Public administration understanding management politics and law in the public sector david h. rosenb
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Rosenbloom, David H.
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Public administration : understanding management, politics, and law in the public sector / David H. Rosenbloom, American University, Robert S. Kravchuk, University of North Carolina/Charlotte, Richard M. Clerkin, North Carolina State University. — Eight edition. pages cm
ISBN 978-0-07-337915-9 (alk. paper)
1. Public administration. 2. United States—Politics and government. I. Kravchuck, Robert. II. Clerkin, Richard M. III. Title.
JF1351.R56 2015
351—dc23
2013044743
The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion of a website does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or McGraw-Hill Education, and McGraw-Hill Education does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented at these sites.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
David H. Rosenbloom is Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at American University in Washington, DC. He earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. Professor Rosenbloom writes extensively about public administration and democratic-constitutionalism. He is the recipient of the 1999 Dwight Waldo Award for outstanding contributions to the field of public administration, the 2001 John Gaus Award for exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration, and the 2012 Leslie A. Whittington Award for excellence in teaching. He is a fellow in the U.S. National Academy of Public Administration, from which he received the 2001 Louis Brownlow Award for his book Building a Legislative-Centered Public Administration. Rosenbloom is editor-in-chief of the CRC/Taylor & Francis Series in Public Administration and Public Policy, serves on the editorial boards of more than a dozen professional journals, and is a Life Associate Trustee Board Member at Marietta College. He was Visiting Chair Professor of Public Management at City University of Hong Kong in 2009 and 2010 and frequently lectures at universities in China and Taiwan. In 1992 he was appointed to the Clinton-Gore Presidential Transition Team for the Office of Personnel Management.
Robert S. Kravchuk is Professor and Director of the Master of Public Affairs Program in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. His teaching and research focus on public budgeting and finance, administrative theory, and the political economy of formerly socialist countries in transition, with a special emphasis on Ukraine and Russia. His administrative experience includes service as Under Secretary in the Connecticut State Budget Office, U.S. Treasury Resident Budget Advisor to the Minister of Finance of Ukraine, and appointment by the U.S. Secretaries of State and the Treasury as Financial Advisor to the President of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is a frequent writer and lecturer on public budgeting, administrative reform, and government capacity-building. Currently, he is researching the emergence of complex financial networks among U.S. Defense Department major weapons acquisition projects, and is writing a modern text on public financial management. His future projects include a canonical history of American administrative thought, and a comprehensive history of Russian public administration from Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin. In addition to Indiana University, Professor Kravchuk has taught at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte, the University of Connecticut, University of Hartford, and LeMoyne College. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana, with his family.
Richard M. Clerkin is an Associate Professor in the Public Administration Department in the School of Public and International Affairs and the Interim Director of the Institute for Nonprofit Research, Education, and Engagement at North Carolina State University. He received his Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Indiana University–Bloomington, where he was a Chancellor’s Fellow. The main focus of his research is on the interplay of government and nonprofit sectors. In particular, he studies motivations for public service and public benefiting activities. Recent research in this vein has examined public service motivation in sector work preferences and in the decision of active duty military to reenlist. A new stream of research, the Changing Philanthropy Project, explores the impact of geographic mobility and regional philanthropic traditions on 1) the volunteering and donating behavior of individuals and 2) the ability of nonprofit organizations to adapt to these changes in their community. His research has been published in Public Administration Review, American Review of Public Administration, Armed Forces & Society, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and Nonprofit Management and Leadership. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife and children.
CONTENTS IN BRIEF
Preface xv
PART I INTRODUCTION: DEFINITIONS, CONCEPTS, AND SETTING 1
CHAPTER 1 The Practice and Discipline of Public Administration: Competing Concerns 2
CHAPTER 2 The American Administrative State: Development and Political Environment 43
CHAPTER 3 Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations: The Structure of the American Administrative State 100
PART II CORE FUNCTIONS 145
CHAPTER 4 Organization: Structure and Process 146
CHAPTER 5 Public Personnel Administration and Collective Bargaining 208
CHAPTER 6 Budgeting and the Public Finances 264
CHAPTER 7 Decision Making 323
PART III THE CONVERGENCE OF MANAGEMENT, POLITICS, AND LAW IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR 361
CHAPTER 8 Policy Analysis and Implementation Evaluation 362
CHAPTER 9 Regulatory Administration: An Illustration of Management, Politics, and Law in the Public Sector 402
PART IV
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND THE PUBLIC 451
Public Administration and the Public 452
Public Administration and Democratic Constitutionalism 489
CHAPTER 12 Accountability and Ethics 530
CHAPTER 13 The Future 562
Glossary 576
Credits 583
Index 585
Preface xv
PART I
INTRODUCTION: DEFINITIONS, CONCEPTS, AND SETTING 1
CHAPTER 1 The Practice and Discipline of Public Administration: Competing Concerns 2
Some Definitions 4
Emphasizing the Public in Public Administration 5
Constitutions 5
The Public Interest 7
The Market 8
Sovereignty 11
Regulation and Service 13
Managerial, Political, and Legal Approaches 14
The Managerial Approach to Public Administration 14
Traditional Managerial Approach to Public Administration 15
The New Public Management (NPM) 19
The Political Approach to Public Administration 26
The Legal Approach to Public Administration 30
The Six Trends Transforming Government 35
Conclusion: Public Administration Reconsidered 37
Study Questions 39 / Notes 39 / Additional Reading 42
CHAPTER 2 The American Administrative State: Development and Political Environment 43
The Rise of the American Administrative State 44
The Political Roots of the American Administrative State 46
The Legal Origins of American Public Administration 49
The Managerial Origins of the Contemporary American Administrative State 54
Administrative Authority and Responsibility 57
The Paradox of Administrative Power 57
Administrative Independence 58
Public Policy Making 61
Responses to the Rise of the Administrative State 61
The President and Public Administration 62
