Further evidence on the social equity record of academic public
administration
Dr. G. G. Candler
School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Indiana University South Bend
Prepared for presentation at the American Society for Public Administration
Denver, CO, 2 April 2006
If you are saying that the poorest people are underrepresented in public
administration and the academy, you have a problem... Perhaps students of the
“lower class” feel more comfortable at institutions that are closer to home, where
they can drop in and out as needed because of financial circumstances (they need
to work, they have to support other family members, etc.).
Reviewer, Public Administration Review
This paper follows up on unfinished business from a forthcoming (2006) paper by
Oldfield, Candler and Johnson. Using the premier journal in the field as an indicator of
academic interest, the authors looked at the social equity record of academic public
administration, and found it to be systematically wanting. In the United States, for
instance, academic public administration did not begin to publish significant (actually:
any) articles on gender until the 1970s, during which decade five articles on gender were
published in Public Administration Review (PAR), increasing to double figures in the
1980s and 1990s. This, despite the woman’s suffrage movement at the turn of the
century, and the explosion of the woman’s movement in the 1960s.
Similarly, a significant number of articles on race did not appear in PAR until the 1970s
(26, with five in the 1960s), again well after the civil rights movement rose to national
prominence in the 1950s. More recently, the analysis tracked two contemporary social
equity issues: social class and sexual orientation. Neither of these topics have generated
significant, sustained interest by those publishing in PAR. A total of eleven articles with
social class implications were published in the 1960s and 1970s, but only three in the
1980s and 1990s. The first two articles with reference to sexual orientation did not
appear until the 1990s.
From this the article concludes that academic public administration in the United States
has been consistently behind the curve – reactionary, in the purest, non-pejorative sense
of the word, in terms of reacting to, rather than proactively taking the leadership on,
social equity issues.
The article was set in a comparative context, conducting the same analysis on Canadian
Public Administration, Australian Journal of Public Administration, and Revista de
Administração Pública, the premier journals of public administration in (respectively)
Canada, Australia and Brazil. In none of these countries was the record of academic
public administration significantly better than that of the United States, and in some cases
the record was worse. As a result, the analysis was able to conclude that this inattention
to social equity issues in academic public administration is not peculiar to the United
States.
As can be imagined, the paper generated considerable controversy during the review
process, which included a rejection by Public Administration Review and eventual
acceptance for publication in the American Review of Public Administration (ARPA), in
which the article should be published in summer 2006. A number of the reviewers raised
a number of objections to the analysis. Much to the credit of the editors of ARPA, the
paper was published despite our inability to address some of these criticisms. This
inability to respond to some of these criticisms, this paper will argue, is because most of
these criticisms reflected almost desperate attempts by the reviewers to accept that
academic public administration has been so consistently reactive in its treatment of social
equity issues. The purpose of this paper, then, is to analyze the social equity record of
academic public administration along some of these other dimensions suggested by prior
reviewers. The reason for this is twofold: first, to strip away remaining excuses that
allow some to deny that academic public administration remains reactive in social equity
issues; and second, because the resort to these fig leaves suggest that some serious
classism exists in academic public administration, and all sorts of bigotry need to be
combated.
Social class in the United States
You state that social class is “inequity itself.” You need to justify why you believe
that being poor in and of itself equates to inequality. I am not convinced that
people are discriminated against because they are poor.
Reviewer, Public Administration Review
It is first worth diverging into a brief discussion of why this topic is being addressed in
the first place, specifically with reference to that more recent social equity failing of
academic public administration: social class. As Oldfield, Candler and Johnson point
out, America has long ignored class divisions that are glaringly obvious to international
observers. At least three reasons have been offered for this neglect.
The first reason for American blindness to class inequities is the myth that America is a
classless society. The country has long been seen as a land of opportunity, where anyone
can bootstrap his or her way to success. This has certainly been the case, as considerable
class mobility has existed. Still, the issue is not so much the possibility of class mobility,
as the likelihood of class mobility. While the former has certainly existed, the latter has
waxed and waned. In third millennium America, the Horatio Alger myth has especially
become prevalent because of the exceptional social mobility that existed in the 2-3
decades after the end of the second world war. However, considerable evidence points to
this class mobility having reduced dramatically with the end of the post-war boom. As a
result, American society has entered a period of reduced class mobility while the memory
of a recent period of relatively high class mobility still exists in the population
(especially among the older generation who may have benefited from this previous era of
relative class mobility).
