Views of Woodrow Wilson on Politics and Administration – Essay

Woodrow Wilson, in “congressional Government” (1885), emphasized that the essential concern of a political scientist is to reveal “the real depositories and the essential machinery of power.” According to Wilson the “basic reality in politics rests on the assumption that there is always a centre of power”.

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The task of a scholar is to find out the “centre of power” in a political system. It is nothing but to identify “in whose hands is (this) self-sufficient authority lodged?” “And through what agencies does that authority speak and act”? (Wilson, 1885; 30).

Vincent Ostrom says, “Once the centre for the exercise of sovereign prerogative is identified then the structure of authority can be untravelled.” Wilson’s thesis in Congressional Government (1885) was that “the more power is divided-, the more irresponsible it becomes”.

“The natural, the inevitable tendency of every system of self government like our own” said Mr. Wilson, “and the British, is to exalt the representative body, the people’s parliament, to a position of absolute supremacy” (Wilson 1885 : 203).

Wilson argued that there was a visible tendency in the operation of American Political system towards:

1. Centralisation of all greater powers of government in the hands of federal authorities.

2. Supreme over lordship which congress gradually arrogated to itself.

3. Central government constantly becoming stronger and more, active.

4. Congress establishing itself as one sovereign authority.

Wilsonian thesis was that in principle, the representatives of the people are the proper ultimate authority in all matters of government and the originating and controlling force in the politics of a nation resides in its legislative body. The executive is plainly bound in duty to render unquestioning obedience to congress.

Wilson further advocated that those, who fix the policies that the administration is to serve, should be strictly accountable to the choice of the majority.

“The conditions of self government requires that a sharp line’ of distinction be made between those offices who are political and those who are non-political the strictest rules of business discipline, of merit tenure, and earned promotion, must rule every office whose incumbent has nothing to do with choosing between policies” (Wilson, 1885: 1890).

In the development of political science as a discipline distinct from history and moral philosophy, Wilson’s work is a bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His most important work in this vein the state (1889) was one of the first books on comparative government written in the United States, although it is not, by twentieth century standards, a behavioural study and is empirical in only a second hand sense.

Earlier Wilson, even while a graduate student in 1879 had published an article entitled “Cabinet Government in the United States” had serious short coming as a piece of empirical work, but Wilson seems to have been the first American political scientist to examine critically the functions of the Congress and its inner working, although such discussion was not uncommon in the opinion press of the day.

Woodrow Wilson had contributed as a political scientist some other books viz., Congressional Government (1885)-constitutional government in the United states (1608).

Professor Vincent Ostrom says about Wilsonian thesis of administration: “Perfection in administrative organization is attained in a hierarchically ordered and professionally trained public service. Efficiency is attained by perfection in the hierarchical ordering of a professionally trained public service.

Wilson also conceptualizes efficiency and at the least possible cost of either money or the energy “(Wilson 1887, 197). Thus, perfection in hierarchical ordering will maximize efficiency as measured by least cost expended in money or effort in realizing policy objectives. “The field of administration is a field of business” argued Woodrow Wilson.

Jameson W. Doig (Princeton University) says, “Echoing these sentiments seven decades later, Sustin Tobin explained that the role of the public authority is to bring the best techniques of private management to the operation of self-supporting or revenue-producing public-enterprise.”

The administrative standards of a “well-managed private cooperation” must be applied to these specialized agencies, concluded one of its pre-eminent spokesmen, “its officials can not 9II0W political influence to play any part in its management or internal affairs.”

Jameson W. Doig has reopened the controversy of politics and administration which had been given impetus by Woodrow Wilson in 1887. Some social scientists believe that this “dichotomy debate” is useful and futile.