Congress and the Administrative State 70
The Courts: A Judicial Response to Modern Public Administration 74
Interest Groups 80
The Public 84
Political Parties 85
State and Local Governments 87
Extensions to the Administrative State 88
The Managerial Approach 89
The Political Approach 90
The Legal Approach 91
Conclusion: The Administrative State 93
Study Questions 93 / Notes 94 / Additional Reading 98
CHAPTER 3 Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations: The Structure of the American Administrative State 100
Why Federalism? The Political Approach 101
What Federalism Does 102
Dual Sovereignty 103
Bicameralism 104
Multiple Layers of Representation 106
Administrative Decentralization: The Managerial Approach 107
The Quest for Uniformity: The Legal Approach 108
The Fourteenth Amendment 108
The Commerce Clause 109
The Tenth Amendment 110
The Eleventh Amendment 111
Evolving Models of American Federalism 112
American Government: The Building Blocks 114
Municipalities 116
Townships 119
Counties 119
School Districts and Other Special Districts 119
States 120
Federal 122
Intergovernmental Relations 125
Federal-State Relations and Fiscal Federalism 125
“Horizontal Federalism”: Interstate Relations 132
Relationships among Local Governments 136
Conclusion: Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations 138
Study Questions 140 / Notes 140 / Additional Reading 142
PART II
CORE
FUNCTIONS
145
CHAPTER 4 Organization: Structure and Process 146
Organizations and Organization Theory 147
What Are Organizations? 147
Organization Theory 148
Commonalities in Public Administrative Organization 149
Bureaucracy 149
Scientific Management 154
The Human Relations Approach 156
Leadership 158
Motivation 164
Contemporary Approaches to Organization Theory 168
Managerial Perspectives on Public Organization 178
Orthodox Public Administration: POSDCORB 178
Challenges to the Orthodoxy 180
What Will Replace POSDCORB? 180
The Political Approach to Public Organization 185
Pluralism 187
Autonomy 188
The Legislative Connection 188
Decentralization 188
A Checklist of Political Questions on Administrative Organization 189
The Legal Approach to Public Organization 190
Independence 191
The Commission Format 191
Insulation from Ex Parte Influences 192
Independent Hearing Examiners–Administrative Law Judges 192
Staffing for Adjudication 193
Alternative Dispute Resolution 193
Conclusion: The Future 194
Fundamental Assumptions 194
Democratic Organization 195
Market-Based Organization 198
The Networked Organization 200
Study Questions 201 / Notes 201 / Additional Reading 207
CHAPTER 5 Public Personnel Administration and Collective Bargaining 208
Historical Background 209
Public Personnel Administration According to “Gentlemen” 210
Public Personnel Administration According to “Spoils” 211
Public Personnel Administration According to “Merit” 213
Management, Politics, and Law in Public Personnel
Administration 218
Civil Service Reform, 1978 219
HRM Reform in the 1990s and 2000s 222
Managerial Public Personnel Administration 223
Position Classification 224
Recruitment, Selection, and Promotion 228
Performance Appraisal 232
Pay 235
Workforce Planning 238
Cutbacks 238
Quality of Work Life (QWL) 239
Political Neutrality 240
The Political Approach to Public Personnel
Administration 241
Responsiveness 241
Representativeness 243
The Legal Approach to Public Personnel Administration 246
The Constitutional Rights of Public Employees and Applicants 247
The Liability and Immunity of Public Employees 250
Collective Bargaining and Labor-Management Partnerships 252
Collective Bargaining 252
Labor-Management Partnerships 256
Conclusion: Three Possible Futures for HRM 257
Study Questions 259 / Notes 259 / Additional Reading 263
CHAPTER 6 Budgeting and the Public Finances 264
The Size and Growth of Budgets 266
Sources of Revenues 268
Revenue Evaluation Criteria 275
Governmental Fiscal Policy Making 276
The National Debt: Is It a Burden? 278
The Federal Budgetary Process 281
Stages in the Budgetary Process 286
The Distinction between Authority and Appropriations 290
The Continuing Saga of the Budget: Execution 292
Continuing Problem Areas 296
A Budget Theory or Theories about Budgeting? 300
The Managerial Approach to Public Budgeting 301
The Political Approach to Public Budgeting 312
The Legal Influence on Budgeting 316
Conclusion: The Search for a Synthesis 317
Study Questions 318 / Notes 319 / Additional Reading 321
CHAPTER
7 Decision Making 323
The Traditional Managerial Approach to Decision Making 324
Specialization 325
Hierarchy 326
Formalization 327
Merit 327
The Rational-Comprehensive Model 330
Critique of the Rational-Comprehensive Model 332
The Political Approach to Decision Making: The Incremental Model 335
Components of the Incremental Model 336
A Critique of the Incremental Model 338
The Legal Approach to Decision Making 339
Advantages of Adjudication 341
Critique of Adjudication as a Decision Making Model 342
The Case of Benzene in the Workplace 343
The New Public Management and Decision Making 345
Market Criteria 345
Employee Empowerment 346
The Impact of Context on Decision Making 348
Individual Level: Recognition-Primed Decision Model 348
Organizational Level: The Governmental Process Model and Accountability for Decisions: Inside the “Garbage Can” 349
Conclusion: Synthesizing Decision Making Approaches 350
What to Avoid 352
Impact of Information Technology (IT) 354
Study Questions 356 / Notes 356 / Additional Reading 358
PART III
THE CONVERGENCE OF MANAGEMENT, POLITICS, AND LAW IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR 361
CHAPTER 8 Policy Analysis and Implementation Evaluation 362
The Growing Concern with Policy Analysis 363
Approaches to Analyzing Public Policy 364
Outcome Analysis 366
Process Analysis and Implementation Studies 370
Implementation Evaluation 372
Managerial Perspectives on Implementation 372
Traditional Management 372
The New Public Management 380
Monitoring and Measuring Performance 382
The Political Perspective on Implementation 388
Representation 388
Responsiveness 389
Accountability 390
The Legal Perspective on Implementation 391
Constitutional Integrity 392
Equal Protection 393
Procedural Due Process and Protection of Individual Rights 394
Estoppel 394
Using Analysis and Evaluation 395
Conclusion: The Complexity of Policy Design 396
Study Questions 398 / Notes 399 / Additional Reading 401
CHAPTER 9 Regulatory Administration: An Illustration of Management, Politics, and Law in the Public Sector 402
The Development and Growth of Regulatory Administration 404
Origins of Government Regulation 404
Market Failure 408
Regulatory Federalism 410
Regulatory Policy and Administration 411
Political Patterns 411
Social Factors 414
The Structure and Process of Regulatory Administration 415
Independent Regulatory Commissions (IRCs) 415
Regulatory Agencies 416 Rule Making 416
Adjudication 418
Inspection and Compliance 420
Common Criticisms of Regulatory Administration 421
Regulation Is Expensive 422
Regulation Dampens Economic Performance 423
Regulation Produces Delay, Extravagant Red Tape, and Paperwork 423
Incompetence and Impropriety 424
Overinclusiveness of Regulation 425
Determining Success 426
Deregulation and Regulatory Reform 429
Deregulation 429
Formal and Informal Rule Making 430
Negotiated Rule Making 432
Perspectives on Regulatory Administration 432
The Traditional Managerial Perspective 432
The New Public Management Approach to Regulation 435
The Political Approach to Regulatory Administration 437
The Legal Approach to Regulatory Administration 440
