completed century,

beginning with the Keep Commission in 1905, are described and analyzed in

chronological order.1 In tracing the history of these commissions, the interplay of

conflicting values appear with regularity. Should the principal supervisor of the

administrative agencies be the President, or Congress, or should the President and

Congress be co-managers? Should commission recommendations serve to encourage

administrative integration and centralization or the values of agency particularity and

decentralization? Should commission recommendations seek to give a greater or

lesser role for government in the social and economic life of the Nation? Successive

commission reports and recommendations provide evidence of the recurring nature

of these and other related value issues.

With the advent of the 21st century, the question reasonably arises: Has the age

of reorganizational commissions passed? Or, is there a continuing need for periodic

reviews and realignments of the basic organizational structure of government?

In nearly every Congress, legislation is introduced to establish a commission

with a broad mandate. The 106th Congress, the last Congress of the 20st century,

proved to be no exception in this respect. Senator Fred Thompson, then chairman

of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced the “Government for the

21st Century Act” (S. 2306). The legislation, which did not receive congressional

action, sought to establish a nine-member Commission on Government Restructuring

and Reform appointed jointly by the President and congressional leadership. The

purpose of the Commission was to study the entire government and make

recommendations “to reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of the Executive

Branch.” The Commission was to submit its recommendations on restructuring by

December 1, 2002. A period of public comment was to follow. Then, the

Commission was to prepare a final report to Congress in a form that would permit

its recommendations to have been included in a single implementation bill and

Two definitional caveats are necessary at the outset. The term “landmark commission” is

intended to be generic in application. That is, many of the comprehensive efforts to

reorganize the executive branch have not been proposed or implemented by “commissions”

per se. In some instances, the President has simply appointed a committee to advise him, as

with the Brownlow Committee in 1937, and in other instances no official commission or

committee was appointed, as with the recent National Performance Review (NPR), headed

by Vice President Al Gore, that rejected the commission option. Nonetheless, in the absence

of a more comprehensive and understandable term, landmark commissions will be used to

generalize about the behavior of successive comprehensive efforts to reorganize part or all

of the executive branch. Second, the term “reform” will be used sparingly. In a scholarly

context, the term has little value as it immediately evokes a normative interpretative and

evaluative meaning. Presumably, reforms are good and opposition to these reforms is bad.

Such normative judgments contribute to the difficulties encountered in generalizing about

major trends in governmental administration.

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referred to the appropriate committees for consideration. An “expedited procedures”

process for floor consideration and mandatory voting was included. As indicated,

Congress chose not to act on the proposal.

Are reorganization panels now passé? Or, is the time approaching when a new

comprehensive commission will be viewed as essential? Have the events since

September 11, 2001 changed the playing field for government organization and

management? Is organizational management a separate field of study and endeavor,

or should it be viewed as properly tied and subordinate to the budgetary process, as

some argue is presently the case? To what degree should departments and agencies

be able to initiate organizational changes on their own authority or take the lead with

their oversight committees in Congress? Should organizational management be

ultimately placed under the purview of a central management agency which applies

certain principles and general management laws across the board, with the burden

of proof for exception resting on the appealing agency? In short, what political,

legal, and administrative values should prevail in the 21st century? What can the

experience of the landmark commissions of the 20th century tell us about what to

expect as the nation continues down the path of democratic governance in the new

century?

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Evolving Theoretical Foundations

Of the Executive Branch

The commissions studied in this report contributed to the evolution of the

executive branch of the federal government. Each was concerned principally, if not

exclusively, with the organization and management of the executive branch. The

commissions were temporary bodies, normally unassociated with the legislative

institutions of government. They did not conduct their proceedings in an apolitical

environment, however, nor were they able to ignore the work and ideas of those who

had trod this path before. Most especially, these commissions were beholden to the

Framers of the Constitution and to an early 20th century political movement,

Progressivism. It is therefore necessary to begin by studying the evolving theoretical

foundations of the executive branch to fully understand the role of landmark

commissions.

The Federalist Creation

While the classical works on political theory and government were useful to the

Framers in developing a coherent political philosophy upon which to construct a

“democratic republic,”2 the reading of Montesquieu, Locke, and Blackstone was of

little assistance or guidance in the weighty matters of organizing and administering

the executive powers of a new government. The Founders turned away from the

books for guidance in organizational matters, and reflected instead upon their own

experience in trying to wage the Revolutionary War against a global power, and in

attempting to manage the national confederation of states after the close of hostilities

in 1781.3 Their personal experiences became the crucible for political thought. This

was particularly true for Alexander Hamilton, who had found his administrative

experiences during the Confederational period to be extremely frustrating.4

It should be noted that while questions regarding how best to organize the

executive branch were raised at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the

Constitution itself is nearly silent on organizational matters.5 The paucity of

language in the Constitution respecting organizational matters should not be

Martin Diamond, The Founding of the Democratic Republic, (Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock

Publishers, 1981).

Ralph Clark Chandler, “Public Administration Under the Articles of Confederation,” Public

Administration Quarterly, vol. 13, Winter 1990, pp. 433-50.

Henry Cabot Lodge, Alexander Hamilton, (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1917), chapter

There are only two indirect references to the question of administrative organization in the

Constitution; namely, that the President “...may require the Opinion, in writing, of the

principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the

duties of their respective Offices,” and that “the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment

of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law,

or in the Heads of Departments.” Article II, sec. 2, cl. 1 and 2.

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interpreted, however, as either lack of interest or concern. Quite the contrary, there

was a lively concern for organizational matters. There was recognition that the new

government would fail if it was unable to generate energy in the executive branch.

In Federalist #70, Hamilton asserted:

Energy in the Executive is a leading character... of good government.... A

feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of government. A feeble execution

is but another phrase for a bad execution.... All men of sense will agree in the

necessity of an energetic Executive.

The Framers, in defending the Constitution, emphasized both its innovative

character and its institutional continuity. Pre-eminent among the many innovative

provisions of the Constitution was the creation of an independent presidency, the

term independent meaning in this instance not being dependent for selection or

maintenance upon the legislature. The President was given a different electoral base

from Congress and also several specific powers, such as the power to veto

legislation, to protect itself from an overbearing Congress. It should not be forgotten

that their fear was less about a too powerful President than about a too-dependent

President, one who would be dominated by Congress which controlled the money.

As for continuity, not only were the states kept intact geographically, but their

authorities remained in large part unaltered. Even most laws of the Confederation,

such as the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, were retained. As one student of early

administrative history observed: “The continuity between the old and new systems

was made plain by the fact both [John] Jay and [Henry] Knox, secretaries of Foreign

Affairs and War, respectively, continued in their offices, with modifications, under

the new government.”6

Reflecting upon the writings and decisions of the Framers with respect to the

administrative elements of the new government, one is struck by their willingness to

break new ground.7 Rarely in their discourse is there reference to the prevailing

administrative systems in Great Britain or France, the two major nation-states of the

period. This is explained in part because the new government of the United States

was created before (although just before) the French Revolution, and thus tended to

reflect the values of the 18th century Enlightenment, rather than the values of the 19th

century social revolutionaries. More to the point, however, neither Great Britain nor

France had “modern” administrative systems at the time. For the most part, their

administrative systems were poorly organized and managed, and to a large extent

Jennings B. Sanders, Evolution of Executive Departments of the Continental Congress,

1774-1789 (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1971 [c. 1935] ), p. 97.

Leonard D. White, The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History (New York:

Macmillan, 1948), pp. 513-15.

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corrupted by the widespread selling of offices of state.8 In the case of France, the

largely feudal administrative structure would be swept away by the Revolution.9

Enlightenment philosophy stressed reason, and reason embraced scientific

methodology. Alexander Hamilton, held by many to be the “father of public

administration,” was articulate in his arguments that public administration was a

“science” and that the United States could organize a government that was at once

efficient and representative.10 Writing in Federalist #9, Hamilton states:

The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received

great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood,

which were either not known at all or imperfectly known to the ancients. The

regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of

legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges

holding their office during good behavior; the representation of the people in the

legislature by deputies of their election: these are wholly new discoveries, or have

made their principal progress toward perfection during modern times.

The important point to recognize is that the Framers believed that it was

possible to create a rational and democratically accountable administrative structure.

They believed that there were principles of organization that ought to be followed

and that deviation from these principles should require the promoters to meet a

higher standard of proof. The role of historical and legal precedent in the evolution

of the federal executive establishment came into play during the very first Congress.

Much that takes place today in the field of organizational management can be traced

back in origin to the first years of the Republic.

One of the first orders of business for the new Congress in 1789 was the

establishment of executive departments. Three “organic” statutes were passed

creating three great departments; Treasury, State, and War.11 A fourth department,

a Department of Home Affairs, was considered and abandoned with the functions

likely to have resided in that department being assigned to the other three

departments. All the particular functions of the newly created executive branch, save

The British administrative system, so idealized in the latter 19th century, and even today by

some, was non-existent during the formative years of the American Republic. Appointments

to public offices, for instance, tended to be in the hands of the landed gentry. J. Donald

Kingsley notes: The civil list of the late 18th century “was a roster of the politically active

aristocracy, together with their illegitimate children, cast-off employees, mistresses, and poor

relations.” Representative Bureaucracy: An Interpretation of the British Civil Service

(Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch Press, 1944), p. 28.

Alexis de Tocqueville, On the State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789, 2nd

ed. (London: John Murray, 1873), chapter 3.

Leonard D. White assigns pre-eminent status to Alexander Hamilton: “Writing in the field

of public administration, in fact, began in the United States. It was Alexander Hamilton who

first defined the term in its modern usage and who first worked out the philosophy of public

administration.” The Federalists, p. 478.

Discussion of the Acts creating the three “great departments” may be found in James Hart,

The American Presidency in Action, 1789: A Study in Constitutional History (New York:

Macmillan Co., 1948), chapter 7.

CRS-7

that of managing the federal government’s legal affairs, and delivering the mails

were entrusted to these departments.

The decision to establish a unitary administrative structure under the President,

a much admired innovation at the time, was intended by the Federalists to

complement their more comprehensive theory of government. Leonard D. White,

an administrative historian, commented on this theory:

The Federalists did not fear administrative power. To the contrary, they had

a deadly fear of governmental impotence. The interests which they cherished had

suffered deeply from lack of a government which could govern, and the need for

power was, in their minds, not subject to debate. The Federalists were not,

however, in favor of irresponsible power; they did not propose an American copy

of an arbitrary kind from whose control they had recently won independence.12

The first potential challenge to the Federalist theory of organization

management arose from the election of Thomas Jefferson, a man suspicious of

energetic government. Jefferson’s theory of organization began at the local level

with emphasis on the citizen as participant in governmental affairs. There was a

romantic element in Jefferson’s political thought that tended to view good

government as utilitarian and minimalist. He believed in rotation-in-office to guard

against the “degeneracy of public servants” and that governmental service should be

“drudgery and for subsistence only.” For Hamilton, on the other hand, government

should be a catalyst for great things. Freedom required strength and national

purpose. As Lynton K. Caldwell would observe: “Hamilton is our great teacher of

the organization and administration of public power; Jefferson our chief expositor

of its control.”13 As it turned out, Jefferson was not inclined to dismantle what

organization was in place, nor to alter its fundamental character.

Organizational Management in the 19th Century

Although the main lines of Federalist organization and managerial philosophy

remained generally in place through 1829, the institutional presidency gradually

declined vis-a-vis the Congress.14 Congress began to assert its authority over

executive agencies more energetically with each passing decade, although this had

minimal consequences in terms of organizational structure.

The Federalist concept of an integrated executive branch under the President

retained its persuasiveness throughout the 19th century. Prior to 1860, only four

permanent “detached agencies” were created: the Library of Congress, the

Leonard D. White, “Public Administration Under the Federalists,” Boston University Law

Review, vol. 24, June 1944, p. 180.

Lynton K. Caldwell, The Administrative Theories of Hamilton and Jefferson, 2nd ed. (New

York: Holmes and Meier, 1988 [c.1944] ), p. 241.

Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1801-1829.

(New York: Macmillan Co., 1951). See also: S.E. Finer, “Patronage and the Public Service:

Jeffersonian Bureaucracy and the British Tradition,” Public Administration, vol. 30, Oct.

1952, pp. 329-60.

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Smithsonian Institution, the Botanic Garden, and the Government Printing Office.

When the federal government assumed additional functions, these functions were

usually assigned to existing departments, or to new departments created for that

purpose, such as the Department of the Interior in 1849.

The first substantial break with Federalist departmentalism did not occur until

the creation of the Civil Service Commission in 1883 and the Interstate Commerce

Commission in 1887.15 This break from departmentalism was associated in many

respects with the newly triumphant civil service reform movement, which sought to

cleanse administration of partisan politics by introducing the merit personnel

system.16

The final two decades of the nineteenth century were years when rapid

industrialization was straining the capacity of the government, which still reflected

in many respects a simpler, more rural period of national life. Regulation was being

demanded for industries, transportation, and urban life. Government institutions

required new cadres of trained, professional personnel, not simply political patronage

appointees. In his review of this period, Stephen Skowronek suggests:

Generally speaking, the expansion of national capacity in America around

the turn of the century was a response to industrialism. The construction of a

centralized bureaucratic apparatus was championed as the best way to maintain

order during this period of upheaval in economic, social, and international affairs.

Viewed at this level, the American experience fits a general pattern of

institutional development and rationalization in public administration.17

Congress was able to exercise leverage over administrative affairs through its

control of the purse strings and through its authority to initiate investigations. With

respect to the latter authority, Congress had made official inquiries into events and

activities since 1789. In the final third of the 19th century, however, Congress

expanded its investigatory activities to include management issues.18 Two

congressional inquiries into the conduct and activities of executive departments stand

out as the century closed. A Select Committee of the Senate, chaired by Francis

From 1887 to 1889, the Interstate Commerce Commission was under the supervision of

the Secretary of the Interior. From 1889, it became independent of any department (25 Stat.