A second, related reason why class is denied in the United States is because many
working class people who have risen out of poverty turn their backs on their roots
(Lopreato 1967, Thompson 1971). As indicated, upward mobility in the United States
was relatively robust during the post war boom, and has narrowed dramatically since
(Sawhill 1998, Krugman 2004). As a result, this generation of Americans, who occupy
senior positions in American life (and academia), have both come to identify with the
upper class to which they moved, and have their own class mobility to point to as
evidence of the reality of social mobility.
A third widely cited reason for American blindness to class inequity concerns the
country’s anti-Communism. Much of the Cold War pivoted on a
Democracy/Communism axis, and so Communism, and Marxist class analysis, soon
came to be vilified. Even after McCarthyite extremism became unfashionable, antiCommunism persisted. In a country with a strong at least nominal affiliation with
Christianity, as well, Marx’s famous statement that religion is ‘the opiate of the people’,
probably contributed to this anti-Marxist, lack of sympathy to class analysis.
Beyond PAR: other disciplines
The authors might also give us more perspective on what to expect. Have other
academic fields been doing more research on these topics? I assume sociology
has done more on all fronts, but how about political science, economics, or
business? A similar analysis of the American Sociological Review, American
Political Science Review, and American Economic Review might give us more of
a sense of how public administration as field compares with some of our sister
sciences and might help us understand why PA has lagged.
Reviewer, American Review of Public Administration
A first exercise conducted in this paper concerns comparing the record of US public
administration to other American academic disciplines. The data in Table 1 below does
this. The analysis used the JSTOR electronic data base. The method used involved
searching keywords1 for the premier journals in sociology (American Sociological
Review -- ASR), economics (American Economic Review -- AER), political science
(American Political Science Review -- APSR) and public administration (Public
Administration Review -- PAR).
Table 1
Social equity record of other American disciplines
1900- 1920- 1930- 1940- 1950- 1960- 1970- 19801919 1929 1939 1949 1959 1969 1979 1989
Race
AER
ASR
APSR
PAR
Gender
AER
ASR
APSR
PAR
Social class
AER
ASR
APSR
PAR
Welfare/poverty
AER
ASR
APSR
PAR
Indian
AER
ASR
APSR
PAR
Gay
AER
ASR
APSR
PAR
HIV/AIDS
AER
ASR
APSR
PAR
7
0
2
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
19901999
0
4
1
0
25
1
0
0
30
1
0
2
25
4
3
25
76
10
16
24
64
15
12
33
72
15
5
1
2
0
2
8
1
0
0
7
0
0
2
11
0
3
24
55
2
13
41
98
7
17
41
94
12
23
0
6
4
0
1
6
0
0
0
44
3
0
0
77
3
2
1
66
11
3
1
60
17
0
3
53
5
1
1
-1
2
-0
2
-0
1
-1
2
11
-0
2
--
--
--
--
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
1
1
0
0
0
3
0
2
0
2
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
The results are striking for at least two reasons. First, it cannot be argued that no other
academic discipline was addressing race and gender, and so academic public
administration was just a function of its era, rather than especially delinquent. Rather,
sociology seems especially worthy of praise for having raised social equity (especially
race and social class) issues well before other disciplines. The existence of these rich
discussions among sociologists makes the absence of attention to these issues in the other
disciplines especially inexcusable: how could public administrationists not have seen the
relevance of these discussions to their own discipline?
Second, the data suggests that the problem is not unique to academic public
administration, but exists in other academic disciplines as well. In other words: the
academic environment rises as prime explanation for the reactive social equity record of
academic public administration.
Beyond PAR: other public administration journals
The idea that by reviewing PAR’s record you have adequate basis for
generalizing about US public administration just won’t wash. The one reference
to an ARPA article opens a door you could drive a truck through, and I wanted to.
