Institutionalization

“ I ask the attention of the public to the paramount necessity of reform in our civil service—a reform not merely as to certain abuses and practices of so-called official patronage which have come to have the sanction of usage in the several Departments of our Government, but a change in the system of appointment itself; a reform that shall be thorough, radical, and complete ”

“ A third underlying motive for community organization, which is just coming to receive recognition, is the need of defending the interests of the local community against the domination of national or state organizations, of maintaining a necessary degree of local autonomy. All organizations which become associated in state or national federations inevitably develop a central administration which [Pg 214] tends to become more or less of a hierarchy or bureaucracy. The national organization seeks to achieve its special objects and to emphasize their supreme importance. ”

“ If your aim is a well-organized army—if you want to have sanitary departments, and educational departments, and charity-departments, managed in a business-like way—if you would have society actively regulated by staffs of State-agents; then by all means choose that system of complete centralization which we call despotism. ”

“ Important as are the functions of a State in the administration of local government, especially in resisting an overbearing centralization, they must not be exalted above the Nation in its own appropriate sphere. ”

“ Centralization imparts without difficulty an admirable regularity to the routine of business; provides for the details of the social police with sagacity; represses the smallest disorder and the most petty misdemeanors; maintains society in a status quo alike secure from improvement and decline; and perpetuates a drowsy precision in the conduct of affairs, which is hailed by the heads of the administration as a sign of perfect order and public tranquillity: *s in short, it excels more in prevention than in action. ”

“ It contributes, at least, in a high degree, to accomplish a principal end of centralized and regular government;—the giving the greatest efficiency, as well as the greatest order, to the administrative system of the country. ”

“ Those who have either themselves remodelled the framework of State constitutions, or proposed schemes of political reform, seem mostly to have studied how to apportion the respective provinces which the nation, and any of its separate elements, should justly share in the administration,—to assign the due functions of each in the governmental plan,—and to adopt the precautions necessary for preserving the integrity of the several interests at stake. ”

“ It appears, therefore, that where a government is really centralized, it governs by maxims which are good in themselves, and which are also consecrated by a formidable public opinion. But since constitutional securities for good government rest immediately on the same moral power, those maxims are equivalent, in no inconsiderable degree, to these more formal guarantees; insomuch, that a government which is not popular in form, but which is really or effectually centralized, will be administered in the spirit of governments which are popular in form and substance. ”

“ But where everything is done through the bureaucracy, nothing to which the bureaucracy is really adverse can be done at all. The constitution of such countries is an organisation of the experience and practical ability of the nation, into a disciplined body for the purpose of governing the rest; and the more perfect that organisation is in itself, the more successful in drawing to itself and educating for itself the persons of greatest capacity from all ranks of the community, the more complete is the bondage of all, the members of the bureaucracy included. ”

“ The Public Administration shall serve the general interest in a spirit of objectivity and shall act in accordance with the principles of efficiency, hierarchy, decentralization, deconcentration and coordination, and in full subordination to the law. ”

“ We have been dealing exclusively with institutions, and the manner in which their growth has been accomplished. For it is in the institutional life of a people, and in the change and development it undergoes, that are to be found those elements which form the basis for all future changes, whether simply in the form of its government or in the structure of its social system. ”

“ What I now hold to be true for all time—and you will all agree with me some day—is that that branch of the Government that under our constitutional system is designated as the one having the authority is the only branch of the Government that can benefit capital, conserve or advance the rights of the people, or do justice in any way whatever. ”

“ In public administration, the most pressing need is for legislative action of the Reorganization Bill and the Revised Administrative Code, already submitted to Congress. We need to transform our administrative structure into the dynamic and synchronized machinery needed to perform effectively its role in economic development. ”

“ To decide for what public objects local superintendence is best suited, and what are those which should be kept immediately under the central government, or under a mixed system of local management and central superintendence, is a question not of political economy, but of administration. ”

“ The more you spread government as an organization of the people themselves, the more humane, upon that working basis, are likely to be its operations—on one condition: that such organisation of the people, whatever its numbers, submits to the operation of its own laws and shares equally in the conditions which it imposes—that, if it provides a qualification for citizenship, it provides also the means for all to qualify. ”

“ The theory of State intervention in such matters is fallacious; private enterprise, if left to itself, would compass the desired end much better than any governmental machinery. The indorsement which the State gives to a new institution, by granting a charter and nominally assuming a supervisory control, endows it with an air of respectability and solidity which it could not otherwise command, and which is for the most part illusive. ”

“ A higher authority might, in certain cases, order societies to be dissolved. These provisions related to voluntary societies; but it was competent for communal authorities also to order the formation of a friendly society, and to make a regulation compelling all workmen not already members of a society to join it. ”

“ The State shall be guided by the principle of decentralisation and devolution of governmental functions and powers to the people at appropriate levels where they can best manage and direct their own affairs. ”

“ Also important to the success of the Nation’s socio-economic program is the need for administrative reforms that would bring about more effective coordination among government offices and agencies commonly seeking the same objectives. Such administrative reforms could include decentralization of public powers to stimulate more participation in government by elective officials at the levels most proximate to the people. ”