Study Questions 445 / Notes 446 / Additional Reading 449
PART IV
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND THE PUBLIC 451
CHAPTER 10 Public Administration and the Public 452
The Public’s Interaction with Public Administration 453
Clients and Customers 454
The Regulated Public 454
Participants 454
Litigants 455
Street-Level Encounters 455
Contractors 455
The Individual in the Administrative State 456
The Individual in Society 456
The Individual in the Political System 461
The Individual in the Economy 464
The Public’s Evaluation of Public Administration 466
Client and Customer Satisfaction 466
A Look at Typical Government Services 469
Public Administrative Perspectives on the Public 470
The Traditional Managerial Approach to the Public 470
The New Public Management Approach to the Public 471
The Political Approach to the Public 474
The Legal Approach to the Public 478
Conclusion: Putting the Public Back in Public Administration 479
Study Questions 484 / Notes 484 / Additional Reading 488
CHAPTER 11 Public Administration and Democratic
Constitutionalism 489
Why Public Administrators Must Understand the Constitution 490
Administrative Structure and Constitutional Structure 494
Administrative Separation of Functions 494
Constitutional Separation of Powers 494
Collapse of the Separation of Powers 494
The Phillips Case 495
Administrative Discretion and “Guerrilla Government” 496
The Three “Masters” of Public Administration 497
Constitutional Values 498
Legitimacy 498
Diversity among the Citizenry 500
Freedom and Liberty 501
Property Rights 507
Procedural Due Process 511
Equal Protection 513
Equal Protection’s Normative Philosophy 516
Individuality 518
Fourth Amendment Privacy Rights 519
Equity 521
State Action 521
Conclusion: An Ongoing Partnership 525
Study Questions 525 / Notes 526 / Additional Reading 529
CHAPTER 12 Accountability and Ethics 530
Why the Guardians Need Guarding 532
Misconception of the Public Interest 532
Corruption 536
Subversion 540
Why It Is Difficult to Guard the Guardians 541
The Accretion of Special Expertise and Information 541
The Advantage of Full-Time Status 542
The Protective Nature of Personnel Systems 542
The “Law of Counter Control” 542
The Problem of Coordination 542
The Lack of Political Direction 543
The Fragmentation of Agency Structures and Functions 543
The Large Size and Scope of Public Administration 543
“Third-Party” Government 544
Ethics and Public Administrators: Three Broad Approaches to Ethical Decision Making 544
Perspectives on Accountability and Ethics 546
The Traditional Managerial Perspective 546
The New Public Management 549
The Political Perspective 550
The Legal Perspective 554
Conclusion: Personal Responsibility 556
Study Questions 558 / Notes 558 / Additional Reading 561
CHAPTER 13 The Future 562
Complexity Is Here to Stay 564
Public Administration Will Be Defined by Politics 565
Law Will Continue to Be Central to Public Administration 567
Performance 568
Disaggregation of Public Administration 569
Fragmentation of the Civil Service 569
The Changing Face of Management 570
Personal Responsibility 571
Conclusion: A New Administrative Culture 572
Study Questions 573 / Notes 573 / Additional Reading 575
Glossary 576
Credits 583
Index 585
PREFACE
The fourth edition of Public Administration: Understanding Management, Politics, and Law in the Public Sector was named the fifth most influential book in the field of public administration published from 1990 to 2010 in a study by David O. Kasdan appearing in Administration & Society in 2012. This was an amazing achievement for a textbook in competition with books on administrative theory and specific topics such as organization theory, human resources management, policymaking, and budget and finance. Kasdan’s finding is bolstered by the book’s status as a “world text.” It is used in English or translation as the core text in MPA programs throughout China, and to the best of our knowledge, as a core or assigned text in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nepal, Netherlands, Pakistan, Portugal, Republic of Georgia, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, as well, of course, as in the United States.
At first thought, the worldwide use of the book seems odd. After all, its framework is informed by features of the U.S. political system that are central to public administration here, but unusual singularly or in combination in developed and developing nations across the globe. These include the constitutional separation of powers, federalism based on a particular blend of dual sovereignty, and our legal system. It could be that students abroad want to learn about U.S. administrative practices, believing correctly or incorrectly that they can serve as a model for their own countries. However, on further consideration it is more likely that the book has attained its measure of success because all public administrative systems have managerial, political, and legal dimensions and, to some extent, these share common characteristics almost everywhere. Management typically values efficiency and cost-effectiveness; in democracies and even some autocracies, political accountability and responsiveness are valued; the legal dimension’s concern with human rights and the rule of law is also widespread, though far from universal. In several countries, classes include student presentations analyzing local administrative issues from each of the three perspectives and discussions of strategies for incorporating elements of management, politics, and law into their potential resolution. Our effort in this eighth edition has been to retain the U.S. focus while broadening much of the discussion and themes in ways that enhance their utility elsewhere.
This comports with the original mission of the book—to ground students in the fundamentals of public administration while embracing its complexity through what has become known as the “three-perspectives” or “competing-perspectives” model. The eighth edition, like those before it, describes, explains, and analyzes public administration through the lenses of three well-established, coherent ways of conceptualizing and understanding public administration: management; politics (primarily with regard to policy implementation and the values of participation, representation, responsiveness, and accountability); and law. These perspectives are embedded in the U.S. Constitution and American political culture.
Each perspective has a distinctive set of core values, decision procedures, organizational arrangements, view of the individual, way of knowing and learning, budget making, and modi operandi. In the midst of President Bill Clinton’s second term, when his administration’s effort by the National Performance Review to “reinvent government” was in full swing, the fourth edition split the management perspective into “traditional management” and “new public management” (NPM). The NPM is no longer new—and some might say the label is passé. It has been augmented, but not replaced, by “collaborative governance,” a topic to which this edition pays considerable attention. In turn, collaborative governance necessarily (and happily) requires greater coverage of the roles of nonprofit organizations in today’s public administration. Realistically, contemporary management consists of a mix of traditional, NPM, and collaborative governance perspectives and practices. The continuing development of the management perspective, however, does not eclipse the importance of the political and legal approaches to public administration and their continuing evolution.