855). For a historical discussion of the early regulatory commissions, consult: Robert

Cushman, The Independent Regulatory Commissions (New York: Oxford University Press,

1941).

Carl Russell Fish, The Civil Service and Patronage (New York: Longmans, Green, 1905).

Paul Van Riper, History of the United States Civil Service (Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson and

Co., 1958).

Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National

Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p.

Oscar Kraines, Congress Against Big Government (New York: Bookman’s Associates,

1958). For a bibliography of congressional inquiries into the conduct of business of

executive departments other than by standing committees, 1789-1911, consult: Gustavus

Weber, Organized Efforts for the Improvement of Methods of Administration in the United

States. (Washington: Institute for Government Research, 1919).

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Cockrell of Missouri, conducted an investigation of executive agencies to determine

why they were so slow in acting and apparently costing so much. (50th Cong., 1st

sess., S. Rept. 507, 1888). With a similar objective, a joint commission of both

Houses was established in 1893 (the Dockery-Cockrell Commission), chaired by

Senator Cockrell and Representative Alexander Dockery, which issued a report on

the laws managing each department (53rd Cong., 1st sess., H. Rept. 49, 1893). A

number of laws altering the “business methods” of agencies were enacted as a direct

result of the commission’s work.

The principal significance for administrative history of these two late 19th

century commissions, however, lies not in their substantive results, but rather in

their attitudes towards the institutionalized presidency and its relationship to the

departments and agencies. Neither inquiry discussed the presidential office, nor

what role that office might be expected to play in the improvement of the conduct of

the executive branch.

While the new governmental reform movement enjoyed its first major victories

at the municipal level, its ideals had an impact upon the national government as well,

in part because Congress was finding it more difficult and less rewarding to manage

federal agencies directly. As Peri Arnold suggests: “[C]ongressional leaders

assumed that only the legislature could impose changes in administrative practices.

But Congress was too unfocused for the task of administrative reform; there were

always more pressing issues for the members, and Congress’ interests in

administration are necessarily episodic....”19 Thus, Congress was increasingly

sympathetic to the idea of delegating some of its managerial and regulatory authority

to the President and executive agencies.

The problem, however, was that the institutionalized presidency was unable to

substantially enhance either its political or managerial leverage over the executive

establishment. The President had virtually no staff, no budgetary authority over

agencies, and few general management laws through which the agencies could be

supervised collectively.20 The situation was ripe for change.

Progressivism and Its Values

The new century ushered in new opportunities for American Presidents to exert

their leadership skills. Governmental institutions were growing rapidly, not only in

size, but in their resource requirements. The executive branch needed new forms of

Peri Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency: Comprehensive Reorganization

Planning, 1905-1996, 2nd rev. ed., (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 18.

John Hart, The Presidential Branch: From Washington to Clinton, 2nd ed. (Chatham, NJ:

Chatham House Publishers, 1995), chapter 2.

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management and a skilled manager, and the President was looked upon to furnish

this leadership

Progressives believed that progress was not only possible, but virtually

inevitable if certain sound principles were followed. The first of the two capstone

principles was that politics and administration could and should be separated.

Although some scholars attribute this intellectual concept to Woodrow Wilson,21

most writing cites a small book by Frank J. Goodnow, Politics and Administration

(1900), with bringing the purported distinction to scholarly consciousness. Goodnow

argued: “Politics has to do with the policies and expressions of state will,” whereas

administration “has to do with the execution of these policies.”22 This dichotomy led

to the proposition that it is the function of the legislative branch to form policy (“will

of the state”) and of the executive branch to implement the policy. The executive

branch, properly organized and managed, would administer the policies in an

impartial and apolitical manner.23

The second capstone principle distinguishing the Progressive era was the belief

that the administration of government agencies and programs was subject to

principles of “scientific management.” The idea that public sector administration

could be made “scientific” was first and most notably promoted by Frederick W.

Taylor who wrote on the “one best way” to manage a manufacturing activity in his

1911 book, The Principles of Scientific Management.24 Although he was specifically

concerned with managing the work process in a private factory, he was convinced,

as were his followers, that the principles of scientific management were applicable

to public administration as well.25

Under the banner of Progressivism, the doctrines of “scientific management”

were promoted for application in the executive branch. With respect to

organizational management, Progressives, by and large, favored four “reforms”: (1)

reorganization of the executive branch into functional departments and agencies; (2)

promotion of the President’s authority to manage a unified executive branch; (3)

introduction of an executive budget; and (4) development of a “neutrally competent”

Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 2,

June 1887, pp. 197-222.

Frank J. Goodnow, Politics and Administration (New York: Macmillan, 1900), pp. 10-11.

The politics/administration dichotomy has been attacked by some scholars as both naïve

and false, yet it retains much of its intellectual appeal. This appeal, Dwight Waldo observes,

is no doubt related to the dichotomy’s strength as both a tool for description and a normative

call for action. “Politics and Administration: On Thinking About a Complex Relationship,”

in A Centennial History of the American Administrative State, ed. Ralph Clark Chandler.

(New York: Free Press, 1987), chapter 3.

Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper and

Bros., 1911).

Testimony of Frederick W. Taylor before the Special Committee of the House of

Representatives to Investigate the Taylor and Other Systems of Shop Management, January

25, 1912. The Committee reported its findings to the House on March 9, 1912. (62nd Cong.,

2nd sess., H. Rept. 403). Daniel Nelson, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific

Management (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980).

CRS-11

management class for agency leadership. Given the particular focus of this study and

the limited space, we can discuss only elements (1) and (2) of the general Progressive

philosophy: the need for a functionally based, integrated executive branch structure

and the evolution of the managerial presidency.26

Scientific management was influential not so much because of its specialized

procedures as for the fundamental idea it fostered, namely, the perfectibility of

human institutions.27 Properly constructed and managed institutions, it was believed,

could overcome many of the structural inadequacies of congressionally mandated

programs. There was a self-assurance among reformers and public administrationists

that they could administer anything. Managers could and would ultimately triumph

over the alleged ineptness and venality of politicians. Managers were to be the elite

in this scientifically ordered world of the future, and the President would be the

Chief Manager of a revitalized national government. The Chief Manager must base

his overall managerial strategy on a comprehensive plan, and for this plan to be

implemented there must be an integrated executive branch organization with strict

lines of responsibility and accountability to him. Thus, the struggle to increase the

President’s managerial capacity began.

Reorganization of executive agencies and functions as a systematic tool of

governance was a major component of the multi-faceted Progressive philosophy.

The first President to espouse the “reorganization” strategy for Progressivism was

Theodore Roosevelt. “President Theodore Roosevelt, unlike McKinley,” Herbert

Emmerich averred, “had firm views on presidential management. He was the

undoubted originator of the concept of reorganization as a continuing need for

administrative management and as an executive responsibility.”28

Theodore Roosevelt, the embodiment of Progressivism, believed that a corollary

of Scientific Management was the view that there was “one best way” to organize

the executive branch, and that the prerogative to reorganize should rest with the

President and his departmental secretaries. He was able to put this view into law

with the passage of the 1903 Act creating the Department of Commerce and Labor

which authorized the President “... by order in writing, to transfer to the new

department any unit engaged in statistical or scientific work, together with their

duties and authority” (32 Stat. 827). The authority to transfer would then be an

Executive Order rather than a statute. Roosevelt subsequently asked Congress,

unsuccessfully, for broad reorganization authority.29 Later Presidents would press

with greater success for general reorganization authority.

For a review of the political theory that motivated the Progressive Movement, see: Dwight

Waldo, The Administrative State, 2nd ed. (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1984

[c. 1948] ), chapters 1-3.

Leonard D. White, Introduction of Public Administration, 4th ed. (New York: Macmillan

and Co., 1951), p. 21.

Herbert Emmerich, Federal Organization and Administrative Management (University,

AL: University of Alabama Press, 1971), p. 38.

James D. Richardson, ed., “Seventh Annual Message of President Theodore Roosevelt to

Congress, Messages and Papers of the President, vol. XIV, (New York: Bureau of National

Literature, 1918), p. 7105.

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Progressives believed in information, analysis and experts. There was a

working assumption in much of their writings and activities that if one could

somehow seat reasonable people around a table, give them plenty of information on

a problem or subject, there would be a high probability of agreement among the

participants. Thus, the idea of “commissions” came into vogue. Ideally,

commissions would consist of “experts” but, if necessary, include some political

leaders as well. The point was, however, that a commission was less likely to be

subject to political pressures and short-term perspectives than a regular legislative

committee. Commissions would meet, hire expert assistance, define the problem,

review the facts, and make recommendations for change to the President, to

Congress, or to both. The use of advisory commissions became popular during the

Progressive era and remains so to this day.

Progressives wanted the American political system and their government to

become both efficient and politically accountable. The leaders of American

commerce wanted a government that could support the emerging business culture

and thus a “good government” alliance was formed consisting of business leaders,

top academics, and social reformers. It was a fragile alliance at best which enjoyed

ascendency for less than two decades ending with America’s entry into World War

I.30 But much was accomplished by this alliance and 80 years later its influence is

still felt.

In the field of organizational design and management, the Progressive values

emphasized presidential administrative leadership, hierarchical structure and an

integrated executive branch. These values still have appeal as a philosophical norm,

even though the administrative history of the post World War II period is largely a

chronicle of rejection of these values in practice. Whereas, Presidents once viewed

organizational management as the key to administrative leadership, today the

tendency by Presidents is arguably to view the design and organizational structures

as simply a minor and negotiable element in the larger political equation. The

absence of a consensus as to the principles or doctrines that should guide the process

of organizational design and management, coupled with a decline in central

management agencies of the U.S. government,31 has resulted in a highly fragmented

political environment. The present situation finds, in the view of some, that

agencies, their interest group constituencies, and relevant congressional committees

(the fabled “iron triangle”) have become the principal initiators and arbiters in

organizational design and management.32

Waldo, Administrative State, chapter 2.

Alan Dean, Dwight Ink, and Harold Seidman, “OMB’s ‘M’ Fading Away,” Government

Executive, vol. 26, June, 1994, pp. 62-64. Paul Light, “The Incredible Shrinking Budget

Office,” Government Executive, vol. 34, Jan. 2002, p. 66.

James R. Thompson, “The Clinton Reforms and the Administrative Ascendency of

Congress,” American Review of Public Administration, vol. 31, Sept. 2001, pp. 249-272.

(name redacted), “Traditional Organizational Principles and the Managerial Presidency: From

Phoenix to Ashes,” Public Administration Review, vol. 50, March/April 1990. pp. 129-40.

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Rise and Decline of Orthodoxy

The study of landmark commissions is, in large measure, the story of the rise

and decline of an idea. The idea began with the Federalists, was reasserted by the

civil service reform movement of the 1880s, refined by the Progressives, and

culminated in the reports of the Brownlow Committee and Hoover Commissions in

the period immediately before and after World War II. The idea that generated all

this activity was the belief that management, particularly the organizational design

aspect of management, was subject to certain theoretical premises applicable

throughout the federal government and government in general.

Writing at mid-century, Wallace Sayre described the prevailing premises of

organizational management:

Organization theory was stated in ‘scientific management’ terms; that is, it

was seen largely as a problem in organization technology—the necessities of

hierarchy, the uses of staff agencies, a limited span of control, subdivision of

work by such ‘scientific’ principles as purpose, process, place, or clientele. The

executive budget was emphasized as an instrument of rationality, of coordination,

planning, and control.... A ‘neutral’ or ‘impartial’ career service was required to

insure competence, expertise, rationality.33

These principles acquired the status of received truth, thus becoming what is

referred to even today as the “orthodox theory” public administration. The most

refined statement of these principles is to be found in the 1937 essay by Luther

Gulick, “Notes on the Theory of Organization,” which was an edited work that

accompanied the Report of the President’s Committee on Administrative

Management (Brownlow Committee) submitted to President Franklin Roosevelt on

January 1, 1937.34 The Brownlow Committee report was described by Sayre “as the

high noon of orthodoxy in public administration theory in the United States.”35

Criticism of the orthodox principles of organization was heard from

academicians even during the period when the principles enjoyed their widest

support among political and governmental leaders. As early as 1946, behaviorists

were labeling the principles of organization as mere “proverbs.” The problem, they

alleged, was not so much that these proverbs were devoid of wisdom, but that the

prevailing doctrine was inadequate to help one pick the right proverb from the wrong

one.36 What was needed to establish a proper theory of organizational and

administrative management was the development of precise language determined by

scientifically based research. Behaviorists, according to skeptics, have been trying

Wallace Sayre, “Premises of Public Administration: Past and Emerging,” Public

Administration Review, vol. 18, Spring 1958, pp. 102-03.

Luther Gulick, “Notes on the Theory of Organization,” in Luther Gulick and L. Urwick,

eds., Papers on the Science of Administration (New York: Institute of Public Administration,

1937), pp. 1-45.

Sayre, “Premises of Public Administration,” p. 103.

Herbert Simon, “The Proverbs of Administration,” Public Administration Review,

6(Winter 1946): 53-67.

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unsuccessfully for over half a century now to come up with a comprehensive theory

of governmental organization to replace the “principles” they debunked.37

The consequence of these assaults on traditional public administration

principles of organizing governmental institutions has been to de-legitimate them in

academic circles and to a lesser degree among practitioners. Public administrators

appear to be embarrassed to openly avow the “orthodox” organizational principles,

lest they be accused of political naïveté. The retreat from public law experience and

orthodox organizational principles proved to be an invitation to those promoting a

new, comprehensive management style, called “entrepreneurial management,” a

subject to be discussed more fully elsewhere in the report.