That is, I’m aware of several articles in ARPA, A&S, JPART, and ATP, not to
mention PPR, ROPPA, Public Voices, Public Integrity, etc. that might somewhat
change the picture.
A second reviewer, American Review of Public Administration
On the surface, this criticism was probably the weakest raised by the reviewers, and
perhaps the most obvious indication of the reluctance that some are feeling in accepting
that academic public administration has been reactive, rather than progressive, in terms of
social equity. Before addressing this criticism, it is worth noting that Streib, Slotkin and
Rivera (2001, p. 516-7) and Stallings and Ferris (1988, p. 580-1) make the case for using
the premier journal as an indication of key trends in an academic discipline. However,
the broader approach suggested by the reviewer makes sense especially given the
vagaries of editorial boards. The ‘Perestroika/Glasnost’ controversy in the American
Political Science Association (see Kasza 2001) represents perhaps the highest profile
example in recent American academic history of the impact of a narrow editorial board in
influencing the ability of the premier journal in a field to reflect academic interest in that
discipline. In other words, there is reason to believe that the premier journal in a field
may be captured by a small group not representative of the broader discipline, and so the
premier journal in the field may not accurately reflect research interests in the field.
Returning to the reviewer’s criticism, none of the journals suggested were in existence
during the period of peak activity of gender and race, the first two social equity issues
discussed by Oldfield, Candler and Johnson. As a result, these journals will not have
‘somewhat changed the picture’ regarding public administration’s laggard response to
these issues. The American Review of Public Administration began publication in around
1971, Administration & Society in 1969, Journal of Public Administration Research and
Theory in 1991, Administrative Theory & Praxis around 1979. Public Productivity
Review began publishing in 1975, Review of Public Personnel Administration in 1980,
Public Voices in 1993, and Public Integrity in 1999.
Note that in PAR, Williams’ (1947) article on efforts of the Office of Price
Administration to overcome the discrimination and marginalization of minority groups,
and to incorporate them into the Office’s programs, was not followed up until 1966. This
period of neglect included a number of articles on current and future trends in the
discipline. Clapp wrote on public administration in the south in 1948, Ascher discussed
trends in administrative practices in 1950, and Sayre discussed trends in administrative
values in 1951. Fleming held forth on the civil service in transition in 1953, Emmerich
and Belsley pondered what was next in the federal civil service in 1954, yet none of these
mentioned race while Rosa Parks symbolically started the civil rights movement in the
following year. That same year racial equity was not one of Luther Gulick’s ‘next steps’
in public administration, any more than it was part of Nigro’s agenda for public personnel
in the 1960s. To offer, then, a number of journals that did not begin publishing until a
decade later as harboring evidence that might ‘somewhat change the picture’ regarding
public administration’s social equity record fails to convince.
Still, it is worth looking at these journals for evidence that they have been ahead of the
curve in terms of social class and sexual orientation. A first piece of evidence that
contradicts the hypothesis that richer social equity scholarship will be evident in journals
other than PAR comes from a recent article by Miller and Jaja (2005). In a survey of 43
symposia published in five journals (Administration & Society, Administrative Theory &
Praxis, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Performance and
Management Review, and Public Administration Review) from 1985-99 the authors
identify no symposia on social equity.
JPART is searchable on JSTOR. A search using the same keywords as for the analysis
above yielded zero hits, though one article was identified regarding the AIDS epidemic.
The article did note that at the time “the disease afflicted particular groups, especially
homosexual men” (p. 180). With a 1992 publishing date the article was published
perhaps only ten years after the problem was first identified, but 23 years after the
Stonewall riots put homosexuality on the American policy agenda, so this is at best weak
evidence of JPART playing a pro-active role on this issue.
ROPPA has an excellent online article database. While the journal features numerous
articles demonstrating that the journal has surged into the battle for gender and racial
equity some decades after those battles began, there is no evidence (at least from article
titles) that the journal has addressed either of the two contemporary social equity issues
that we identify: sexual orientation and social class.