The book remains divided into four parts. Part I introduces the book’s intellectual framework and discusses the development of public administration in the United States. Part II considers public administration’s core functions: organization, personnel, budgeting and finance, and decision making. Part III shows how management, politics, and law converge in the practice of policy analysis and implementation evaluation and regulatory administration. Part IV focuses on the place of the “public” and the “public interest” in public administration. Chapters are devoted to public administration and the public, democratic constitutionalism, and accountability and ethics. The concluding chapter looks at trends that are likely to impact public administration in the near-term future.
In keeping with previous revisions, we have sought throughout the text to update, maintain relevance by incorporating vital developments in U.S. governance and administrative thought, including court decisions, and to jettison material that is no longer pertinent or useful in explaining contemporary public administrative theory, techniques, and practices to students. Few texts reach an eighth edition or the global stature this one has attained. Attribution goes to the staying power of the basic framework and appeal of a comprehensive look at the challenges of governing in the late modern era. We continue
to believe that the three-perspectives approach to analyzing and understanding administrative matters in all their complexity is the key to educating future public administrators to systematically approach the ever-changing and “complexifying” environments in which they will work. (Note: A passwordprotected Web site at www.mhhe.com/rosenbloom8 contains a comprehensive Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank.)
A book reaching an eighth edition generates many debts of gratitude to those reviewers and readers who have offered excellent suggestions for improvements along the way. They have become too numerous to name individually, but their contributions are now part of the book and greatly appreciated. We also want to thank our readers for their loyalty over the years. You are responsible for the book’s success and we welcome your comments and suggestions for continually upgrading it.
David H. Rosenbloom
Robert S. Kravchuk
Richard M. Clerkin
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PART I
INTRODUCTION: DEFINITIONS, CONCEPTS, AND SETTING
Chapter 1
The Practice and Discipline of Public Administration: Competing Concerns
Chapter 2
The American Administrative State: Development and Political Environment
Chapter 3
Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations: The Structure of the American Administrative State
THE PRACTICE AND DISCIPLINE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Competing Concerns
Key Learning Objectives
1. Be able to define public administration, and to identify its principal concerns.
2. Understand the differences between public administration and private management.
3. Learn the managerial, political, and legal approaches to public administration and the tensions among them.
4. Learn about six trends that are transforming government in the 21st century and management of private enterprises—changing the rules of the game; using performance measurement; providing competition, choice, and incentives; “government on demand”; engaging citizens; and using networks and partnerships.
This chapter considers what distinguishes public administration from the administration and management of private enterprises, focusing on the roles of the Constitution, the public interest, economic market forces, and state sovereignty. The principal focus of public administration with providing both service and regulation is explored. The chapter discusses a framework for understanding public administration that consists of three general and competing approaches to administrative theory and practice. One approach sees public administration as essentially management, another emphasizes its political nature, and the third focuses on its legalistic aspect. In the past twenty-five years, the traditional managerial approach took on a new variant, called the “new public management” (NPM), in response to calls for more responsive and efficient government. The NPM in turn has a relatively distinctive offshoot called “collaborative governance,” which relies on for-profit and nonprofit organizations, often generically referred to as “third parties,” to achieve public administrative program objectives. Each perspective embraces a different set of values, offers distinctive organizational approaches for maximizing those values, and considers the individual citizen in different ways.
Public administration has historically been difficult to define. Nonetheless, we all have a general sense of what it is, though we may disagree about how it should be carried out. In part, this is because public administration involves a vast amount of activity. Public sector jobs range from providing homeland security, to the exploration of outer space, to sweeping the streets. Some public administrators are highly educated professionals who may be at the forefront of their fields of special expertise (like NASA engineers and rocket scientists); others possess few skills that differentiate them from ordinary workers. Some public administrators make policies that have a nationwide impact and may benefit millions of people; others have virtually no responsibility for policy making and simply carry out mundane but necessary clerical tasks. Public administrators are doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, accountants, budgeters, policy analysts, personnel officers, managers, baggage screeners, clerks, keyboarders, manual laborers, and individuals engaged in a host of other occupations and functions. But knowing what public administrators do does not resolve the problem of defining what public administration is.
It was pointed out some time ago that any one-paragraph or even onesentence definition of public administration may prove temporarily mindparalyzing.1 This is because “public administration” as a category is so abstract and varied that it can be described only in vague, general, and somewhat competing terms. Yet some attention to definition is important. First, it is necessary to establish the general boundaries, and to convey the major concerns of the discipline and practice of public administration. Second, defining public administration helps place the field in a broader political, economic, and social context. Third, and perhaps most importantly, consideration of the leading definitions of public administration reveals that there are at least three distinct underlying approaches to the field. For years the tendency among scholars and practitioners has been to stress one or another of these approaches. But this
has promoted confusion, because each approach tends to emphasize different values, different organizational arrangements, different methods of developing knowledge, and radically distinct views of the individual citizen.
➻ SOME DEFINITIONS
One can find a wide variety of definitions of public administration, but the following are among the most serious and influential efforts to define the field. 2
1. “Public administration . . . is the action part of government, the means by which the purposes and goals of government are realized.”
2. “Public administration as a field is mainly concerned with the means for implementing political values. . . .”
3. “. . . Public administration can be best identified with the executive branch of government.”
4. “The process of public administration consists of the actions involved in effecting the intent or desire of a government. It is thus the continuously active, ‘business’ part of government, concerned with carrying out the law, as made by legislative bodies (or other authoritative agents) and interpreted by the courts, through the processes of organization and management.”
5. Public administration: (a) is a cooperative group effort in a public setting; (b) covers all three branches—executive, legislative, and judicial—and their interrelationships; (c) has an important role in the formulation of public policy, and is thus part of the political process; (d) is different in significant ways from private administration; and (e) is closely associated with numerous private groups and individuals.
What conclusions can be drawn from the variety of definitions of public administration and their myriad nuances? One is that public administration is indeed difficult to pin down. Another conclusion is that there is really no such subject as “public administration,” as such, but rather that public administration means different things to different observers and lacks a significant common theoretical or applied meaning. However, this perspective has limited appeal because the problem is certainly not that there is no public administration—we not only know it exists, but also are often acutely aware of its contributions and/or its shortcomings.