On a practical level, a break occurred in the 1960s between the academics, who

tended to abandon orthodox organizational principles and language, and political

leaders who, although they felt little constraint against breaking orthodox

organizational principles in designing agencies and programs, still felt compelled to

use the orthodox rhetoric. Even today, most political leaders justify reorganization

proposals on the grounds of improving “economy and efficiency,” “streamlining

government,” “reducing overlap and duplication” and other such phrases which

suggest the savings of money as the primary motive for making organizational

decisions.38 The last landmark commission study to reassert the orthodox principles,

albeit with reservations, was the Ash Council report of 1971 to President Nixon.39

Heterodoxy: Deconstructing the State

In the two decades following the Ash Council report, no one theory or doctrine

of public management gained consensus status. Whereas before 1970, most

Orthodox principles of organizational management enjoy a virtue that should not be

ignored; they are comprehensible and tend to conform to the experiences of lawmakers. As

Harold Seidman commented early in the 1980s:

Flawed and imperfect as they may be, the orthodox ‘principles’ remain the

only simple, readily understood, and comprehensive set of guidelines available

to the President and Congress for resolving problems of executive branch

structure. Individual members of Congress can relate them to their own

experience within the Congress or outside organizations. They have the virtue

of clarity, a virtue scorned by the new orthodoxies, especially the behaviorists

and social psychologists, who tend to write to each other in the arcane language

which is unintelligible to the lay public.

(Politics, Position and Power: The Dynamics of Federal Organization, 3rd ed. (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 8-9).

In November 1991, for instance, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Leon

Panetta, proposed to consolidate the existing 14 Cabinet-level departments into six “super

departments” indicated that such a reorganization would result in eliminating 250,000 federal

jobs and a savings of between $3 and $5 billion a year. The likelihood of “savings” or

special efficiencies coming to pass by way of such a proposal was immediately challenged.

Eric Pianin, “Opposition Swamps Panetta’s Plan to Consolidate Cabinet,” Washington Post,

November 5, 1991, p. A-19.

U.S. Executive Office of the President, Papers Relating to the President’s Departmental

Reorganization Program (Washington: GPO, 1971).

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reorganization proposals emanating from commissions reporting to the President, or

Congress, or both, emphasized the need for more presidential leadership, integrated

departments, hierarchical leadership, budgetary accountability, and personnel system

interchangeability, this ceased to be the case. The next two landmark commissions,

President Carter’s Presidential Reorganization Project (PRP)(1977-79) and President

Reagan’s Grace Commission (1984-85), specifically disavowed orthodox

organizational management principles, and by implication, government

organizational theory altogether. As Peri Arnold observed, they also shared an antigovernment, populist bias in their thinking.

Beginning with Carter, and continuing through the presidency of Ronald

Reagan and into the Clinton Administration, administrative reorganization and

reforms have become expressions of populist concerns about government’s size,

cost, and performance.... Now reform’s purpose was to make government fit the

expectations of the electorate that was increasingly hostile to big government.

In effect, administrative reform was abandoning one presidential political project

regarding administration for another. It is now a tool to negotiate the President’s

role vis-à-vis administration in an environment of discontent about government

and skepticism about its activities.40

With respect to the PRP (1977-79), President Carter’s chief reorganization

planner, Harrison Wellford, “forthrightly denied that any overall principles, theory,

or view of organization, administration, or the governmental system guided the

planning operation.”41 The PRP believed that the best management concepts came

“from the bottom up, not from the top down.” Good management was based on

pragmatism, not doctrine. Let a thousand ideas flourish.

The Administration of Ronald Reagan continued the populist thrust of the

Carter years with its Grace Commission that announced at the outset that its report

would not discuss “the origins, premises, or methodologies of their studies ... because

we do not want to risk losing even one reader who might be turned away from

having to wade through such preliminary material.”42 The Carter and Reagan

reorganization exercises rejected the orthodox concept of a strong institutional

presidency, opting instead for the stronger political presidency then in academic

vogue.43 As the 1980s progressed, an intellectual vacuum emerged, with no

comprehensive organizational management counter theory being presented to replace

the orthodox principles now in disfavor. Insofar as there was coherence to the Carter

and Reagan reorganization exercises, it was a general movement toward

deconstructing the state.

Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency, 2nd ed., p. 373. See also: Arnold, “Reforms

Changing Role,” Public Administration Review, vol. 55, Sept./Oct. 1995, pp. 407-17.

Ibid., p. 300.

President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (Grace Commission), War on Waste

(New York: Macmillan Co., 1984), p. 1.

See: Terry M. Moe, “The Politicized Presidency,” in The New Direction in American

Politics, eds. John E. Chubb and Paul E. Peterson (Washington: The Brookings Institution,

1985).

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New Public Management:

Constitutionalists

Entrepreneurs

Versus

While the Carter and Reagan Administrations were not subtle in their populist

distrust of government, and felt little need to posit a comprehensive administrative

theory upon which to base their actions, the new Clinton Administration (1993-2001)

decided to achieve similar ends with a new strategy. They would “reinvent

government” toward the end of making it both smaller and more concerned with

“performance.”44 A bit of historical background is useful at this point.

Beginning in the immediate post World War II period, several strands of

economic literature emerged arguing a case for the superiority of the market over

governmentally planned and managed economies, then dominant throughout the

world. One strand consciously assumed the mantle of “public choice” theory. At its

heart, public choice theory rests on the premise that political as well as economic

behavior is based on rational, self-serving maximization of material income or the

satisfaction derived therefrom.45

The political impact of this premise has been extraordinary. By the mid-1980s,

it had swept many nations to varying degrees, including the United States, and

contributed its share to the collapse of the communist world and to centralized

government planning and management generally. Planned economies fell from

favor. Free market advocates pushed a variety of related concepts internationally,

many with profound implications for government management.46 A New Public

Management (NPM) paradigm (model) emerged in the early 1990s and rapidly

gained international currency through its dissemination, if not uncritical support, by

the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).47 The

underlying premise of the NPM is that the governmental and private sectors are alike

in their essentials and subject to the same generic management principles. Promoters

of NPM (“entrepreneurs”) rely on literature, propositions, and practices that strive

The term “reinventing government” came from David Osborne’s and Ted Gaebler’s widely

read account, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the

Public Sector (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1992). This book strongly

influenced Vice President Al Gore.

“Public choice can be defined as the economic study of economics and political science.

The subject matter of public choice is the same as that of political science: The theory of the

state, voting rules, voting behavior, party policies, the bureaucracy, and so on. The

methodology of public choice is that of economics, however, the basic behavioral postulate

of public choice, as for economics, is that man is is an egoistic, rational, utility maximizer.”

Dennis Mueller, Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago: Aldine Press,

1979), p. 1. For an early American variation on this bureaucratic utility maximizer theme,

see: Anthony Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1967).

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,

1962).

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Governance in

Transition: Public Management Reforms in OECD Countries (Paris: OECD, 1995).

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for convergence of the governmental and private sectors.48 The acceptance of the

convergence model of public management worldwide has been both rapid and in

some instances disruptive.49

The American variation on the New Public Management (NPM) was the

“reinventing government” exercise, led principally by Vice President Al Gore. The

reinventors largely rejected the language of public choice, however, preferring

instead that of business schools: entrepreneurs accept the underlying premise that the

government and private sectors are fundamentally alike and subject to most of the

same economically derived behavioral norms.50 In the private sector the principal,

if not exclusive, objective is results, and this principle, in their view, should be

applied to the governmental sector as well. Thus, the first principle of the 1993

National Performance Review (NPR) Report reads: “Effective entrepreneurial

governments cast aside red tape, shifting from systems in which people are

accountable for following rules to systems in which they are accountable for

achieving results.”51

This shift toward results over legal process as the primary value in government

management is a statement about political power as well as administrative

management. Vice President Gore indicated as much in 1993 when he stated:

“CEOs—from the White House to agency heads—must ensure that everyone

understands that power will never flow through the old channels again.”52 The NPR

vision was to break down the barriers between the sectors and create a society of

government/private partnerships. The partnerships, ideally, would be largely

autonomous bodies run by managers under contract to meet negotiated performance

standards. The entrepreneurs argue that managers should be deregulated, given

freedom from congressional “micro-management”53 and less supervision by the

President and his central managerial agencies. Since the goal is greater managerial

autonomy, there is relatively little interest in organization per se, or in the legal

theories that encourage political accountability for agencies and officers.

Barry Bozeman, All Organizations Are Public (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987). L.J.

O’Toole, “The Implications for Democracy in a Networked Bureaucratic World,” Journal

of Public Administration Research and Theory, vol.7, July 1997, pp. 443-60.

Donald F. Kettl, The Global Public Management Revolution: A Report on the

Transformation of Governance (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 2000). B. Guy

Peters and John Pierre, “Governance Without Government? Rethinking Public

Administration,” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, vol. 8, April 1998,

pp. 223-43.

Mark Schneider, Paul Teske, and Michael Mintrom, Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for

Change in American Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

U.S. National Performance Review, From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government

That Works Better and Costs Less (Washington: GPO, 1993), pp. 6-7.

Ibid., p. 68.

Donald F. Kettl notes: “First, ‘reinventing government’ seeks the transfer of power from

the legislative to the executive branch.” “Beyond the Rhetoric of Reinvention: Driving

Themes of the Clinton Administration’s Management Reforms,” Governance, vol. 7, July

1994, p. 309.

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Critics (often self-identified as constitutionalists) challenged the fundamental

philosophical basis of the entrepreneurial management paradigm arguing, among

other things, that it tends to subvert the intentions of the Constitution and is antidemocratic in thrust, if not intention. Constitutionalists view the government and

private sectors as distinct in character, with the distinctions founded in law. The

distinguishing characteristic of governmental management, contrasted to private

management, is that government actions must have their basis in public law, not in

the financial interests of private entrepreneurs or in the fiduciary concerns of

corporate managers.54 The frequently criticized hierarchical structure found in the

executive branch is designed more to ensure accountability for managerial action;

promoting control over employee is secondary. In this view, the value of

accountability to political leadership and the importance of due process in

decisionmaking trumps the premium placed on performance and results. However,

it is less a question of pursuing one value at the expense of the other than it is a

matter of precedence in the event of conflict.

According to the constitutionalists, the fundamental purpose of governmental

management is to implement the laws passed by Congress, laws that may be wise or

less-wise, not necessarily to maximize performance (however it is defined and

measured) or to satisfy “customers.” While political accountability and effective

performance are generally compatible objectives, when these values come into

conflict, the democratic values of legal process and political accountability take

precedence over the unquestioned entrepreneurial values of efficiency and results.

The century closed with this debate between the entrepreneurs and

constitutionalists over the future direction of public administration. The debate is not

over arcane issues of little long-term consequence, but rather it concerns

fundamental issues of democratic governance.

This study of landmark commissions is intended to provide an overview of the

ideas, institutions, and people who shaped the contemporary organization of the

United States government. The executive branch is not the result of random political

actions. Nor is it a construct of a single moment, set in stone to last the ages.

Rather, it is a product of several basic theoretical concepts intended to create a

structure that permits and enhances the Founders’ goal of creating a democratic

republic. In the century recently ended, these theoretical concepts underwent

periodic reinterpretations to accommodate changing circumstances and

administrative values.

This study covers the period through 1999, but it is already clear in this new century

that new institutional questions and challenges are facing the President and Congress.

For instance, how best to reorganize the executive branch to pursue effective

counterterrorist measures without eroding democratic accountability and the proper

administration of other agencies and programs? Should Congress realign committee

jurisdictions to best oversee and co-manage the national counterterrorism strategy?

All of which leads to the question: What contribution, if any, might another landmark

commission provide towards addressing these questions?

(name redacted) and Robert S. Gilmour, “Rediscovering Principles of Public

Administration: The Neglected Foundation of Public Law,” Public Administration Review,”

vol.55, March/April 1995, pp. 135-46.

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Landmark Commissions

Those commissions considered to be “landmark” in character, while they may

be studied individually or collectively, may also be viewed as part of a much larger

institutional category, the federal “advisory commission.” Advisory commissions,

or committees as they are often called, come in many sizes, lengths of service, and

are assigned remarkably diverse mandates. Indeed, categorizing the multitude of

advisory commissions has proven to be a daunting task.55 One attempt was

undertaken by Hugh Davis Graham. Graham suggested that there were essentially

five categories of advisory commissions:

reorganization. The study of organizational structure generally with the

intent to realign authorities, organizations and personnel toward the end

of increasing rationality and accountability.

mega-commission. Intended to examine the existing status of national life

and offer recommendations for its betterment.

crisis-induced. In the turbulent 1960s, the practice began of establishing

high visibility commissions to make investigations into so-called national

crises (e.g., the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968),

generally referred to as the Kerner Commission).

technical. The great majority of advisory commissions perform technical

functions and give advice to agencies. Most such commissions are

permanent, staffed by technical experts, and form a basic method for the

inclusion of diverse views in the agency’s policies and management.

major policy. These commissions have been appointed to study and make

recommendations on policy issues. In the past, such commissions have

studied civil rights, elements of U.S. foreign policy, and more recently,

provided a study on the future of Social Security.56

In this study our attention will center on one of the subcategories of advisory

committees, the reorganization commissions, those that were assigned a

comprehensive mandate to study the organization and management of the executive

branch, broadly interpreted. It is also worth noting that the literature on both

advisory committees and reorganization generally focuses on advisory committees

created by, or related to, the executive branch. Much less attention has been paid to

There are a number of studies of advisory commissions and committees. See: Thomas R.

Wolanin, Presidential Advisory Commissions: Truman to Nixon (Madison, WI: University

of Wisconsin Press, 1975); Carl Marcy, Presidential Commissions (New York: King’s

Crown Press, 1945). Steven P. Croley, “Practice and Guidance on the Applicability of the

Federal Advisory Committee Act,” Administrative Law Journal, 10(Spring 1996): 111-78.

U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Federal Advisory Committees:

A Primer, by (name redacted), RL30260 (Washington: July 16, 1999).

Hugh David Graham, “The Ambiguous Legacy of American Presidential Commissions,”

The Public Historian, 7(Spring 1985): 5-25.

