Officeholding and Powerwielding

An Analysis of the Relationship Between Structure and Style in American Administrative History

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4084652
AutoresWilliam E Nelson (autor de correspondencia)
Año1976
Volumen10
Número2
Páginas187-233
Fecha de publicación1976-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLaw & Society Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3053099
OpenAlexW2320126380
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5

To what extent has the exercise of administrative power been directed during the course of American history toward highly political ends, such as repaying political debts or furthering the particularistic interests of rich or powerful individuals and groups? Even a cursory review of the facts reveals that the administrative process has not always been highly politicized. When the United States became independent some two centuries ago, magistrates generally sought to use their power to further non-political religious and ethical ends in which nearly all their fellow subjects believed. More than a hundred years later, at the close of the nineteenth century, the ideology of administrative decision-making was similarly an apolitical one, in which administrators sought to resolve disputes and decide upon policies by reasoning deductively from abstract, general principles which nearly all of the nation accepted. The administrative process in the late nineteenth century differed from that of the mid-eighteenth not in the degree of politicization, but in the substantive standards from which administrators reasoned: In the mid-eighteenth century, as I have already suggested, the standards were ultimately religious and ethical, whereas by the end of the nineteenth century they had become basically scientistic and utilitarian

Archaeology · Political science · Sociology · Style (visual arts · Architecture, Design, and Social History · History