Ironically, another conclusion that can be drawn from the multiplicity of definitions is that public administration is everywhere. Some have argued that there is no field or discipline of public administration per se because the study of public administration overlaps a number of other disciplines, including political science, sociology, economics, psychology, and business administration. Although this approach contains a great deal of truth, in practical terms it is unsatisfactory because it leaves us without the ability to analyze coherently a major aspect of contemporary public life—the emergence of large and powerful governmental agencies. In a word: bureaucracy.
This book concludes that all the previous definitions are helpful, but limited to some extent. Public administration does involve activity, it is concerned with politics and policy making, it tends to be concentrated in the executive branch of government, it does differ from private administration, and it is concerned with implementing the law. But we can be much more specific by offering a definition of our own: Public administration is the use of managerial, political, and legal theories, practices, and processes to fulfill legislative, executive, and judicial mandates for the conduct of governmental regulatory and service functions. There are several points here that require further elaboration.
➻ EMPHASIZING THE PUBLIC IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
First, public administration differs from private administration in significant ways. The lines between the public and private sectors are often blurred, insofar as several aspects of management and law are generic to both sectors. However, on balance, public administration remains a separate field. The reasons for this are outlined in the pages which follow.
Constitutions
In the United States, the federal and state constitutions define the environment of public administration and place constraints on it. First, constitutions fragment power and control over public administration (see Box 1.1). The separation of powers places public administration effectively under three “masters.” Americans have become accustomed to thinking of governors and presidents as being in control of public administration, but in practice legislatures possess as much or more constitutional power over administrative operations. This is clearly true at the federal level, where Congress has the constitutional authority to create agencies and departments by law; fix their size in terms of personnel and budget; determine their missions and legal authority, internal structures, and locations; and establish procedures for human resources management. Congress has also enacted a large body of administrative law to regulate administrative procedures, including rule making, open meetings, public participation, and the gathering and release of information. The courts also often exercise considerable power and control over public administration. They help define the legal rights and obligations of agencies and those of the individuals and groups on which public administrators act. They define the constitutional rights of public employees and the nature of their liabilities for breaches of law or the Constitution. The judiciary has also been active in the restructuring of school systems, public mental health facilities, public housing, and prisons in an effort to make certain they comply with constitutional standards. Judicial review of agency activities is so extensive that the courts and public administrators are now widely regarded as “partners.”3 The extent of legislative and judicial authority over public administration leaves chief executives with only limited control over the executive branch,
1.1 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION’S CONSTITUTIONAL STATUS*: WHOSE EXECUTIVE BRANCH IS IT, ANYWAY?
The Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which expired in 1992, provided for the appointment of an independent counsel much like Kenneth Starr, independent counsel in the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton in 1999. The independent counsel’s job was to investigate and prosecute certain high-ranking government officials for federal crimes. The independent counsel was located in the Department of Justice and had “full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions and powers of the Department, . . . the Attorney General, and other department [personnel].” The independent counsel was appointed by a special court, called the Special Division, and could not be removed by the attorney general except for “good cause, physical disability, mental incapacity, or any other condition that substantially impairs the performance of such independent counsel’s duties.” The key question before the U.S. Supreme Court in Morrison v. Olson was whether these arrangements violated the constitutional separation of powers. The Court, per Chief Justice William Rehnquist, held that they did not. First, the appointment of an executive officer by a court under these circumstances was not “incongruous” because it did not have “the potential to impair the constitutional functions assigned to one of the branches” of the government. Second, the Court noted that in its “present considered view . . . the determination of whether the Constitution allows Congress to impose a ‘good cause’-type restriction on the President’s power to remove an official cannot be made to turn on whether or not that official is ‘purely executive.’” Rather, “the real question is whether the removal restrictions are of such a nature that they impede the President’s ability to perform his constitutional duty” to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. The Court
concluded that although “[i]t is undeniable that the Act reduces the amount of control or supervision that the Attorney General and, through him, the President exercises over the investigation and prosecution of a certain class of criminal activity,” the executive branch retained “sufficient control over the independent counsel to ensure that the President is able to perform his constitutionally assigned duties.”
Justice Antonin Scalia heatedly dissented:
There are now no lines. If the removal of a prosecutor, the virtual embodiment of the power to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” can be restricted, what officer’s removal cannot? This is an open invitation for Congress to experiment. What about a special Assistant Secretary of State, with responsibility for one very narrow area of foreign policy, who would not only have to be confirmed by the Senate, but could also be removed only pursuant to certain carefully designed restrictions? . . . Or a special Assistant Secretary of Defense for Procurement? The possibilities are endless. . . . As far as I can discern from the Court’s opinion it is now open season upon the President’s removal power for all executive officers. . . . The Court essentially says to the President: “Trust us. We will make sure that you are able to accomplish your constitutional role.” I think the Constitution gives the President—and the people—more protection than that.
So an executive official with law enforcement duties can be appointed by a court and dismissed only for limited reasons specified by Congress. Whose executive branch is it, anyway?
*Morrison v. Olson 487 U.S. 654 (1988).
and far less authority than is commonly found in the hands of chief executive officers of private organizations, whether profit-seeking or not. The text of the federal Constitution grants presidents only two specific powers that they can exercise over domestic federal administration on their own: the power to ask department heads for their opinions in writing on various subjects and to
make temporary appointments to vacant offices when the Senate is in recess. In practice, of course, chief executives in the public sector now often exercise statutory powers given to them by legislatures—but legislative bodies almost always retain a strong interest in how public agencies are operating.
The separation of powers not only provides each branch with somewhat different authority over public administration but also may frustrate coordination among them. Chief executives, legislatures, and courts are responsive to different constituencies, political pressures, and time constraints. All three branches have legitimate interests in public administration. However, they often differ with regard to what they think agencies should do and how they ought to do it.
The federal constitutional framework also embodies a system of federalism that allows for considerable overlap in the activities of federal, state, and local administrators. Often the federal government will create a program and rely on the states to implement it. Funding and authority may be shared. In practice, state and local agencies may be responsible to federal departments to a greater extent than they are to state governors or state legislatures.