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the many advisory committees created by or related to the legislative branch.57 Many

of these advisory committees, such as the Base Closure and Realignment

Commission,58 while reporting to Congress, nonetheless ultimately impact the

organization and management of the executive branch.

Keep Commission (1905-1909)

Context.

As the new century dawned, the United States was fully involved in the age of

industrial and technological growth. The Spanish American War had established the

United States as an international power with the responsibilities of empire. What had

historically been a tax system resulting in surpluses was now producing recurrent

deficits. Calls were heard from “reformers” to revamp the federal government to

permit growth in the capacity of government to perform its basic functions and those

functions being added each year.

As Governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt had been engaged in a number

of reorganization projects, such as reorganization of the state canal system and its

correctional institutions. At the national level, he supported Elihu Root’s campaign

to professionalize the military. Upon becoming President after William McKinley’s

death, Roosevelt set about to bring his Progressive values to play in reorganizing the

executive branch. He believed that problem areas should be first studied by an

advisory commission that would provide recommendations to the President. In his

view, the advisory commission should be composed of volunteers, typically unpaid

interdepartmental committees, drawn from the ranks of career civil servants.

Several advisory commissions offered recommendations for improvements in

specific agencies and programs (e.g., Gifford Pinchot’s Committee on the

Organization of Government Scientific Work) during 1903 and 1904. The President

was convinced that a similar advisory commission should be established to examine

the organization and operations of all executive branch departments and agencies.

A preliminary outline for what such a commission should do was written by

Gifford Pinchot and James R. Garfield, Commissioner of the Bureau of Corporations.

This inattention to congressionally created advisory committee has been recently remedied

by (name redacted)’s

Discharging Congress: Government by Commission (Westport,

CT: Praeger, 2002).

Christopher J. Deering, “Congress, the President, and Automatic Government: The Case

of Military Base Closures,” in James A. Thurber, ed., Divided Democracy: Cooperation and

Conflict Between the President and Congress, 2nd ed. (Washington: CQ Press, 1996).

Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1947), p. 296.

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Authority.

In 1905, on his own initiative, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed by letter

a Commission on Department Methods, and named Charles Hallem Keep, Assistant

Secretary of the Treasury, as chairman.60 The commission (committee) became

known as the Keep Commission. The President’s practice of appointing

commissions to study and recommend changes in administrative practices without

consulting Congress or receiving its approval upset many in the legislative branch.

They believed that such oversight and management recommendations properly

belonged to Congress, as it had been in the 19th century.61

The commission, although its principal work was completed in 1907, remained

in operation until the close of the Roosevelt Administration in 1909.62

Membership .

The Keep Commission consisted of five government executives of sub-cabinet

rank: Charles Hallem Keep, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; Lawrence O.

Murray, Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor; James R. Garfield,

Commissioner of the Bureau of Corporations in the Department of Commerce and

Labor; Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the Forest Service in the Department of

Agriculture; and Frank H. Hitchcock, First Assistant Postmaster General.

The selection of sub-cabinet officers to the commission understandably upset

some cabinet secretaries since the commission’s analyses and recommendations

would tend to highlight deficiencies in the administration of departments and

agencies, thus presenting departmental secretaries in an unfavorable light. This

problem, for the most part, was never fully resolved but was mitigated by restraint

practiced by all parties.

Administrative Philosophy.

President Roosevelt, in his 1905 Message to Congress, made clear the

philosophy on administrative management he wished to see come to fruition.

There is every reason why our executive governmental machinery should

be at least as well planned, economical, and efficient as the best machinery of the

During his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt appointed six advisory commissions to provide

him with a broadened view on the problems of administration. The first of the six

commissions was the Commission of Government Scientific Work, at suggestion of Gifford

Pinchot, head of the Forest Service, Progressive, and friend of the President. The second

advisory commission was the Commission on Department Methods (Keep Commission).

Theodore Roosevelt was not only the “father” of executive reorganization, but of advisory

commissions as well. Wolanin, Presidential Advisory Commissions, p. 5.

For a general history of the evolution of the executive branch through 1922, see: Lloyd M.

Short, The Development of National Administrative Organization in the United States

(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1923).

Oscar Kraines, “The President Versus Congress: The Keep Commission, 1905-1909,”

Western Political Quarterly, vol.23, March 1970, pp. 5-54.

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great business organizations, which at present is not the case. To make it so is a

task of complex detail and essentially executive in nature; probably no legislative

body, no matter how wise and able, could undertake it with reasonable prospect

of success. I recommend that the Congress consider this subject with a view to

provide by legislation for the transfer, distribution, consolidation, and assignment

of duties and executive organizations or parts of organizations, for the changes

in business methods, within or between the several Departments, that will best

promote the economy, efficiency, and high character of the Government’s work.63

Organization, Support Staff, and Financing.

In performing its work, the Keep Commission in 1906 was aided by a group of

12 subcommittees (e.g., Subcommittee on Accounting and Personnel) composed of

approximately 70 persons from among full-time employees in the various executive

departments. In addition to longer range studies of cross-cutting administrative

issues, the commission was also used by the President to investigate specific

management problems that were actual or potential scandals.

In a message to Congress in 1906, Roosevelt requested an appropriations for

$25,000 “for the employment of specialists and experts to assist the special

Committee on Department Methods.” Congress, however, was not persuaded and

granted the President only $5,000 to be used for hiring private experts. (34 Stat.

635). As a consequence, few outside consultants were hired and the work was

performed almost completely by federal officers and employees on their own time,

in addition to their regular duties.

Congress was sufficiently upset at the Rooseveltian use of commissions, which

they correctly viewed as a tactic to bypass Congress, that it passed the Tawney

amendment to the 1909 supplemental appropriations act (32 Stat. 1027). The

Amendment prohibited the expenditure of public funds to support presidentially

created commissions unless appropriated for that express purpose.

Reports and Recommendations.

By December 1907, the major inquiries of the Keep Commission had been

completed; nonetheless the commission continued its work until the end of President

Roosevelt’s term on March 3, 1909. In all, it issued 19 formal reports to the

President, although they were never compiled and issued as a single report.

Gustavus Weber states: “It is much to be regretted that ... these reports of the Keep

Commission were never published as public documents. The result is that they are

exceedingly difficult to obtain. The set possessed by the Institute of Governmental

research [later to become The Brookings Institution] is, in fact, the only complete set

of which the author of the present volume has knowledge.”64

While there were hundreds of recommendations ranging from agency specific

to government-wide proposals, the “success” of the exercise was difficult to measure.

Most of the Keep Commission’s recommendations were not incorporated in

“Business Methods in Departments,” Congressional Record, vol. 40, Dec. 5, 1905, p. 96.

Weber, Organized Efforts for Improvement, p. 81.

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executive orders or legislation. Implementation varied from one department to the

next, dependent in large measure on the support of department secretaries.

The commission recommended many housekeeping changes in the fields of

accounting, purchasing and contracting, records management, coordination of

statistics, and government printing and publications. Recommendations were

forthcoming on ways and means to improve inter-departmental relations and

coordination. It was in the area of personnel management that the Keep Commission

probably made its innovative recommendations, calling for competitive pay and a

retirement system for federal workers.

Results and Assessment.

The Keep Commission was generally accorded high marks, then and now, for

the quality of its research and the insight of its recommendations.65 Writing in 1970,

Herbert Emmerich concluded:

The work of the Keep Commission ... was a landmark of executive

introspection. It stimulated management improvement in bureau after bureau and

in such varied fields as accounting and costing, archives and records

administration, simplification of paper work, use of office machinery, personnel

administration, procurement and supply, and contracting procedures.... Congress,

however, resented its activities because it threatened many vested interests and

jobs and because it had only presidential sanction.66

No major structural reorganizations can be attributed to the work of the Keep

Commission. The reports dealt with specific aspects of administrative methods and

procedures, yet relatively little change in these practices can be credited directly to

the commission. What, then, was the contribution of the Keep Commission? First,

it produced a quality set of reports that reflected the initial effort by the executive

branch to study itself in a comprehensive fashion. Second, it was a commission that

broke with the congressional definition of efficiency, a term associated almost

exclusively with “economy,” or the spending of less monies, and concentrated

instead upon expanding the capacity of agency heads to manage their agencies.

Third, the commission was responsible for creating a whole new vocabulary of terms

and concepts to be applied to public administration. Finally, in Oscar Kraines’

opinion, the major contribution of the commission lay in “the assertion for the first

time of the Presidential responsibility for administration.”67

Carl Marcy, Presidential Commissions (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1945), p. 19.

Herbert Emmerich, Federal Organization and Administrative Management (University,

AL: University of Alabama Press, 1971), pp. 39-40.

Kraines, “The President Versus Congress: The Keep Commission,” p. 53.

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President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency (19101913)

Context.

When William Howard Taft assumed the presidency in 1909, it was generally

agreed that the budgetary and fiscal practices of the executive branch were no longer

adequate and that the situation was rapidly deteriorating. Deficits were becoming

chronic and Congress found the ministerial Book of Estimates submitted each year

by the Treasury Department an inadequate tool for comprehending the financial

status of the entire government and for making informed decisions among competing

claims for limited resources.

Authority.

In 1909, Congress specified that the President and the Secretary of the Treasury

were to compare expected revenues and the appropriations requested by the agencies

and then make recommendations as to both the priority of appropriations and where

expenditures might be reduced (35 Stat. 1027). In effect, Congress was calling for

an executive budget to be submitted by the President, a practice in use in many

states. President Taft and his Treasury Secretary, Franklin MacVeigh, quickly found

that they did not have the resources to meet this requirement. As a result of the

Tawney Amendment passed during the Keep Commission days, Taft was not able

to establish and fund a commission by presidential directive. Also, Taft, unlike his

predecessor, had a less expansive view of presidential prerogatives and was more

deferential to congressional sensibilities: he requested funds so that he might

determine how best to establish a commission to address the executive budget issue.

Taft requested that Congress appropriate $100,000 for this preliminary exercise, and

Congress appropriated the funds (36 Stat. 703).

The project was conducted in two phases; phase one, from October 1910

through March 1911, consisted of making preliminary studies, largely under the

direction of the President’s Secretary, Charles Norton, to determine the scope of the

issue areas. Phase two comprised the establishment of a commission to study the

data and make recommendations to the President, and the Commission on Economy

and Efficiency.

Membership.

In 1911, President Taft named Frederick Cleveland as chairman of the

President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency, and physically provided space

and support in the White House. Four other members were appointed, William F.

Willoughby, a public administration scholar, who was at the time was assistant

director of the Bureau of the Census; Walter Warwick, one-time auditor of the

Isthmian Canal Commission; Frank J. Goodnow, professor of administrative law;

Harvey S. Chase, a certified public accountant; and Merritt O. Chance, then Auditor

for the Post Office Department, was made secretary and later a member of the

commission.

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Later on, in an economy measure intended to appease a hostile Congress, Taft

reduced the commission in 1912 to three members, Cleveland, Warwick and Chance.

Former members Goodnow and Willoughby maintained close ties to the commission

nonetheless.

Administrative Philosophy.

There was, at least initially, a division of opinion regarding the appropriate

direction for the proposed commission to take. For the most part, Congress wished

to have the commission reassert its values, meaning congressional dominance over

agency management and funding. Efficiency, defined simply as spending less

monies, was the congressional leitmotif and they expected any reorganization

proposal and any executive budget proposal to promote this overall objective. Taft,

however, rejected this narrow approach and determined instead to align himself with

the newly emergent field of public administration. In consultation with the New

York Bureau of Municipal Research, he determined to make this definitely a

presidential exercise by having the study based in the White House. Frederick

Cleveland, the director selected by Taft for the initial study was also director of the

New York Bureau. By placing the study physically in the White House, Taft was

not only concerned with protecting the commission from congressional pressures, but

from pressures by cabinet members as well. The study was to be comprehensive in

scope, concerned with organization as well as budgetary matters and management

practices.

In President Taft’s message to Congress of January 17, 1912 (H. Doc. 458), he

reviewed the status of the executive branch as he found it in 1909:

This vast organization has never been studied in detail as one piece of

administrative mechanism. Never have the foundations been laid for a through

consideration of the relations of all its parts. No comprehensive effort has been

made to list its multifarious activities or to group them in such a way as to present

a clear picture of what the Government is doing. Never has a complete

description been given of the agencies through which these activities are

performed. At no time has the attempt been made to study all of these activities

and agencies with a view to the assignment of each activity to the agency best

fitted for its performance, to the avoidance of duplication of plant and work, to

the integration of all administrative agencies of the Government, so far as may

be practicable, into a unified organization for the most effective and economical

dispatch of public business.68

By the comprehensive vision President Taft brought to the project, he

significantly redefined the debate over organizational management and established

the President as the key player for future organizational management. As Peri

Arnold notes:

President Taft’s statement to Congress as printed in: U.S. Congress, House, Committee on

Appropriations, Message of the President of the United States Transmitting the Reports of

the Commission on Economy and Efficiency, H.Doc. 1252, 62nd Cong., 3rd sess.

(Washington: GPO, 1913), p. 2.

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From a modern perspective, it is difficult to appreciate how innovative was

Cleveland’s model of the organization of the executive branch. No longer were

these agencies to be understood as single units tied to Congress by an imbilical

cord of statute and appropriations. Rather, they would be seen as part of a whole

that had hierarchy and ordered authority—a bureaucracy. When seen through

this new conception, the traditional picture of the dominant tie of agency to

legislature is an intrusive element—a pathology.69

Organization, Staff Support, and Funding.

Pursuant to its statutory authority, a preliminary investigation was begun under

Charles Norton, Secretary to the President. At the close of the preliminary studies

President Taft, as noted earlier, requested an appropriation of $100,000 which

Congress granted in a sundry civil appropriation act for 1911. This appropriation

was supplemented by one for $75,000 contained in the sundry civil appropriation act

for 1912. Another appropriation for $10,000 passed to meet the expenses of a

special investigation of the Patent Office, which Congress, by joint resolution,

directed the President to make. Finally, Congress appropriated $75,000 in the sundry

civil appropriation act for 1913. The total funding for the commission was thus

$260,000 from fiscal years July 1, 1910, to June 30, 1913.70

Reports and Recommendations.