Similarly, the author had ready access to Administration & Society and especially the
American Review of Public Administration (reference to which by Oldfield, Candler and
Johnson, a previous reviewer argued opened a hole in our argument that s/he could ‘drive
a truck through’) from the 1980s. Again, given their ~1970 origins, no evidence can be
found in these journals contradicting our assertion that academic public administration
was laggard in addressing race and gender in the 1950s and 1960s, and Oldfield, Candler
and Johnson date PAR’s attention to race and gender from the 1970s. That leaves social
class and sexual orientation. Again, these journals have not addressed thee issues. Only
Riccucci and Gossett (1996) directly address sexual orientation (Kemp, 1995 perhaps
indirectly), and only Heaberle (1987), Hetzner (1989), Farazmand (1999), and Matheson
(1999) incorporate social class (and/or structures of inequality) into their analyses.
Beyond PAR: the ‘great books’
A third dimension, not raised by the reviewers, that ‘might somewhat change the picture’
regarding the social equity record of academic public administration might be major
books in the field. Happily, a 1990 article by Frank Sherwood provides a useful survey
of ‘the half-century’s great books in public administration’. Sherwood based his list on a
survey of twenty leaders in the field. Sherwood’s list is also useful for the purposes of
this paper as straddling the period when evidence of pro-active social equity scholarship
in public administration would be especially relevant on at least three of the four
dimensions utilized in this paper: race, gender, and social class. Even sexual orientation,
if one lists the 1960 Stonewall riots as the point when a reasonably well-informed person
could no longer overlook this issue, should be relevant at least for the latter of the books
identified by Sherwood and his correspondents. The results are presented below, in
Table 2.
Table 2
Social equity record of American public administration books
1980-9
1970-9
1960-9
1950-9
1940-9
1930-9
Totals
Sherwood
total
10
14
24
12
9
5
74
total
found
9
10
21
11
8
5
64
race
gender
2
1
6
1
0
0
10
1
0
2
1
0
0
4
class/
poverty
1
3
6
1
2
0
13
gay
Indian
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
total
equity
2
3
7
2
1
0
15
This presents perhaps the best face of American public administration’s social equity
record, as over 20% of the books surveyed had at least some reference to race, gender,
and class/poverty. Sexual orientation remains an under-addressed topic. The record also
is less than stellar when the international contributors are removed (Hirschman, Burrell &
Morgan, Weber, Crozier and Popper), and when one considers that Charles Lindblom and
Robert Dahl account for three of the remaining six books with at least some social equity
engagement.
Frederick Mosher’s (1968) Democracy and the Public Service was a notable exception.
A decade earlier the American reading either Popper’s (1951) The Open Society and its
Enemies or Gerth and Mills translation of Max Weber (1946) would have been
introduced to the concept of social class. David Truman’s The Governmental Process:
Political Interests and Public Opinion also represents an early (1950s) discussion of the
administrative milieu that recognized the presence of groups of women (1951: 100-2), of
racial minorities (p. 102-4), and class-based interest groups (p. 165-7) advocating for
what would subsequently come to be known in academic public administration as ‘social
equity’. The result was the increased incorporation of groups suffering from inequality in
books in the 1960s.
There are also the expected embarrassing omissions and language. The International City
Management Association’s (1940) The Technique of Municipal Administration discussed
“non-merit factors in personnel administration” (p. 188), and lists veterans’ preferences,
residence, seniority and dependants as relevant. Race and gender are missing. A chapter
in Gulick and Urwick’s Papers on the Science of Organization identifies women pictured
at a “bench assembling relays” (p. 147) as “girls”. Corson’s chapter in Newland’s
Professional Public Executives is titled “equipping men for career growth in the public
service” (1980). It is also worth noting that many of the references included in Table 2
are fairly short, do not directly address the need of public administration to work to assist
the efforts made by thee groups in seeking greater equity, and no book in this list had
social equity as its primary focus.
The point is not to criticize the authors of these classics individually for not addressing
social equity issues, as the focus of many of these books was elsewhere. Still, the ‘great
books’ do contain a number of interesting lessons regarding the topic of this paper. Most
important, there is little evidence of the discipline meeting its pro-active charge to
Review and evaluate developments in public administration, including existing
and emerging issues and problems, new ideas and current opinions, significant
research and research needs, institutional development, and critical matters in
social equity and governance in need of attention. (Standing Panel, undated)
Whither representative bureaucracy?