The federal courts also have a substantial impact on state and local administration. They define the constitutional or legal rights of citizens as they are affected by governmental activity. Over the years the federal courts have ordered extensive reforms in state and local administrative systems and processes.4
The separation of powers and federalism result in a fragmentation of authority that is generally not seen in the private sector. Legal restrictions and requirements affect private management, but they do not fragment authority over it in the same way or to the same extent, nor do they provide so many parties with a legal right to observe and participate in private firms’ policy decisions and other affairs.
Constitutional concerns are important in another way as well. They embrace values in the public sector that frequently run counter to the values embodied in private management. Efficiency in government is often subordinated to political principles such as representativeness, accountability, and transparency. Efficiency is also trumped by legalistic considerations such as due process. Remember that, with the exception of the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude, the Constitution does not directly regulate relationships between purely private parties. Rather, it applies to relationships among units of government, such as Congress and the president or the federal and state governments, and to those between the public and its governments. Further, in most of the public sector, there is no genuine equivalent to the profit motive that is so central to private enterprise.
The Public Interest
The governmental obligation to promote the public interest also distinguishes public administration from private management. In a moral and basic sense, government must serve “a higher purpose.”5 Even though reasonable people may disagree about precisely what is in the public interest, there can be no
dispute about the obligation of public administrators to consider it as a general guide for their actions. When they fail to do so, public administrators may rightly be criticized. A central issue is assuring that public administrators represent and respond to the interests of the citizenry.6 Various regulations have been enacted over the years in an effort to assure that those exercising public power will not use it for narrow partisan or purely private gain or engage in subversion. Many public personnel systems in the United States and abroad place restrictions on the political activities of civil servants, some have comprehensive conflict-of-interest regulations, and all are concerned with the political loyalty of their employees.
By contrast, private firms are thought to best serve the general interest by vigorously pursuing their own economic interests. Their task is to be highly efficient and competitive in the marketplace. Not only is profit the motivating factor in the world of business, the profit motive is viewed as a positive social and economic good. Private companies should not endanger the health and safety of their workers or that of the general community. Nor should they damage or destroy the environment. By and large, however, it is assumed to be government’s role to ensure, through proper regulation, that the private sector does not harm society at large. This is partly why it is plausible to hold that “public administration is not a kind of technology but a form of moral endeavor.”7
The Market
A closely related distinction between public and private administration concerns the market. Public agencies traditionally have not faced free, competitive markets in which their services or products are sold.8 For the most part, the price tags attached to governmental operations are established through budgetary procedures rather than fixed in the market through free transactions between buyer and seller. Revenues are generated largely through taxation, although in some cases user fees may be a substantial source of operating budgets. Additionally, bonds may be sold to pay for capital projects. Even where user fees are important, however, a governmental agency may be operating as a legal monopoly or be under a mandate to provide service to all people at a fixed cost, no matter how difficult or expensive it may be to reach them. The U.S. Postal Service’s mission regarding first-class mail is an example: The price of sending a letter from Miami to North Miami is the same as that of sending one to Honolulu or Nome.
The market is less constraining in the public sector than in the private sector. The market becomes most salient for public agencies when governments, primarily cities, are under severe fiscal constraints. In the long run, excessive taxation of the public in support of undesired or inefficient governmental operations can cause citizens (who are the consumers or customers of public administrative operations) to “opt out” of the system, by moving to another jurisdiction. Governments may also seek to contract out some services, such as trash collection. The federal, state, and local governments also
face market forces when they borrow money. The less strong their financial shape is, the more expensive borrowing is likely to be. But the governments in question are not likely to go out of existence. Unlike private firms, they cannot move “off shore” and rarely dissolve through bankruptcy.
The “public choice” movement holds that government agencies will be more responsive and efficient if they can be compelled to react to marketlike forces. For instance, public schools might be made to compete with one another by allowing parents the opportunity to choose which schools to send their children to within a general geographic area. Voucher systems can be used to promote competition between public and private schools.
Private firms typically face markets more directly. Under free-market conditions, if they fail to produce products or services at competitive prices, consumers take their business elsewhere, and a company’s income declines. Eventually the noncompetitive private firm will go out of business. In between the typical public agency and the private firm is a gray area in which not-forprofit organizations and highly regulated industries, such as many utilities, operate. Not-for-profit organizations (NPOs) fill an important niche in the economy, providing services that may not be sustained through market pricing, either because their clients lack the funds to pay for them, or because the goods provided have merit but cannot feasibly be provided either by the market (because they are public or quasi-public goods) or through government (because the services are provided on the basis of social or religious criteria that governments must steer clear of).
A vast number of NPOs operate in the United States. In 2011 the country had around 1.08 million tax-exempt organizations, the vast majority of them charitable or religious in nature. Social welfare agencies, business leagues, labor groups, social and veterans’ clubs, and fraternal societies make up the rest. NPOs received more than $298.42 billion in contributions in 2011, or around 2.0% of GDP, including $217.79 billion in the form of individual contributions (equal to 1.9% of household disposable income). In fact, some two-thirds of American households routinely donate money to NPOs, with the average gift in 2008 reaching $2,321. The remainder came from foundations ($41.67 billion), corporate donors ($14.55 billion), and bequests ($24.41 billion). NPOs also derive a substantial amount of revenue both from government sources and from their own business-type (for-profit) activities. This makes NPOs a significant partner with governments in addressing certain areas of social concern and need. It also formed the basis for the efforts of President George W. Bush to lever the activities of “faith-based and community initiatives” in the service of meeting some federal priorities.9
The remoteness of market forces from most public administrative operations has profound consequences. It enables government to provide services and products that could not profitably be offered by private firms. Some of these services and products are referred to as public goods or quasi-public goods. Broadly speaking, these are goods, such as national defense and lighthouses, that individuals cannot be excluded from enjoying, that are not exhausted or significantly diminished as more individuals use them, and for
which individuals do not compete with one another to acquire. It would be impossible to provide such goods in open, competitive markets, because individuals lack the incentive to purchase the goods, no matter how desirable they are. Why would an individual ship owner pay the full cost for a lighthouse when others, including competitors, would be able to benefit from it for free? Having a lighthouse might be in the public’s interest, but it would also be in everyone’s self-interest to obtain it free by letting someone else build and maintain it. Under these conditions, especially if the costs are significant, everyone may seek to be a “free rider” on another’s lighthouse. The net result would most likely be that no one would individually invest in lighthouses and their benefit to ships would be forgone.