The commission, complaining of meagre funding and inadequate congressional

support, nonetheless produced many reports, some of which were sent to Congress,

others not. The forms of publications included a Message of the President,

accompanied by the official reports to Congress; circulars printed by the

commission; and miscellaneous documents (e.g., Treasury circulars). The great

majority of reports and recommendations were agency-specific (e.g., consolidation

of the Bureau of Lighthouses with the Life-Saving Service) or process-based (e.g.,

principles for handling correspondence) and thus constituted what today might be

referred to as micro-management issues. Most of the recommendations were

concerned with personnel, financial practices, and business type activities performed

by agencies.71 The running thread of the various recommendations was that agencies

should be grouped together by purpose and that they should follow similar

procedures in the conduct of their affairs.

One of the recommendations of the commission proved, however, to be of

government-wide and political importance. President Taft forwarded a Message to

Congress, attached to the commission’s 568 page supporting report (The Need for a

Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency, 2nd ed., p. 33.

Weber, Organized Efforts, p. 84.

Ibid., pp. 94-103. One important, noncontroversial report of the commission and its staff

was the inventory of all agencies of the executive branch. The inventory was published as:

U.S. Commission on Economy and Efficiency, Report to the President on the Organization

of the United States as It Existed on July 1, 1911. The report was published in H. Doc. 458,

2 vol. 62nd Cong., 2nd sess., (Washington: GPO, 1912).

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National Budget), calling for a national executive budget.72 In the meantime, Taft

directed that agencies simultaneously assemble an estimate of expenditures using the

traditional congressional method and an executive budget according to a

presidentially directed format. In 1913, just prior to his leaving Office, Taft

proposed that his successor be given a presidential staff agency to support the

President in his new budgetary responsibilities.

Understandably, a major political debate ensued over which institution, the

President or Congress, had principal authority and responsibility to oversee the

agencies. Opposition to the proposal was not confined to certain Members of

Congress, but included some cabinet secretaries as well, secretaries with well

developed lines of communications and support from their committees. In the

immediate term, Congress, and more particularly the two appropriations committees,

prevailed over President Taft, the latter being politically weakened by the

congressional elections of 1910 and the divisive 1912 presidential elections, in which

the Democrats swept not only the White House but both houses of Congress as well.

Some voluntary actions at the agency level were forthcoming, but generally

speaking, little action proceeded directly from the commission report or its

leadership. In a post-election gesture, Taft proposed that his successor be given a

presidential staff agency to support the President in meeting his responsibilities as

part of the larger executive budget reforms.73

Results and Assessment.

Subsequent assessments of the commission and of President Taft’s leadership

in the development of executive branch budgetary and management methods have

generally been favorable.74 “That the Commission’s life ended with none of its

major recommendations implemented,” Peri Arnold concluded, “ought not be taken

as a measure of failure. In hindsight the Commission was strikingly successful, even

if that success was longer in coming than any of its members would have preferred.

Its work formed the template of modern comprehensive reorganization planning.”75

Taft had made a plea to Woodrow Wilson, his successor, to keep the

commission alive, but to no avail. Wilson, although considered a successful

U.S. Commission on Economy and Efficiency, The Need for a National Budget.

Transmitted with presidential Message to Congress on June 27, 1912, H. Doc. 854, 62nd

Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington: GPO, 1912).

Message of the President, February 26, 1913 (62nd Cong., 3rd sess., S. Doc. 113).

Frederick C. Mosher assigns credit to President William Howard Taft in his promotion of

a national budget. “There may have been some discussion of a national budget in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But basic credit for initiating the idea should

probably go to President William Howard Taft. Unlike virtually all Presidents before him,

Taft busied himself soon after his inauguration with superintendence of the preparation of

estimates in the departments.” A Tale of Two Agencies: A Comparative Analysis of the

General Accounting Office and the Office of Management and Budget (Baton Rouge:

Louisiana State University Press, 1984), p. 24.

Arnold, Executive Reorganization, 2nd ed., pp. 49-50.

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Progressive in many respects, was not interested in continuing the life or the work

of the commission.

The major contribution made by the commission was more in the theoretical or

conceptual realm than in the contribution of specific recommendations. With the

commission’s studies, the case was made for presidential authority and resources to

manage the federal bureaucracy. Congress itself gradually became persuaded by this

argument and also by the experience of World War I, with its massive demands upon

the administrative system of the nation.

Congress, early in the Wilson administration, passed a bill, signed by the

President (March 25, 1913) (38 Stat.1007), establishing the Bureau of Efficiency as

a branch of the Civil Service Commission. In a sense, Congress looked upon this

Bureau as a successor of the President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency.

The Bureau was plagued by the absence of adequate funding. Nonetheless, the

mandate of the Bureau was expanded by act of March 4, 1915, to include the

“investigation of duplication of statistical and other work and method of business in

the various branches of government service.” In 1916, the Bureau was made an

independent agency (39 Stat.15). Although the Bureau was authorized to investigate

the need for administrative reorganization, it never undertook such a project.76 The

Bureau of Efficiency had an ambiguous status. As Gustavus Weber noted at the

time: “[T]he Bureau, notwithstanding that its legal status is that of a part of the

administrative branch of the government, is functioning largely as a direct agent of

the legislative branch.”77 The Bureau was abolished in 1933 (97 Stat. 1519).

Joint Committee on Reorganization (1921-1924)

Context.

The First World War provided extensive evidence of the need for an integrated

executive branch with the President as chief manager. President Taft’s call for a

national budget and administrative reorganization, first heard in 1912, now fell on

more receptive ears. The new Republican majority in both chambers saw this as an

opportunity to regain the initiative in the field of executive branch organization

Following the War, the House took the initiative in promoting the national

budget concept by passing a bill in October 1919 requiring the President to be

responsible for estimates of the agencies. To this end, the bill provided for the

establishment of a Bureau of the Budget in the Office of the President. President

Wilson announced his support, belatedly in the view of supporters, for the executive

budget concept. The Senate passed a revised version of the bill on May 1, 1920.

This revised bill provided not only for a Bureau of the Budget but for a General

Accounting Office in the legislative branch as well.78

Weber, Organized Efforts, pp. 104-113.

Ibid., p. 111.

U.S. Congress, A National Budget System: A Compilation of Hearings, Reports, Acts,

(continued...)

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While the bill had some recognized flaws, supporters were nonetheless

surprised when President Wilson invoked his veto power, citing constitutional

grounds. The President objected to procedures for removing the Comptroller

General.79 Frantic efforts to refashion the bill before adjournment were unsuccessful,

thus ending the opportunity for President Wilson to take some credit for establishing

a national budget and a national budget agency.

The Republican sweep of 1920 enhanced already strong sentiment for budget

reform. Congress altered the Budget bill slightly, hoping to overcome objections.

First, the new Budget Bureau was to be “in but not of” the Department of the

Treasury, with a separate director to be appointed by the President and not subject

to Senate confirmation. Second, Congress would continue to be the initiatory agent

for removing the Comptroller General, but removal would require a joint resolution,

a procedure with the effect of law, thereby requiring a presidential signature. The

new President, Warren Harding, did not challenge this removal procedure (it has

never been employed), and thus the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 became law

(42 Stat. 20). Herbert Emmerich, succumbing to hyperbole, described the Budget

and Accounting Act as “probably the greatest landmark of our administrative history

except for the Constitution itself.”80

Authority.

In the waning days of the Wilson Administration, Congress, by joint resolution

of December 29, 1920 (41 Stat. 1083), created a Joint Committee on Reorganization,

to be composed of three members of each house of Congress, appointed by the

President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House. The mission of the

commission was “to make a survey of the administrative services of the government

for the purpose of securing all pertinent facts concerning their powers and duties,

their distribution among the several executive departments and their overlapping and

duplication of authority....”81

At the suggestion of the new President, Warren Harding, Congress passed a

supplementary joint resolution, approved May 5, 1921 (42 Stat. 3), authorizing the

President to appoint a representative of the executive branch to cooperate with the

Joint Committee on Reorganization, whose salary should be paid in equal parts from

the contingent funds of the Senate and House.82 President Harding’s personal

(...continued)

Bills, Tracing the Legislative Development of the Budget and Accounting Act.

(Washington: GPO, 1918-1921).

2v.

President Woodrow Wilson’s veto message of H.R. 9783 is to be found in: U.S.

Congressional Record, House, 66th Cong., 2nd sess., June 4, 1920, pp. 8609-10.

Emmerich, Federal Organization and Administrative Management, pp. 40-41.

Lloyd M. Short, The Development of National Administrative Organization in the United

States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1923), pp. 462-70.

“Walter F. Brown Will Probably Be Named by President Harding to Head of Joint

Congressional Committee to Reorganize Executive Departments,” New York Times, April

16, 1921, p. 16. In 1921, Congress passed, after a Democratic filibuster, a resolution

(continued...)

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representative on the committee, Walter F. Brown, was subsequently voted the

chairman of the congressional committee, an unprecedented action.83

President Harding, suspected of subscribing to congressional dominance of

organizational method, surprised Congress by reasserting presidential prerogatives

over matters of executive organization and management.84 As a matter of high

priority, Harding successfully pushed for passage of legislation to establish both a

General Accounting Office and a Bureau of the Budget. (42 Stat. 20). Next,

Harding sought to not only have executive participation on the Joint Committee, but

for the executive branch to take the lead. He was committed to submit to Congress

a comprehensive executive reorganization proposal, which occurred in the early

months of Harding’s successor, President Calvin Coolidge.85

Membership.

The joint committee was composed of three members from each house of

Congress, one of whom was to be a member of the minority party (Democratic at that

period). The initial makeup of the joint committee was Senators Reed Smoot (RUT), James Wadsworth (R-NY), and Pat Harrison (D-MS). House members were

Representatives C. Frank Reavis (R-NE), Henry Temple (R-PA), and Robert W.

Moore (D-VA).

At the request of the President, Walter F. Brown was elected chairman of the

joint committee. No apparent concern was expressed at the time about this

extraordinary apparent breaching of the separation of powers doctrine.

Administrative Philosophy.

The principal philosophical underpinning of the joint committee exercise was

to reorganize the executive branch according to “major purpose.” In President

Harding’s letter of June 13, 1921 to the joint committee, he stated:

Since it is extremely difficult to administer efficiently departments which

include wholly dissimilar and unrelated services, and quite impossible to

administer economically identical or similar services which are scattered

throughout several departments, it would seem necessary at the outset of the work

of reorganization to provide a statutory regrouping of governmental activities to

the end, as far as practice, that each department be made up of agencies having

(...continued)

providing Brown be paid $7,500 per year. “Filibuster by House Democrats,” New York

Times, July 27, 1921, p. 2.

Walter F. Brown was an attorney in Toledo, Ohio, leader in Republican Party activities,

and friend of President Harding. “Interview with W.F. Brown,” New York Times, August

28, 1921, sec. VII, p. 2. Brown was later Postmaster General under President Hoover.

Warren G. Harding, “Business in Government and the Problem of Governmental

Reorganization for Greater Efficiency,” Academy of Political Science, Proceedings, 9(July

1921): 430-31.

Message of the President of the United States, S.Doc. 128, 68th Cong., 1st sess., June 23,

1924.

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substantially the same major purpose and, further, that identical or similar

services shall be grouped together.86

The joint committee, especially its chairman, Walter F. Brown, was receptive

to the concept of reorganizing by major purpose, although this term was as likely to

raise questions as to be the answer.

The chief player in developing and sustaining an administrative philosophy for

the Administration was a member of Harding’s Cabinet, Herbert Hoover, Secretary

of Commerce. Hoover enthusiastically embraced the Brown effort as his own and

set about to reassert the Progressive ideal of an efficient, but also effective, executive

branch.87 Peri Arnold provides a graphic description of the dynamic quality that

Herbert Hoover brought to the Harding Cabinet:

The major intellectual thrust in this reorganization effort came not from the

President or Brown, but from the Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover.

Hoover was vitally interested in reorganization, and to this day stands out as

perhaps the most prominent theoretician-practitioner in American public

administration. Beyond this, Hoover was the pillar of the Harding cabinet. The

President trusted his Secretary of Commerce and tended to rely on Hoover for

advice on a wide range of policy matters. While President Harding used his

position to support the reorganization planning effort, and Walter Brown offered

the legitimizing aegis of the joint committee and served as coordinator, Herbert

Hoover provided the intellectual thrust for the endeavor.88

As Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover set out to reorganize much of the

executive branch. His immediate objective was to alter and expand the functions of

the Department of Commerce. During the course of the discussion in 1921 within

the executive branch, he proposed three great divisions for the Department; one for

industry, one for trade, and one for transportation and commerce. A variety of

agencies would then be shifted to the Commerce Department. Ellis Hawley observed

of Hoover’s early reorganization effort: “In essence, the Commerce Department was

to become a department of economic development and management; other agencies

would still be responsible for special sectors of the economy, but Commerce would

serve as a general coordinator....”89

Not surprisingly, Secretary Hoover’s grand scheme, while enjoying some

implicit support from the White House, was viewed by the other departments and

“Harding Urges Joint Congressional Committee to Act Quickly,” New York Times, June

14, 1921, p. 14.

Although largely forgotten by latter-day political analysts, Herbert Hoover was a

Progressive in his philosophy toward government. Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover:

Forgotten Progressive (Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1975).

Peri E. Arnold, “Executive Reorganization and Administrative Theory: The Origins of the

Managerial Presidency.” Paper delivered at the 1976 Annual Meeting of the American

Political Science Association, p. 12.

Ellis Hawley, “Herbert Hoover, The Commerce Secretariat, and the Vision of the

‘Associative State,’ 1921-1928,” The Journal of American History, vol. 61, June 1974, p.

