Expert Administrators in Popular Government

A. Lawrence Lowell

American Political Science Review, 1913, vol. 7, issue 1, 45-62

Abstract: Presidents, governors and mayors certainly cannot be experts in all the matters with which they are called upon to deal, nor, as a rule, are they thoroughly expert in any of them; and in fact this is generally true of officers elected to administer public affairs. We cannot, therefore, avoid the question whether they do, or do not, need expert assistance if the government is to be efficiently conducted. The problem is not new, for the world struggled with it two thousand years ago. The fate of institutions has sometimes turned upon it, and so may the great experiment we are trying today—that of the permanence of democracy on a large scale. Americans pay little heed to the lessons taught by the painful experience of other lands, and Charles Sumner expressed a common sentiment when he remarked sarcastically his thankfulness that they knew no history in Washington. Our people have an horizon so limited, a knowledge of the past so small, a self-confidence so sublime, a conviction that they are altogether better than their fathers so profound, that they hardly realize the difficulty of their task. We assume unconsciously, as a witty writer has put it, that human reason began about thirty years ago; and yet a candid study of history shows that the essential qualities of human nature have not changed radically; that men have little more capacity or force of character than at other favored epochs. Some improvement in standards has, no doubt, taken place, and certainly the bounds of human sympathy have widened vastly; but there has been no such transformation as to justify a confidence that the men of the present day can accomplish easily and without sacrifice what to earlier generations was unattainable.

Date: 1913
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