Governments are not immune to the need to make economic trade-offs. Sometimes the trade-offs involve deciding how much to spend on highways versus welfare programs in the current budget. Sometimes they involve deciding whether to invest in preparation for natural disasters that may or may not occur versus spending on programs that are badly needed now. Box 1.2
1.2 TRADE-OFFS AND PUBLIC EXPECTATIONS: WHY THE U.S. WASN’T PREPARED FOR HURRICANE KATRINA, AND WHY IT PROBABLY WON’T BE PREPARED FOR THE NEXT ONE
Storms the scale of magnitude and destruction of Hurricane Katrina are appropriately called “100-year storms.” This tagline implies that storms bringing such destruction are a rare occurrence. It does not mean that Katrinas happen every 100 years, like clockwork. Rather, it is a crude way of indicating that the magnitude of the storm is inversely proportional to its probability of occurrence. Thus, smaller storms occur rather frequently; more violent ones occur more infrequently. Scientists know this as “Zipf’s Law,” and it describes the frequency and magnitude of many natural disasters, including not only hurricanes but also tornadoes, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Obviously, an appropriate understanding of the likelihood of a disaster’s occurrence is vital to government officials in providing the resources necessary for responding to them.
In the hurricane’s aftermath, it was clear that the United States—at all levels of government—was unprepared for Katrina’s devastating effects. A moment’s reflection, however, will reveal that the situation could not have been otherwise. To be fully prepared for such disasters, governments at all levels would have to have many hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of materiel and personnel in place, poised and waiting to respond. But the infrequency of these disasters cannot justify such a standing investment, especially in the face of more immediate and acute needs for funding education, health, and welfare. Hurricane preparedness simply cannot compete effectively against demands for immediately funding big-ticket items such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—all of which the public wants and expects. Further, in some important sense it does not appear to be rational to make such an overwhelming investment in a hurricane-specific response, because the next disaster may well be a major earthquake, volcano, or terror attack. It is difficult in the extreme to prepare for these calamities. As a consequence, the United States was not prepared for Hurricane Katrina, it was not prepared for super storm Sandy, which devastated the New York City region and New Jersey in 2012, and it probably won’t be adequately prepared for the next disaster either.
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FOOTNOTES:
[27] Copyright, 1911, by J B Lippincott Co , and used by permission
VIII
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
Markheim.—R L S
On the Stairs.—A M
He [the author] can sometimes rouse our intense curiosity and eagerness by the mere depiction of a psychological state, as Walter Pater has done in the case of Sebastian Storck and other personages of his Imaginary Portraits. The fact that “nothing happens” in stories of this kind may be precisely what most interests us, because we are made to understand what it is that inhibits action.—B P , A Study of Prose Fiction.
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
A subtle distinction is to be observed between the character-study and the psychological study, but it will not be supposed that writers of short-stories plainly label the distinction, or that the two types are frequently, if ever, found entirely separate. In the character-study more attention is paid to the true natures of the actors, and the demonstration of their natures is shown in the action of the story; in the psychological study more stress is laid upon the actual operation of thought, feeling and purpose—it is a laboratory study of what goes on in the human heart, to use a somewhat vague but necessary term, under stress of crisis.
The psychological study is the most difficult because the most penetrating of all short-story forms, and in consequence the most rare in its perfect presentation. To show the processes of reasoning, the interplay of motive, the power of feeling acting upon feeling, and the intricate combinations of these, calls for the most clear-sighted understanding of man, and the utmost skill in literary art, lest the story be lost in a fog of tiresome analysis and discussion. In “Markheim” and “On the Stairs,” two master story-tellers are easily at their best, for they never obtrude their own opinions, but swiftly and with a firm onward movement the stories disclose the true inward workings of the unique characters, while from mood, speech, and action we infallibly infer all the soul-processes by which their conclusions are reached.
MARKHEIM
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
“Yes,” said the dealer, “our wind-falls are of various kinds. Some customers are
I Remarkable because it at once
touches upon the external crisis of the story.
ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,” and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, “and in that case,” he continued, “I profit by my virtue.”
2. Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.
Note double reason.
See how daringly the author plays with the reader without arousing suspicion. Compare Stevenson’s reasoning as to the reader’s suspicions with Dupin’s reasoning in “The Purloined Letter,” pp. 91, 92.
3. The dealer chuckled. “You come to me on Christmas-day,” he resumed, “when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer can not look me in the eye, he has to pay for it.” The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, “You can give, as usual, a clean account of how you came into possession of the object?” he continued. “Still your uncle’s cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!”
Markheim has been there before.
4. And the little, pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror.
5. “This time,” he said, “you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have no
Forecast.
Insincerity evident.
curios to dispose of; my uncle’s cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas-present for a lady,” he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; “and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected.”
6. There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
7. “Well, sir,” said the dealer, “be it so. You are an old customer after all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now,” he went on, “this hand-glass—fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector.”
Compare this setting, as it is gradually unfolded, with that of Gautier’s “The Mummy’s Foot.”
Analyse its nature.
8. The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the hand that now received the glass.
9. “A glass,” he said, hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more clearly. “A
Contributory incident.
glass? For Christmas? Surely not?”
10. “And why not?” cried the dealer. “Why not a glass?”
Forecast.
11. Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. “You ask me why not?” he said. “Why, look here—look in it—look at yourself! Do you like to see it? No! nor I—nor any man.”
12. The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on hand, he chuckled. “Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard favoured,” said he.
13. “I ask you,” said Markheim, “for a Christmas-present, and you give me this— this damned reminder of years, and sins and follies—this hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?”
Note the working of Markheim’s morbid conscience, not yet understood by himself.
F M C
14. The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
15. “What are you driving at?” the dealer asked.
16. “Not charitable?” returned the other, gloomily “Not charitable; not pious; not scrupulous; unloving, unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?”
17. “I will tell you what it is,” began the dealer, with some sharpness, and then broke off again into a chuckle. “But I see this is a love match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady’s health.”
18. “Ah!” cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity “Ah, have you been in love? Tell me about that.”
19. “I,” cried the dealer “I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?”
Note change of attitude.
20. “Where is the hurry?” returned Markheim. “It is very pleasant to stand here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry away from any pleasure— no, not even from so mild a one as this. We should rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a cliff’s edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it—a cliff a mile high—high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each other; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows, we might become friends?”