121.

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agencies as a “power grab.” Opposition within the cabinet to the Hoover proposal

was immediate and intense.90 Congress, although it had been waiting for the

comprehensive executive reorganization report from the joint committee it had

created in cooperation with the White House, was less than enthusiastic with its final

recommendations and chose to take a pass on this first opportunity to perform major

surgery on the executive branch.91

Organization, Staff Support, and Funding.

Unable to establish its own staff, the joint committee, in the form of Walter F.

Brown, requested the assistance of the Bureau of Efficiency under Herbert Brown

(no relation). Like the joint committee, the Bureau tried to straddle the branches.

It worked with congressional committees on budgetary matters and worked with the

executive branch to promote central managerial interests. The Bureau was very

cognizant of the institutional weakness of the presidential office.

Under the Constitution, the President is responsible for the management of

the executive branch of the government, but up to the present, Congress has not

seen fit to give to the Chief Executive any machinery with which he can

effectively discharge this responsibility. The President’s staff consists wholly of

a small number of personal secretaries and clerks. The time of this staff is taken

up with the consideration of legislative business, the preparation of commissions,

appointment matters, and so on. Under these conditions the President is... unable

to function as an administrative officer.92

The Bureau of Efficiency did provide clerical and other support to the Joint

Committee. Herbert Hoover’s staff at the Commerce Department was also used to

develop and promote his views on the proper direction for the executive branch to

take. Hoover, as we will learn, tended to be simultaneously of two minds with

regard to executive branch organization. First, he sought to build up the capacity of

the executive branch to meet its responsibilities under a President holding sufficient

authority and institutional support to be the activist Chief Manager. Second, and

somewhat paradoxically to his critics, he believed that government should be limited

in its functions and seek the least claim (economy and efficiency) upon the resources

of the taxpayers.

Reports and Recommendations.

When the joint committee received the reports and recommendations from the

Harding-Coolidge administration, it reviewed the studies without benefit of staff.

Nonetheless, the joint committee held hearings in 1924, but several factors

Edward L. and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, “Disharmony in the Harding Cabinet,” Ohio

History, vol. 75, Spring/Summer 1966, p. 135.

U.S. Joint Committee on Reorganization of the Administrative Branch of the Government,

Reorganization of the Executive Departments, Hearings on S.J. Res. 282, 68th Cong., 1st sess.

(Washington: GPO, 1924).

Memorandum, Herbert Brown to the Postmaster General, April 25, 1921, Bureau of

Efficiency, 1.02, RG 51, National Archives. As quoted in Arnold, Making the Managerial

Presidency, 2nd ed., p. 63.

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discouraged the committee from pursuing legislation on recommendations of the

report. First, a new President, Calvin Coolidge, had replaced the recently deceased

Harding, and had exhibited little interest in executive branch reorganization or the

development of a White House staff capacity. Second, administration witnesses

illustrated in their remarks the strong divisions of opinion on reorganization

proposals, especially the proposal to merge the Departments of War and Navy.

Third, there was little discussion of how the reorganizations would eventually “save”

money.

The plan submitted by the joint committee to the full Congress was essentially

the Harding plan minus the provision to merge War and Navy. Neither Harding’s

plan or the specific proposals provided firm statistics on “savings” to be achieved by

the reorganization. As it turned out, the attractiveness of reorganization was waning

and “none of the Joint Committee’s large-scale recommendations were given serious

consideration.”93

The methodology for developing an overall executive branch reorganization

plan was to have the departments themselves take the first shot. Each was to submit

a plan to Walter Brown. In Brown’s view, such an approach, which was the opposite

of the arms-length approach of Taft’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency, was

more likely to produce informed analysis by those most clearly affected. This

approach, however, left most of the department secretaries nonplused or highly

defensive.

Unlike his cabinet colleagues, Secretary Herbert Hoover saw this approach as

an opportunity to recast his Department as the centerpiece of a completely

redesigned government. Under his reorganization plan, submitted to Brown (and

also the President) in 1921, the Commerce Department would become a “super

department” responsible for government’s activities in industry, trade, and

transportation. To achieve this objective, many agencies would be taken from their

current departments and placed in whole or in part in the new Department of

Commerce. A typical transfer proposed by Hoover was to move the Bureau of

Public Roads from the Agriculture Department to Commerce. Not surprisingly,

Hoover’s proposals and those of other departmental secretaries, provided the grist

for controversy within the Administration. Rather than presiding over a rational,

scientific debate on the alternatives of organizational design, Brown found that he

was a referee in an amazingly intense political struggle. As if the individual reports

of departmental secretaries were not enough, Brown was the recipient of two major

reports from outside organizations, the National Budget Committee and the

Brookings Institution.94

The plans submitted by the departments generally called for the aggrandizement

of their functions. In no instance did a department propose to limit or shed one of

its functions. Brown worked diligently to make a single plan from the many

submitted to present to the President for his review. Finally, a single reorganization

plan was put in front of the President, who was immediately faced with strong

Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency, p. 79.

Short, The Development of National Administrative Organization, pp. 462-66.

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opposition from cabinet members. Conflict was intense on certain proposals,

especially the proposal to transfer the Forest Service from the Agriculture

Department to the Interior Department. For months, the cabinet debated the

provisions of the plan, and there was little progress.

Finally, under pressure from Congress, Harding had Brown produce a single

plan, one presumably representing the President’s views, and sent it to the joint

committee. The Administration’s proposals were bold and expansive, but politically

unacceptable and no action was forthcoming.

Results and Assessment.

None of the specific recommendations of the joint committee was directly

adopted, but they influenced executive organization and management nonetheless.

The 1920s were years of transition, with the President gradually emerging as the

dominant force in supervising administrative agencies.95 A number of agencyspecific reorganization studies were published during the decade, and definite steps

were taken to enhance the managerial capacities of departmental secretaries as well

as those of the President.96 In that sense, therefore, the work of the joint committee

and other reorganization efforts of the 1920s were precursors of the President’s

Committee on Administrative Management (Brownlow Committee) appointed in

1936.

Reorganization Authority (1930-1933)

As previously discussed, Hoover had been the principal driving force in

promoting the departmental reorganization by general purpose and shifting authority

and responsibility for such reorganizations from Congress to the President. Speaking

as Secretary of Commerce in 1924, Hoover had recommended that Congress give the

President authority, within specified limits, to reorganize executive departments and

agencies.97

No action was forthcoming on his proposal. In his first year as

President, 1929, Hoover included in his Annual Message to Congress, a request for

authority to submit proposals for reorganization, subject to some form of

congressional disapproval. He said that he saw “no hope for the development of a

sound reorganization of the Government unless Congress be willing to delegate its

authority over the problem (subject to defined principles) to the Executive, who

should act upon approval of a joint committee of Congress or with the reservation

Peri E. Arnold, “Executive Reorganization and Administrative Theory,” (1976).

E.H. Hobbs, Executive Reorganization in the National Government (Oxford, MS:

University of Mississippi Press, 1953, pp. 21-35.

U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Reorganization of the Administrative Branch of the

Government, Reorganization of Executive Departments, Hearings, 68th Cong., 1st sess.

(Washington: GPO, 1924), p. 353. “To Herbert Hoover,” noted Herbert Emmerich, “belongs

the undoubted credit for the invention and espousal of the important peacetime

reorganization device — presidential initiative subject to the legislative veto.” Federal

Organization and Administrative Management, p. 43.

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of power of revision by Congress within some limited period adequate for its

consideration.”98

During 1930, Hoover was able to secure from Congress approval of two agency

consolidations. On May 27, 1930, he signed a bill authorizing him to consolidate all

the Prohibition enforcement agencies into the Department of Justice, which he did.

On July 8, 1930, under authority of Congress, he issued an Executive order creating

the Veterans’ Administration out of some five agencies scattered among the

departments. The new Administrator of Veterans’ Affairs claimed that the

reorganization and consolidation saved $10,000,000 a year, thus reasserting the

standard rationale for reorganization, the saving of money, and only secondarily the

improvement of managerial capacity.99

President Hoover returned to the subject of executive reorganization in his

Annual Message for 1931, although this time not specifying a method of

congressional disapproval.100 In a major address of February 17, 1931, Hoover asked

for authority consolidate various executive and administrative organizations and

activities. The form of congressional control was left indefinite. He recommended

that Congress provide that:

Authority under proper safeguards is to be lodged in the President to effect

these transfers and consolidations and authority to redistribute executive groups

in the 10 executive departments of the Government or in the independent

establishments, as the President may determine, by Executive order, such

Executive order to lie before the Congress for 60 days during the sessions thereof

becoming effective, but becoming effective at the end of such period unless the

Congress shall request suspension of action.101

During 1932, a year in which Hoover campaigned for reelection, the subject of

reorganization appeared two dozen times in executive messages.102 Both political

parties called for drastic reductions in government spending. On February 24, 1932,

the House of Representatives created a seven-member Select Committee on

Economy to investigate the possibilities of agency consolidation. The temper in

Congress favored some grant of authority to the President as a means of avoiding the

delays created in the legislative branch, delay attributed to the power of interest

groups. Senator David Reed expressed his disillusionment with the existing system:

U.S. Public Papers of the Presidents: Herbert Hoover (1929). (Washington: GPO, 1974),

p. 432.

Ray Lyman Wilbur and Arthur Mastick Hyde, The Hoover Policies (New York: Charles

Scribner’s Sons, 1937), pp. 568-69.

100

U.S., Public Papers of the Presidents: Hoover (1931) (Washington: GPO, 1974), pp. 59495.

101

U.S., Public Papers of the Presidents: Hoover (1932-1933) (Washington: GPO, 1974),

p. 58.

102

U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Rules, “Delegating With Ambivalence: The

Legislative Veto and the Reorganization Authority,” by (name redacted) and (name redacted),

in Studies on the Legislative Veto, Committee print, 96th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington:

GPO, 1980), p. 173.

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Mr. President, I do not often envy other countries their governments, but I

say that if this country every needed a Mussolini it needs one now. I am not

proposing that we make Mr. Hoover our Mussolini, I am not proposing that we

should abdicate the authority that is in us, but if we are to get economies made

they have to be made by some one who has the power to make the order and

stand by it. Leave it to Congress and we will fiddle around here all summer

trying to satisfy very lobbyist, and we will get nowhere. The country does not

want that. The country wants stern action, and action quickly.... 103

Hoover received reorganization authority in the form of an amendment (Part II)

to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for fiscal 1933. Title IV of Part II

(known as the Economy Act of 1932) authorized the President to reorganize the

executive branch. The President could transfer the whole or any part of any

independent executive agency, or the functions thereof, to an executive department

or to another independent executive agency. Functions within a department could

be consolidated. This power was conferred upon the President without a time limit

(47 Stat. 413).

Reorganization proposals were subject to a one-house veto. The legislation

provided that the President could propose a reorganization by an executive order,

which would be transmitted to Congress while in session, but not become effective

until 60 days after its transmittal. Congress could shorten the period by passing a

concurrent resolution of approval. Any executive order or part thereof would

become null and void if either house, within the 60-day period, passed a resolution

of disapproval. The bill therefore allowed not only for disapproval in whole but also

selective disapproval.

Hoover signed the bill on June 30, 1932. Shortly thereafter Congress

adjourned. When it reconvened on December 3rd, President Hoover issued 11

executive orders consolidating some 58 governmental activities.104 By that time,

however, Hoover had been overwhelmingly defeated in the general election, and it

was evident that Members of Congress, in the closing hours of a lame-duck session,

intended to leave reorganizations changes to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hoover, aware

of sentiments in the House, announced on January 3, 1933, that either Congress

“must keep its hands off now, or they must give to my successor much larger powers

of independent action than given to any President if there is [sic] ever to be

reorganizations.” He further stated that such authority, to be effective, should be free

of the legislative veto. Otherwise the reorganization authority would, “as is now

being demonstrated in the present law, again be merely make-believe politics.”105

The House Committee on Expenditures in the executive departments

recommended disapproval of all the executive orders and the full house, after some

103

U.S. Congressional Record, vol. 75, May 5, 1932, p. 9644.

104

U.S. Congressional Record, vol. 76, Dec. 9, 1932, pp. 233-54. .

105

U.S., Public Papers of the President: Hoover (1932-33), (Washington: GPO, 1974), p.

920.

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parliamentary maneuvers, proceeded to pass the resolution of disapproval by voice

vote.106

However, Congress decided to follow Hoover’s advice and provide the

President with reorganization authority free of the legislative veto process to avoid

“merely make-believe politics.” One day prior to Roosevelt’s inauguration,

Congress passed the Economy Act of 1933 (47 Stat. 1519). The delegation of power

in that act was extraordinary. The statute did more than allow the President to

transfer functions. It authorized him, for a two-year period, to “abolish the whole or

any part of any executive agency and/or the functions thereof.” Moreover, it

eliminated the check of a one-house veto.107

President’s Committee on Administrative Management

(Brownlow Committee), 1936-1937

Context.

Franklin Roosevelt did not exhibit any overall interest in executive organization

during his first years in office. Indeed, Roosevelt preferred a loose approach to

organizational management, creating new agencies under the aegis of his emergency

powers rather than by statute, reorganization plan authority, or by reorienting

existing agencies to perform new missions.108 One consequence of this approach

was that a relatively high percent of the new government growth in agencies,

personnel, and programs took place outside the executive departmental structure.

The use of emergency legislation as the vehicle for executive reorganization

reached its peak in 1935, and also encountered its first real challenge, when the

Supreme Court struck down two delegations of legislative power to the President,

both involving the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA).109 The Court

concluded that the NIRA failed to provide adequate standards and guidelines for

administrative action.

A more serious challenge to Roosevelt’s authority came on May 27, 1935, the

same day the Supreme Court handed down the second of the NIRA decision. The

Court agreed unanimously that Roosevelt did not have unlimited authority to remove

106

U.S. Congressional Record, vol. 76, Jan. 19, 1933, p. 2103.