The ‘great books’ are also interesting because they provide another window into
academic public administration in the United States during the earlier, pre-Civil Rights
era. What is perhaps especially striking about the dozen books published in the 1930s,
1940s and 1950s, and in the first two decades of Public Administration Review, is the
absence of references to representative bureaucracy. Here the failure of American public
administration to address social class is odd given that social class was fundamental to
the theory of representative bureaucracy, both in the United Kingdom (Kingsley, 1944, p.
142-8 and Kelsall, 1955, p. 146-60) and the United States (Long, 1952, p. 814 and Van
Riper, 1958, p. 552). Yet Kelsall’s compelling argument (quoting Finer) that better
government would result if policy was implemented by a bureaucracy whose
“composition included the memory of hunger, misery, squalor, bureaucratic oppression
and economic security” (p. 192) was ignored, perhaps because, as Lindblom noted in
gingerly raising the issue of social class: “furious controversies descend like swarming
wasps on anyone who pokes the nest of class” (1977: 222). It was not until 1968 that this
silence on representative bureaucracy was broken, with Frederick Mosher’s opening his
(1968) Democracy and the Public Service with the observation that “severest among the
violations of passive representativeness in this country today are the shortages of
minority races in middle and upper levels of service in most public (as well as private)
agencies” (p. 14); and his closing with the pessimistic observation that “Given the gross
imperfections in American society and its toleration of discrimination and of a more or
less permanently underprivileged minority…” (p. 206)
Because there is a history of discrimination based on gender and race, affirmative
action is necessary to correct the problems created by policies or practices of the
past. Being female or African-American is something an individual cannot
change. Being poor is not a life sentence. It is something that a qualified and
motivated person can change regardless of gender or race. There are hundreds
of thousands of highly successful people in the USA that come from poor
backgrounds. Many found ambition to succeed based in their humble beginnings.
They realize that they have to work harder than the more privileged person. I am
thankful that our system allows upward mobility rather than assignment to the
class in which you were born.
Third reviewer, American Review of Public Administration
Passion and anger
It is high time for moral indignation, for passion and anger. The moral high
ground, often put passionately as Christian doctrine, has tended toward those
interested in issues like abortion, gay marriage, human cloning, stem-cell
research and euthanasia, and those mobilized in pursuit of those issues have
proven to be formidable. Issues of poverty, at least from the biblical Christian
perspective, are far more central to the doctrine than the issues mentioned above.
But, it is far more difficult to bring indignation and passion to matters of poverty.
Still, that is what needs to be done.
H. George Frederickson
PA Times (2005)
Shortly after the Oldfield, Candler and Johnson article that this paper follows up was
rejected at Public Administration Review, the quote above from George Frederickson
appeared in one of his monthly PA Times commentaries. What seems to be missing from
this call for “moral indignation, for passion, and anger,” though, is a target for this moral
indignation. In this same article, Prof. Frederickson offers as a first item on a proposed
agenda for addressing social equity as inequality the reminder that “when it comes to
social equity we should think globally and act locally. Indeed all important matters of
social equity are local, local in the sense of consequences. The results of national
policies are all manifest locally, in our neighborhoods, in our families, in our cities and in
our work places” (p. 11).
He might also have added: in our academic discipline.
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1
For race, keywords used included race, racial, black, negro, African and segregation. For gender,
keywords used included gender, women, female, sex. For social class, keywords used included class,
equity, stratification. For sexual orientation, keywords used included gay, lesbian, queer, homosexual. The
advanced search function was used, with these keywords sought in the title or abstract of articles. Results
were analyzed to ensure that they related to the topic of interest, so articles referring to work by an author
named Black; or articles discussing a political race, were omitted. While the method cannot be considered
comprehensive, as other keywords could refer to topics related to race, gender, sexual orientation and social
class, at the least the method can be considered a consistent sample drawn through the four journals.