Analyse the forces back of Markheim’s parleying.
21. “I have just one word to say to you,” said the dealer. “Either make your purchase, or walk out of my shop.”
22. “True, true,” said Markheim. “Enough fooling. To business. Show me something else.”
Note how quickly Markheim follows the unconscious lead.
F E C
23. The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the shelf, his thin blonde hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his great-coat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many different emotions were depicted together on his face —terror, horror and resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.
24. “This, perhaps, may suit,” observed the dealer; and then, as he began to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his
Note all these.
He was prepared for the crime.
victim. The long, skewerlike dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in a heap.
25. Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow as was becoming to their great age; others garrulous and hurried. All these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings. Then the passage of a lad’s feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.
Beginning of the internal action. Note how all external things now begin to play upon the internal man.
Throughout, note Stevenson’s rich imagery, and also his unusual vocabulary
An unusual word.
F M C Picture.
Evidence of premeditation.
Note the interplay of the outward picture and Markheim’s mind. Keep before you always the double movement of
26. From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim’s eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion—there it must lie till it was found. Found! ay, and then? Then would this dead
this study as both progress side by side, finally resulting in the predominance of the spiritual.
flesh lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead, or not, this was still the enemy. “Time was that when the brains were out,” he thought; and the first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was accomplished—time, which had closed for the victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.
27. The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz—the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
28. The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with a sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like scurrying of
The old motive reasserts itself.
P I
As fear subsides craft returns.
A significant expression.
Contrast physical and moral fear. Consider how the two are related.
rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin.
Note the primary use of the word “rumor.”
29. Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumor of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all the neighboring houses, he divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear—solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humor, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passerby; and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own house.
Contrast.
Study of fear. Impressionism.
An important observation.
30. But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white face beside his window, the passerby arrested by a horrible surmise on the pavement—these could at worst
Note how his reasoning becomes hyper-acute
suspect, they could not know; through the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, “out for the day” written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; and yet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a stir of delicate footing—he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred.
Forecast.
Note force of “blind.”
31. At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did there not hang wavering a shadow?
Pseudo crisis.
32. Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beat with a staff on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with shouts and railleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from his knocking and departed.
Contributory incident.
33. Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth from this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a
Note “apparent.”
bath of London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety and apparent innocence—his bed. One visitor had come: at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The money, that was now Markheim’s concern; and as a means to that, the keys.
Key
34. He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair day in a fisher’s village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly colored: Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of
Note subsidence of acute fears and rise of his true mood.
Carefully consider the question of Markheim’s sanity, judging only from the story as thus far told.
Reaction.
physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that day’s music returned upon his memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantly resist and conquer.
35. He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as the horologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor.
Key. What caused this benumbed conscience?
P I .
36. With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the keys and advanced toward the open door of the shop. Outside, it had begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton’s weight of resolve upon his muscles, and drew back the door.
Forecast of moral crisis.
Note harmony of setting with tone of approaching crisis.
37. The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs; on the bright suit of armor posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing; and on the dark wood-carvings, and framed pictures that hung against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim’s ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop, he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he would possess his soul. And then again, and hearkening with every fresh attention, he blessed himself for that unresisting sense which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from their orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half-rewarded as with the tail of something nameless, vanishing. The fourand-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
Compare Stevenson’s combination of fact and fantasy with Hawthorne’s in “The White Old Maid.”
Rise toward crisis.
Body and spirit.
A notable passage.
38. On that first story, the doors stood ajar, three of them like three ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men’s observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at
Note the exception.
Note how suspense in the reader is maintained by disclosing Markheim’s suspense.
that thought he wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission in the continuity of man’s experience, some willful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chess-board, should break the mold of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; ay, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him; if, for instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that he felt sure of justice.
Key
Is this normal?
39. When he had got safe into the drawingroom, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous furniture; several great pierglasses, in which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on the stage; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with
Note action of autosuggestion.
Remarkable relief in suspense period.
tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw the door—even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate of his defenses. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and voices of many children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images; church-going children and the pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
40. And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.
41. Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the dead man
Powerful contrast.
Approach of moral crisis.
Markheim perceives only a physical
walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned.
42. “Did you call me?” he asked, pleasantly, and with that he entered the room and closed the door behind him.
danger. Note how long he remains dead to any moral judgment of himself. Here is a real though unrecognized moral crisis. Fear eventually leads to his moral triumph.
Note the symbolism of the closed door
43. Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle-light of the shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror, there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the earth and not of God.
K
This states the problem.
44. And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: “You are looking for the money, I believe?” it was in the tones of everyday politeness.
45. Markheim made no answer.
46. “I should warn you,” resumed the other, “that the maid has left her sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences.”
47. “You know me?” cried the murderer.
48. The visitor smiled. “You have long been a favorite of mine,” he said; “and I have long observed and often sought to
help you.”
49. “What are you?” cried Markheim: “the devil?”
50. “What I may be,” returned the other, “cannot affect the service I propose to render you.”
51. “It can,” cried Markheim; “it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by you! You do not know me yet, thank God, you do not know me!”
This is an important passage. Forecast of Markheim’s struggle with his better self.
52. “I know you,” replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or rather firmness. “I know you to the soul.”
53. “Know me!” cried Markheim. “Who can do so? My life is but a travesty and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature. All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control—if you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time, I could disclose myself.”
54. “To me?” inquired the visitant.
Does Markheim really know himself?
Note the author’s name for Markheim.
55. “To you before all,” returned the murderer “I supposed you were intelligent. I thought—since you exist—you would prove a reader of the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it; my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother—the giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by
Seek a cause for such reasoning.
any willful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity—the unwilling sinner?”
Note the distinction between the final importance of cause and effect.
Contrast.
56. “All this is very feelingly expressed,” was the reply. “But it regards me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is as if the gallows itself was striding toward you through the Christmas streets! Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell you where to find the money?”
57. “For what price?” asked Markheim.
58. “I offer you the service for a Christmas gift,” returned the other.
M M C .
A test of Markheim’s consistency.
59. Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph. “No,” said he, “I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing to commit myself to evil.”
60. “I have no objection to a death-bed repentance,” observed the visitant.
61. “Because you disbelieve their efficacy!” Markheim cried.
62. “I do not say so,” returned the other; “but I look on these things from a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under color of religion, or to sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can add but one act of service—to repent, to die smiling, and