107

U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Rules, Delegating With Ambivalence, pp. 164-247.

108

Typical of Roosevelt’s method of establishing or reorganizing agencies was that of the

establishment of the Resettlement Administration by Executive order 7027, May 1, 1935.

“By virtue of and pursuant to the authority vested in me under the Emergency Relief

Appropriation Act of 1935, I hereby establish an agency within the Government to be known

as the ‘Resettlement Administration,’ and appoint Rexford G. Tugwell, Undersecretary of

Agriculture, as Administrator thereof, to serve without additional compensation.”

109

Panama Refining Co., v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388 (1935); Schecter Corp. V. United States, 295

U.S. 495 (1935).

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members of independent regulatory commissions.110 Roosevelt viewed this decision

as severely restricting his administrative capacities and now turned to administrative

reorganization “as a possible means of trying to integrate all of the separate

independent agencies into major executive departments where they would clearly be

subject to the President’s administrative supervision.”111 Roosevelt was apparently

convinced that he would henceforth have to reorganize the executive branch in a

straightforward statutory manner and also provide institutional capacity to the

President to manage the departments and agencies.

With respect to the reorganization plan authority in the 1933 Economy Act, he

issued only a few Executive orders transferring various agencies and functions, none

of which was controversial or far-reaching.112

Authority.

On March 22, 1936, President Roosevelt announced by a White House

statement the formation of the President’s Committee on Administrative

Management.113 This committee’s primary purpose was to consider the problem of

overall management of the entire executive establishment. Technically, the

committee was to serve as an adjunct of the National Emergency Council.

Membership.

The President’s Committee on Administrative Management consisted of three

persons; Louis Brownlow as chairman, Charles E. Merriam, and Luther Gulick as

members. The committee soon became known popularly as the Brownlow

Committee. Brownlow had been an eminent city manager with additional national

and international experience. Charles E. Merriam, one-time Chicago city

councilman, held a professorship with special interest in American political theory,

and Luther Gulick was head of the Institute of Public Administration (IPA) in New

York City. In preparation for staff work on the Committee’s report, the IPA had

published a volume titled: Papers on the Science of Administration, (eds. Luther

Gulick and L. Urwick, 1937). The membership remained constant through the

committee’s life.

110

Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935).

111

Wann, The President as Chief Administrator, p. 193.

112

See Lewis Meriam and Laurence F. Schmeckebier, Reorganization of the National

Government (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1939), pp. 200-12. Also, A.J. Wann,

The President as Chief Administrator: A Study of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Washington: Public

Affairs Press, 1968), p. 193.

113

“White House Statement on the Appointment of a Committee to Formulate a Plan for the

Reorganization of the Executive Branch of Government,” March 22, 1936. U.S. Public

Papers of the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1936) (New York: Random House, 1938),

vol. V, p. 144.

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Administrative Philosophy.

With the approach of the 1936 presidential election, Roosevelt determined that

it was both possible and desirable to reorganize much of the executive branch during

the early months of his second term. The President was further persuaded by

Brownlow and Merriam that what was needed was an academic theory and treatise

to buttress a comprehensive reorganization strategy. Such a report was intended to

raise issues in a way that they would appear to be based on neutral principles, not

partisan advantage. Brownlow and Merriam were able to assure President Roosevelt

that a report could be written to his liking.114

The underlying administrative philosophy of the Brownlow Committee was that

of the ascendent public administration discipline. The committee and its staff built

on the intellectual developments of the Progressive era and the 1920s in government

management, national, state and local. Political accountability to the President for

implementing the laws was the highest value to the committee. Its immediate goal

was to strengthen the President as chief manager of the executive branch.

The essence of the committee’s distinctive approach to reorganization was the

view that the President must be made the central actor in the vast reorganization

project. The concept of the presidency as a uniquely American institution was their

touchstone. Everything seemed to follow from this basic premise. The problems

affecting contemporary government were, to their minds, largely administrative in

character. The solution lay in the provision of tools to the President so he could

manage the entire executive branch through well-conceived, consistent laws, an

institutional arm in the Executive Office to promote government-wide procedures

and practices, and the reassignment of most “independent agencies” into the

departments.

Organization, Support Staff, and Financing.

The committee, which held its first meeting on April 1, 1936, was to work

without presidential involvement until after the November election. Joseph P. Harris

was selected Director of Research, and a research staff was quickly recruited. The

group consisted of some 26 experts, for the most part being young, political science

Ph.Ds. They worked on their respective papers during the summer and returned to

their homes by September.115 Committee members reassembled in September

(Brownlow and Merriam had been in Europe) and began to put the Report together.

The draft Report was ready before the November election.

As for funding, Herbert Emmerich reported that no funds were granted for the

President’s Committee until June, 1936, when the President was authorized to

allocate not more than $100,000 from emergency funds for the study it was to

114

115

Polenberg, Reorganizing Roosevelt’s Government, pp. 14-15.

James W. Fesler, “The Brownlow Committee Fifty Years Later,” Public Administration

Review, vol. 47, July/August 1987, pp. 291-96.

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undertake.116 It needs to be recognized that the House and Senate, especially the

latter, were involved in reorganization studies themselves, and political

considerations arguably entered into the appropriations equation117. The President’s

committee gave $10,000 to the House committee and assumed expenses of the

Senate select subcommittee headed by Senator Harry Byrd, to the extent of another

$40,000. This left $50,000 for the use of the President’s Committee of which its

spent $45,000.

Reports and Recommendations.

The Brownlow Committee submitted its report to the President on January 1,

1937. It was a 55 page general report accompanied by supporting studies.118 At the

end of the Report, the Committee summarized their findings and recommendations.

Expand the White House staff to include assistants to the president who

are “possessed of high competence, great physical vigor, and a passion for

anonymity.”

Develop and strengthen the central management agencies of government,

especially those responsible for budget, management (“efficiency

research”) and planning.

Extend the merit system upward, outward, and downward to cover all nonpolicy-determining posts.

Overhaul the 100 independent agencies, administrations, authorities,

boards and commissions and place them by executive order within one or

another of the major departments. Two major new departments (Public

Works and Social Welfare) were proposed. The Department of the Interior

to be changed to the Department of Conservation.

An auditor general within the executive branch should be provided to

perform post-audits of all transactions. Intended to perform some of the

functions of the Comptroller General, who reports to Congress.

116

Emmerich, Federal Organization, p. 49. A provision in the First Deficiency

Appropriations Act for the fiscal year 1936 authorized the President to allocate not more than

$100,000 from appropriations under the 1935 Emergency Relief Act for a committee “to

make a study of the emergency and regular agencies of the executive branch of the

government for the purpose of making recommendations to secure the most efficient

organization and management of that branch of the public service.” (49 Stat. 1600).

117

U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee to Investigate the Executive Agencies of the

Government, Investigation of Executive Agencies of the Government (Preliminary Report),

S. Rept. 1289, 75th Cong., lst sess., 1937. A subsidiary product of the Brookings Institution

study, supported by Senator Harry Byrd, Sr., was: Lewis Meriam and Laurence F.

Schmeckebier, Reorganization of the National Government: What Does It Involve?

(Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1939).

118

U.S. President’s Committee on Administrative Management, Report with Special Studies

(Washington: GPO, 1937).

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Additionally, certain other recommendations were found in the body of the

report. The presidential assistants were suggested to be six in number and without

portfolio. This was in addition to the existing three assistants. The Bureau of the

Budget would be responsible for designing new agencies and programs and

approving reorganization proposals. The administrative functions of the independent

regulatory commissions (“A headless fourth branch of government”) should be

assigned to the executive departments under single administrators. Congress should

delegate to the President continuing authority to transfer, consolidate, and abolish

functions within the executive departments. Government corporations should be

placed under departments acting as “supervisory agencies,” with semi-autonomous

status.

Results and Assessment.

The President received the Report as the new year and his second term began.

He was pleased with the administrative philosophy of the Report and with most of

the specific recommendations. He introduced a bill in 1937 embodying many of the

recommendations of the Committee. The bill was debated in 1938, but was under

consideration at the same time as the presidentially inspired legislation to enlarge the

Supreme Court. Indeed, the reorganization bill was seen by some to be part of an

effort to establish a “presidential dictatorship,” a perception persuasive enough to

sink the reorganization bill.119

In 1939, still smarting from the defeat suffered the previous year, President

Roosevelt submitted another, more modest, reorganization bill. The 1939 bill

contained only two of the major proposals recommended by the Brownlow

Committee. It authorized the President to appoint six administrative assistants and

to submit reorganization plans to alter executive branch organization, such Plans

being subject to a veto by concurrent resolution of Congress.120 While there was

considerable concern expressed regarding the constitutionality of the procedures

outlined for approving reorganization plans,121 the House and Senate passed the bill,

and it was signed by the President on April 3, 1939 (53 Stat. 561).

The report of the Brownlow Committee has been characterized as the “high

noon of orthodoxy” because of its advocacy of clear lines of accountability,

departmentalism, and the doctrine that responsibility for making policy and setting

119

For a discussion of the fate of the Brownlow Committee recommendations, consult:

Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency, 2nd ed., chapter 4. Also: Harvey C. Mansfield,

“Reorganizing the Federal Executive Branch: The Limits of Institutionalization,” in The

Institutionalized Presidency, eds. Normal C. Thomas and Hans W. Baade (Dobbs Ferry, NY:

Oceana Publications, 1972). (name redacted), “The Brownlow Report: A Timeless Message,”

The Bureaucrat, vol. 16, Fall 1987, pp. 45-48.

120

John D. Millett and Lindsay Rogers, “The Legislative Veto and the Reorganization Act

of 1939,” Public Administration Review, vol. 1, Winter 1941, pp. 176-89.

121

For a discussion of the history and use of the President’s Reorganization Authority, see:

Harvey C. Mansfield, “Federal Executive Reorganization: Thirty Years of Experience,”

Public Administration Review, 20(July/August 1969): 332-45. (name redacted) and (name red

acted), “Presidential Reorganization Authority: Is It Worth the Cost?” Political Science

Quarterly, vol. 96, Summer 1981, pp. 301-18.

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standards ought to reside in the President and departmental secretaries, rather than

being devolved to the agency level.122

In a study of Roosevelt’s efforts to reorganize the executive branch, Richard

Polenberg observed: “What distinguished Roosevelt’s conception of reorganization

from that of his predecessors was his objective rather than the means he employed.

Other Presidents had considered reorganization an Executive responsibility, but their

aim had consistently been the reduction of expenditures. Roosevelt disagreed. He

believed that the true purpose of reorganization was improved management.... In this

appraisal of reorganization the New Deal marks a sharp break with tradition.”123

Reorganization Authority: 1939, 1945 Acts

The preamble to the Reorganization Act of 1939 contained a statement of the

Scientific Management ideal and the invocation of economy, the latter point having

been added to the bill by Senator Harry Byrd.124 President Roosevelt had not

highlighted “economy” as a purpose of executive reorganization because he was

skeptical of this objective. In 1936, the President told Louis Brownlow and Luther

Gulick: “We have got to get over the notion that the purpose of reorganization is

economy. I had that out with Al Smith in New York.... The reason for

reorganization is good management.”125 Extensive economy, he told Congress in

1938, “depends upon a change of policy, the abandonment of functions, and the

demobilization of the staff involved,” all of which were outside the scope of his

request for reorganization authority.126 Roosevelt’s skepticism notwithstanding, the

objective of reducing expenditures would appear prominently in the preamble of all

subsequent reorganization acts.

122

Wallace Sayre, “Premises of Public Administration: Past and Emerging,” Public

Administration Review, vol. 50, March/April 1990, p. 103.

123

Richard Polenberg, Reorganizing Roosevelt’s Government: The Controversy Over

Executive Reorganization, 1936-1939 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 7.

The notion that the New Deal made “a sharp break with tradition on executive reorganization

is not accepted by all. Barry Karl, for one, concludes: “As far as executive reorganization

was concerned, the New Deal from 1932 to 1936 differed in no way from the major lines of

a tradition of attitudes stretching back to the Civil War. The basic premises of that tradition

were retained: that government was excessively large and sprawling hence excessively

expensive; that the rationalization of its structure would ultimately produce less government

more economically and efficiency run. This was good business and good business was good

government.” Executive Reorganization and Reform in the New Deal: The Genesis of

Administrative Management, 1900-1939 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963),

p. 191.

124

Richard Polenberg, “Roosevelt, Carter, and Executive Reorganization: Lessons of the

1930s,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 9, Winter 1979, p. 43.

125

Louis Brownlow, A Passion for Anonymity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,

1958), II, p. 382.

126

The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1936) (New York: Random

House, 1938), vol. V, p. 676.

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While Congress was sympathetic toward economy in expenditures, it was also

protective of favored agencies and programs. Congress prohibited the President

from using this procedure to create or abolish executive departments, and exempted

a number of agencies, commissions, boards, and government corporations from the

reorganization process. A reorganization plan submitted by the President would lay

before Congress for 60 days, during which time it could be disapproved by a

concurrent resolution of both Houses (two-house veto). After the 60 day time limit,

the reorganization plan became law. From the outset, the legislative veto procedure

prompted controversy within Congress, in part because the procedure gave the

President a tremendous advantage when compared to normal legislative

procedures.127

Under the Reorganization Act of 1939 (53 Stat. 561), Reorganization Plan No.

1 established the Executive Office of the President, the Federal Security Agency, and

several lesser transfers of agencies from one department to another. Only four more

reorganization plans were submitted before the authority expired in 1941, all of

which were relatively minor shifting of agencies and authorities.

The death of President Roosevelt and the close of World War II came within

months during the year 1945. The new President, Harry S. Truman, assumed the

office with the definite opinion that his predecessor, whatever his strengths

otherwise, had not been a particularly good manager.128 Truman’s first concern was

to achieve an orderly reconversion of the economy from a war to a peacetime basis.

