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

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## Record

- **Collection:** Congressional research report
- **Document type:** CRS Report
- **Published:** June 10, 2002
- **Citation:** RL31446

## Text

Order Code RL31446

Report for Congress

Received through the CRS Web

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

1

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

2

Martin Diamond, The Founding of the Democratic Republic, (Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock
Publishers, 1981).

3

Ralph Clark Chandler, “Public Administration Under the Articles of Confederation,” Public
Administration Quarterly, vol. 13, Winter 1990, pp. 433-50.
4

Henry Cabot Lodge, Alexander Hamilton, (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1917), chapter
3.

5

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

6

Jennings B. Sanders, Evolution of Executive Departments of the Continental Congress,
1774-1789 (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1971 [c. 1935] ), p. 97.

7

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

8

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.

9

Alexis de Tocqueville, On the State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789, 2nd
ed. (London: John Murray, 1873), chapter 3.
10

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.
11

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
12

Leonard D. White, “Public Administration Under the Federalists,” Boston University Law
Review, vol. 24, June 1944, p. 180.
13

Lynton K. Caldwell, The Administrative Theories of Hamilton and Jefferson, 2nd ed. (New
York: Holmes and Meier, 1988 [c.1944] ), p. 241.

14

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.

CRS-8
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

15

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).
16

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).
17

Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National
Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p.
4.
18

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).

CRS-9
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

19

Peri Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency: Comprehensive Reorganization
Planning, 1905-1996, 2nd rev. ed., (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 18.
20

John Hart, The Presidential Branch: From Washington to Clinton, 2nd ed. (Chatham, NJ:
Chatham House Publishers, 1995), chapter 2.

CRS-10
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”

21

Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 2,
June 1887, pp. 197-222.
22

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

23

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.
24

Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper and
Bros., 1911).
25

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.

26

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.
27

Leonard D. White, Introduction of Public Administration, 4th ed. (New York: Macmillan
and Co., 1951), p. 21.
28

Herbert Emmerich, Federal Organization and Administrative Management (University,
AL: University of Alabama Press, 1971), p. 38.
29

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.

CRS-12
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

30

Waldo, Administrative State, chapter 2.

31

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.
32

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.

CRS-13

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

33

Wallace Sayre, “Premises of Public Administration: Past and Emerging,” Public
Administration Review, vol. 18, Spring 1958, pp. 102-03.
34

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.
35
36

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

Herbert Simon, “The Proverbs of Administration,” Public Administration Review,
6(Winter 1946): 53-67.

CRS-14
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
37

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).
38

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.
39

U.S. Executive Office of the President, Papers Relating to the President’s Departmental
Reorganization Program (Washington: GPO, 1971).

CRS-15
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.

40

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.

41

Ibid., p. 300.

42

President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (Grace Commission), War on Waste
(New York: Macmillan Co., 1984), p. 1.
43

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).

CRS-16

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

44

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.
45

“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).
46

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1962).

47

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Governance in
Transition: Public Management Reforms in OECD Countries (Paris: OECD, 1995).

CRS-17
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.

48

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.
49

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.
50

Mark Schneider, Paul Teske, and Michael Mintrom, Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for
Change in American Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
51

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.
52
53

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.

CRS-18
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?
54

(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:
1.
2.
3.

4.

5.

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

55

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).
56

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.
59
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.

57

This inattention to congressionally created advisory committee has been recently remedied
by (name redacted)’s
Discharging Congress: Government by Commission (Westport,
CT: Praeger, 2002).
58

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).
59

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

60

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.

61

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).
62

Oscar Kraines, “The President Versus Congress: The Keep Commission, 1905-1909,”
Western Political Quarterly, vol.23, March 1970, pp. 5-54.

CRS-22
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

63

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

64

Weber, Organized Efforts for Improvement, p. 81.

CRS-23
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

65

Carl Marcy, Presidential Commissions (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1945), p. 19.

66

Herbert Emmerich, Federal Organization and Administrative Management (University,
AL: University of Alabama Press, 1971), pp. 39-40.

67

Kraines, “The President Versus Congress: The Keep Commission,” p. 53.

CRS-24

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.

CRS-25
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:

68

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.

CRS-26
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

69

Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency, 2nd ed., p. 33.

70

Weber, Organized Efforts, p. 84.

71

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).

CRS-27
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

72

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).
73

Message of the President, February 26, 1913 (62nd Cong., 3rd sess., S. Doc. 113).

74

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.
75

Arnold, Executive Reorganization, 2nd ed., pp. 49-50.

CRS-28
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
76

Weber, Organized Efforts, pp. 104-113.

77

Ibid., p. 111.

78

U.S. Congress, A National Budget System: A Compilation of Hearings, Reports, Acts,
(continued...)

CRS-29
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
78

(...continued)
Bills, Tracing the Legislative Development of the Budget and Accounting Act.
(Washington: GPO, 1918-1921).

2v.

79

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.
80

Emmerich, Federal Organization and Administrative Management, pp. 40-41.

81

Lloyd M. Short, The Development of National Administrative Organization in the United
States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1923), pp. 462-70.
82

“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
82

(...continued)
providing Brown be paid $7,500 per year. “Filibuster by House Democrats,” New York
Times, July 27, 1921, p. 2.
83

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.
84

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.
85

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

86

“Harding Urges Joint Congressional Committee to Act Quickly,” New York Times, June
14, 1921, p. 14.
87

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).
88

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.
89

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

90

Edward L. and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, “Disharmony in the Harding Cabinet,” Ohio
History, vol. 75, Spring/Summer 1966, p. 135.
91

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).
92

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.

CRS-33
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

93

Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency, p. 79.

94

Short, The Development of National Administrative Organization, pp. 462-66.

CRS-34
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

95

Peri E. Arnold, “Executive Reorganization and Administrative Theory,” (1976).

96

E.H. Hobbs, Executive Reorganization in the National Government (Oxford, MS:
University of Mississippi Press, 1953, pp. 21-35.
97

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.

CRS-35
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:

98

U.S. Public Papers of the Presidents: Herbert Hoover (1929). (Washington: GPO, 1974),
p. 432.
99

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 Ac

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/crs%3ARL31446. Public record. Not legal advice.