“ We have succeeded in effective­ly employing this authority to begin to establish the infrastructure of a New Society in the acceleration of economic growth, in the democratization of land, public resources and economic opportunities, in the reform of institutions and in the reestablishment of a stable public order where the rights of all, especially of the majority, can be protected. ”

“ By the same clearness of arrangement, the departments and sub-departments are prevented from clashing, as well as from resisting or thwarting the sovereign power. Not being covered with the mystery of a crude and confused organisation, the administrative machine is not impervious to discerning observation and criticism; and the endeavours of the central authority to control and direct its movements, are, therefore, enlightened and assisted by an intelligent public opinion. ”

“ Every enlargement of the powers of the government which may be made, every measure which may be adopted to aggrandize the dominant combination which may control the government for the time, must necessarily enlarge, in a greater or less degree, his patronage and influence. With their enlargement, his power to control the other departments of the government, and the organs of public opinion, and through them, the community at large, must increase, and in the same degree. ”

“ If, other things remaining the same, the political structures of a society are further developed—if the existing institutions are extended or fresh ones set up—if, for directing social activities in greater detail, extra staffs of officials are appointed, the simultaneous results are an increase in the aggregate of those who form the regulating part and a corresponding decrease in the aggregate of those who form the part regulated. In various ways all who compose the controlling and administrative organization become united with one another and separated from the rest. ”

“ In the effort to adapt the framework of the administrative system to the fast changing conditions of a rapidly growing population Parliament piled act upon act, the result being a sheer jungle of interlacing jurisdictions alike baffling to the student and subversive of orderly and economical administration. ”

“ But if a government really centralized supposes a people highly civilised, the tendencies of such a government (whatever be the form of the sovereignty) will be beneficent in the main. The notions of the people about the ends of government, and about the means of attaining them, will be enlightened and just. As holding the same notions, or in its own despite, the government will aim at the ends sanctioned by a commanding opinion; and the administrative authorities, as its obedient instruments, will keep to the line of duties which is set to them by government and people. ”

“ Some people confuse the terms and ideas, concentration and centralization. Proper concentration in complete units by an earlier convergence of authority permits decentralization in administration. A lack of such early concentration makes centralization inevitable. ”

“ The concentration of administrative authority at one point has proved impracticable, first because of the great amount of red tape involved in the handling of the endless detail, and second because of the resulting destruction of initiative and enterprise. Such a centralization of social function would be just as cumbersome as a like centralization of all bodily functions in the higher brain centres. ”

“ This system, which created the omnipotent State and a powerful centralisation, was retained by all subsequent Governments and is preserved to-day. Centralisation being, in spite of its drawbacks, the only means of avoiding local tyrannies in a country profoundly divided within itself, has always been maintained. ”

“ But when the supreme authority undertakes at the same time to govern with freedom, and to administer by centralization,—when it has to contend, at the seat of power, for the great affairs of the State, and to regulate, under its own responsibility, in all the departments, the minor business of every district,—two weighty objections immediately present themselves: either the central power, absorbed by the care of national questions, and occupied with its own defence, neglects local affairs, and suffers them to fall into disorder and in [183] action ”

“ As the twentieth century has seen a great increase in the control that national governments exercise over their citizens, so too with ecclesiastical organizations there is a trend toward centralization, bureaucracy, and an indifference toward inalienable rights. ”

“ to secure as much of the advantages of centralised power and intelligence, as can be had without turning into governmental channels too great a proportion of the general activity, is one of the most difficult and complicated questions in the art of government. ”

“ Experience points to the system of local autonomy in local matters and to the central control of general matters as the most workable in a complex society.
In the first instance, under such a system, each local unit is responsible for its own activities and for its own discipline. It is obvious that no matter how efficient the bureaucracy, it would hardly be possible for a centralized authority to control, from one point, the six millions of farms and the quarter million industrial establishments of the United States. ”

“ II. The misconception which we have examined confounds centralization with over-governing. By the mistake which we shall now consider, it is deemed incompatible with the substance or spirit of what is commonly called free government.
Where the sovereign power resides in a body of persons, forming a fraction of the society, which may be deemed a large one, the government is popular or democratic; or, at least, the constitution of the government partakes largely of the popular or democratic element. ”

“ Within a few years other measures of a more fundamental and comprehensive nature have been adopted, and the centralisation of the schools, the means of communication, and the banks, the three institutions of the most vital importance in a society devoted to industry, has already been commenced. Thus the germ of a vigourous central authority, which will embrace all the ruling interests of the country, is already beginning to sprout. ”

“ The people respectively composing them, instead of constituting political communities, having appropriate organs to will and to act — which is indispensable to the existence of a State — would, in such case, be divested of all such organs; and, by consequence, reduced into an unorganized mass of individuals — as far as related to the respective States — and merged into one community or nation, having but one constitution and government as the organ, through which to will and to act. ”

“ The institutions which insure the best management of public affairs practicable in the existing state of cultivation tend by this alone to the further improvement of that state. A people which had the most just laws, the purest and most efficient judicature, the most enlightened administration, the most equitable and least onerous system of finance, compatible with the stage it had attained in moral and intellectual advancement, would be in a fair way to pass rapidly into a higher stage. ”