He believed, at least initially, that substantial reorganization would be necessary.

The President requested, and Congress approved, the Reorganization Act of

1945 (59 Stat. 613) which authorized the President to submit reorganization plans

subject to fewer restrictions than had been present in the 1939 Act. The President,

once again, could not abolish or create an executive department, and only 11

agencies were partially or wholly exempted form the provisions of the Act. The

legislative veto procedures were the same as in the 1939 Act. The reorganization

authority would expire in 1948. President Truman used the authority infrequently

and on minor issues.

127

Reorganization Plan No. 4 of 1939 (April 11, 1940) provided for miscellaneous

organizational changes in the executive branch, one change being the transference of the

Civil Aeronautics Authority from independent status to the Department of Commerce. This

provision generated opposition, and the House adopted a resolution of disapproval by a vote

of 232 to 153. The Senate, on the other hand, rejected the resolution of disapproval by a vote

of 46-34. Thus, Reorganization Plan No. 4 became law without the approval of both

chambers.

128

Harry S. Truman, Years of Decision (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1955), I, p.

12.

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First Hoover Commission (1947-1949)

Context.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, there was a fairly broad consensus

favoring governmental “retrenchment.” Such sentiment had its origins in the

obvious need to re-evaluate the administration of numerous organizations and

programs left in the wake of the Depression, War, and demobilization. Congress

began the task by reorganizing itself under provisions of the Legislative

Reorganization Act of 1946.129 In November 1946, control of Congress shifted to the

Republicans and they were in the mood to tackle the unprecedented peace time

federal budget and what they viewed as an unwise long-term shift of power to the

President.130

Between the years 1947 and 1955, two major studies of the organization and

functions of the executive branch were undertaken. Congress established by statute

a Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government,

popularly known by the name of its chairman, former President Herbert Hoover, as

the first Hoover Commission. This Commission submitted its report with

recommendations in 1949. In 1953, Congress again established a study commission

with the same title, also chaired by Mr. Hoover, that is referred to as the second

Hoover Commission. This Commission submitted its recommendations to the

President and Congress in 1955.131 These two related commissions will be discussed

separately.

Authority.

Throughout 1946, Representative Clarence Brown (R-OH) studied previous

efforts to reorganize the executive branch. Incremental proposals had yielded, in his

opinion, disappointing results and he concluded that what was needed was a “blue

ribbon” commission to review the entire government and to make recommendations

for reorganization.132 The opportunity to realize his objective followed the 1946

congressional elections, in which Republicans displaced the Democratic majority in

both the House and Senate. Brown introduced a bill in the House to establish a

“mixed commission” consisting of Members of Congress, appointees from the

executive branch, and representatives from the private sector, to study the

organization of the executive branch and to submit recommendations to both the

129

Roger Davidson, “The Advent of the Modern Congress: The Legislative Reorganization

Act of 1946,” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 15, August 1990, pp. 357-73.

130

David Rosenbloom, Building a Legislative-Centered Public Administration: Congress

and the Administrative State, 1946-1999 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press,

2000).

131

For a summary account of both commissions, consult: U.S. Congress, House, Committee

on Government Operations, Summary of the Objectives, Operations, and Results of the

Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (First and Second

Hoover Commissions). committee print, 88th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington: GPO, 1963).

132

William E. Pemberton, Bureaucratic Politics: Executive Reorganization During the

Truman Administration (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1979), p. 12.

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President and Congress. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., (R-MA) introduced an

identical bill in the Senate.

The bills were referred to the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive

Departments of the respective chambers and both Committees held hearings and

voted unanimously to favorably report the bills. One June 26, 1947, the House

considered the bill briefly and passed it by a voice vote without dissent. On the day

following, the Senate acted on the House bill and voted its approval unanimously.

As Ferrel Heady observed: “The proposal had a singularly easy journey through the

legislative mill. No alteration of the language of the bill as originally introduced

occurred at any stage; nor was a single vote recorded against the proposal, either in

committee or on the floor.”133 The President signed the bill into law on July 7, 1947

(62 Stat. 246).

Membership.

The commission was to consist of 12 members: four appointed by the President,

two from the executive branch and two from private life; four appointed by the

President pro tempore of the Senate, two from the Senate and two from private life;

and four appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, two from the

House and two from private life. Of each class of two members, one had to be from

each of the “two major political parties.” The commission was to elect its own

chairman and vice chairman.

In order to accomplish the purposes set forth in the legislation, the Commission

was empowered to hold hearings, administer oaths to witnesses, and every executive

agency was directed to furnish such information, suggestions, estimate, and statistics

as might be properly requested by the chairman and vice chairman. Compensation

for members was stipulated in the Act.134

The three appointing officers lost little time in announcing their choices.

Republican Arthur Vandenburg (R-MI), President pro tempore of the Senate,

appointed Senators George Aiken (R-VT) and John L. McClellan (D-AR), chairman

and ranking minority member of the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive

Departments, the committee with jurisdication over reorganization matters.

Vandenburg’s two appointees from the private sector were James K. Pollack,

professor of political science at the University of Michigan, a Republican, and

Joseph P. Kennedy, formerly chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission

and Ambassador to Great Britain, a Democrat.

133

Ferrel Heady, “A New Approach to Federal Reorganization,” American Political Science

Review, vol.41, December 1947, p. 1120.

134

Compensation varied for members who were from Congress, the executive banch, and

from private life. Senators and Representatives received no additional compensation beyond

that received from their services as Members of Congress. A member from the executive

branch received his regular salary, plus such additional compensation, if any, as necessary

to make his aggregate salary equal to the congressional salary of $12,500. Private members

received $50 per diem when engaged in the performance of duties vested in the commission.

In addition, provisions were made to reimburse all members for travel, subsistence, and other

necessary expenses incurred by them in the performance of Commission duties.

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Speaker of the House, Joseph Martin, (R-MA) named as representatives of the

House, Congressman Clarence Brown, (R-OH), and Carter Manasco, (D-AL).135

Both gentlemen were senior members of the House Committee on Expenditures in

the Executive Departments. From the private sector, Martin named former President

Herbert Hoover136 and James Rowe, Democrat, the latter known principally for his

service in staff positions under President Franklin Roosevelt.

President Truman announced his appointments on July 17, 1947. His

Democratic appointee from within the executive branch was James A. Forrestal, head

of what was then called the National Military Establishment.137 For the Republican

member, President Truman selected Arthur Fleming, a member of the Civil Service

Commission. From private life, he selected Republican George Mead, the owner and

chief executive office of the Mead Corporation, a large paper and pulp

manufacturing corporation in Ohio. Dean Acheson was President Truman’s

Democratic choice from private life. Acheson had served in both the Treasury and

State Departments, and was then in private law practice.

A few words on Herbert Hoover are appropriate. The two Hoover Commissions

cannot be understood without first recognizing the crucial role played in their

deliberations and recommendations by their chairman, former President Hoover. Mr.

Hoover’s concept of governmental administration, as Secretary of Commerce, as

President, and later as chairman of the Commissions, was strongly influenced by

Progressivism and the tenets of Scientific Management. He believed in fact-finding,

research and planning, and, like the first Roosevelt, he favored “blue ribbon” study

committees.138 His experience, first as an international business executive, then as

administrator of a massive food distribution system under wartime and revolutionary

conditions, gave him two tools indispensable to his later political career. He

acquired a cadre of devoted younger colleagues as well as a comprehensive

135

Representative Carter Manasco (D-AL) lost in his 1948 re-election bid, but remained a

member of the Commission.

136

Speaker Martin recalled his decision process for selecting Mr. Hoover: “I thought at once

of Hoover, knowing that if a former President became a member, he would almost

automatically be elected chairman.” My First Fifty Years in Politics (New York: McGrawHill Company Book Company, 1960), p. 191.

137

Although Forrestal was able to serve throughout the entire period of the Commission, his

attendance and interest became increasingly sporadic due to a mental breakdown. He died

in 1949.

138

Proof of Mr. Hoover’s commitment to public administration research is to be found in one

of the most extraordinary, and largely ignored, research projects in American history. As

President, he promoted a three year project, the President’s Research Committee on Social

Trends, to study all major aspects of American society; (e.g., “Political, Economic, and

Social Activities of Women,” “The Growth of the Federal Government, 1915-1932”), with

the objective being to “supply the basis for the formulation of large national policies looking

to the next phase of the nation’s development.” The products of this effort were two stout

volumes and 13 substantial monographs.

Recent Social Trends in the United States: Report of the President’s Research

Committee on Social Trends, 2v, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933). See: Arthur N.

Holcombe, “Report on Recent Social Trends in the United States,” American Political

Science Review, vol. 27, April 1933, pp. 222-27.

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philosophy of administration that stressed the necessity of strong leadership

emanating from a single executive. Hoover, prior to his presidency, was widely

viewed as the quintessence of the new, 20th century man, the public manager.139 He

had been personally hurt by the treatment accorded him by his successor, the media,

and even the academy during his service as President, and viewed this appointment

as chairman of the Commission as a chance to vindicate his reputation.

Administrative Philosophy.

Considerable publicity attended the establishment of the Hoover Commission.

Within the commission, however, divergent attitudes threatened the success of the

venture. There were clashes over interpretations of the intent of the enabling

legislation. The congressional grant of authority covered the entire executive branch,

yet it was vague regarding what direction the commission was expected to follow

and the type of product to be submitted to Congress.

According to the statute, the commission might recommend reducing

government expenditures “to the lowest amount consistent with the efficient

performance of essential services,” and was authorized to recommend “abolishing

services, activities, and functions not necessary to the efficient conduct of

government.” To those who interpreted these words broadly, the commission’s

mandate was to go to the heart of the federal government and review, restructure, and

reduce the scope of government activities.140

Defenders of the status quo, as it was at that time, considered that while

recommendations could be made in the name of “efficiency,” the law did not

authorize recommending the abolition of substantive functions. They feared the

commission might venture into the fields of social security, foreign aid, and veterans’

benefits.

For defenders of the Administration, the mandate assigned in the law was

interpreted narrowly. They wanted the government to continue what it was doing,

139

In describing Herbert Hoover as an administrator, Peri Arnold states: “He was a

remarkably talented, modern administrator who understood the breadth of possibilities

present in an expansive public bureaucracy.... His disagreement with the New Deal’s use

of the State was a disagreement over policy and not an attack on modern state bureaucracy

itself, which Hoover had used brilliantly during the 1920s.” “The ‘Great Engineer’ as

Administrator: Herbert Hoover and Modern Bureaucracy,” Review of Politics, vol. 42, July

1980, p. 347.

140

The commission adopted a policy statement on October 20, 1947, which stated, in part,

that it was the task of the commission to review the necessity and desirability of programs

and functions as well as the organization and management of same.

Thus, it is clear that the Commission is not confined to recommending

management or structural changes which improve the efficiency of performance

of the executive branch but is clearly directed to exploring the boundaries of

government functions in the light of their cost, their usefulness, their limitations,

and their curtailment or elimination.

Policy statement adopted at Commission Meeting on October 20, 1947. Miscellaneous

folder, Frederick A. Middlebush Papers. Quoted in: Pemberton, Bureaucratic Politics, p.

88.

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but were willing to concede that it might be reorganized to perform these functions

better. Commissioners critical of the Truman and earlier Roosevelt Administrations,

however, tended to see the “mandate” of the commission as the retrenchment and

reorientation of the federal government.

The terms of this philosophical debate progressively changed and were

ultimately influenced by the results of the 1948 presidential elections. Mr. Hoover’s

concerns and emphases, however, had begun to change even prior to the election.

As time passed, his primary goal had shifted from retrenchments to the enhancement

of the managerial authority of the President and his departmental secretaries. This

shift in emphasis, evident before the election, was reinforced by the results of the

election.

President Truman, although protective of the residuals of the New Deal, was

also sympathetic to the Scientific Management ideals of traditional public

administration. Therefore, he and Herbert Hoover were not far apart in philosophical

terms regarding the “best” organization of the executive branch. According to

Harold Seidman:

President Truman had an organizational strategy, but it was that supplied

to him by the first Hoover Commission. The Hoover commission reports

provided a conceptual framework for the organizational philosophy developed

by Herbert Hoover during his years as President and secretary of commerce, and

did not stem from Truman’s own thinking. There is no evidence, however, that

the return to orthodoxy symbolized by many of the Commission’s

recommendations was in conflict with Truman’s views.141

Despite occasional lapses into partisan manuevering, Truman and Hoover

developed a close personal relationship that grew with time and turned out to be a

critical element in whatever success may be attributed to the commission.142

Organization, Staff Support, and Finances.

The first meeting of the commission was held at the White House on September

29, 1947. Commissioner Brown moved to have Mr. Hoover elected chairman, a

decision approved unanimously. Dean Acheson, a Democrat was selected as vice

chairman. One the early decisions made by the commission was that the basic work

unit would be a “task force.” Twenty-four task forces (e.g., Presidency and

Departmental Management; Federal Personnel Management; Federal-State

Relationships) were established. There was no master plan guiding the mandate,

operations or timing of the reports of the several task forces. In most instances a task

force was headed by a project director, an individual usually selected by Hoover and

accepted by the commission, a staff and a task force advisory committee. These

141

142

Seidman, Politics, Position and Power, 3rd ed. (1980), p. 103.

Pemberton, Bureaucratic Politics, pp. 92-93. At least a portion of the friendship that

evolved between Hoover and Truman may be traced to the fact that both men shared the fate

of living in the shadow of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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advisory committees varied in membership from two to more than thirty, and were

composed of prominent citizens.143

The commission listed 74 persons on its own staff. The staff personnel were

divided into four groups: (1) 18 commissioners’ assistants; (2) a 13-member central

staff, including an executive director, a public relations director and an editorial

director; (3) a four-member administrative staff; and (4) a 39-member secretarial

staff. Also, the commission called on more than 300 outside specialists from

universities, institutions, and businesses. These experts made up 24 separate teams

or task

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