Frank Johnson Goodnow Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Frank Johnson Goodnow (1859–1939) was an American professor of administrative law and political science, a university president, and a progressive social reform advocate. Cofounder and first elected president of the American Political Science Association, he is considered the “father of public administration.” His prolific scientific work—he authored a dozen books and more than sixty articles—did not preclude him from engaging in frequent public service efforts.

A graduate of Amherst College, Goodnow received a law degree from Columbia University Law School in 1882. He completed his education with a year of study at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques in Paris and at the University of Berlin. In 1884, he was appointed to the Columbia School of Political Science. He remained affiliated with Columbia for thirty years before accepting the post of president of Johns Hopkins University in 1914, a position he left only to retire in 1929.

His first book, Comparative Administrative Law:An Analysis of the Administrative Systems, National and Local, of the United States, England, France and Germany (1893), followed a mainly legalistic approach but brought at least two major contributions to the political science of his time. It was the first of a long series of volumes in which Goodnow initiated the systematic study of public administration as well as a pioneer work in the United States for the use of a comparative method of inquiry.

His classic, Politics and Administration: A Study in Government (1900), is an influential analysis of the American political system. It also triggered one of the most enduring controversies in political science. Following U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, Goodnow carved a dichotomy between two distinct functions of government, politics as the sphere that “has to do with the guiding or influencing of governmental policy” and administration as the sphere that “has to do with the execution of that policy,” that has been fiercely debated. Severely criticized by Dwight Waldo in his Study of the Administration (1955), the discredited separation between politics and administration has now been replaced in the work of public administration specialists like James H. Svara by the notion of interrelationship. However, Samuel C. Patterson and other contemporary scholars who argue that Goodnow has been misinterpreted are rehabilitating the distinction. According to them, he intended the “typological distinction” for analytical purposes only.

Goodnow’s acknowledged expertise in public administration and his taste for public service earned him numerous appointments to commissions and boards. In 1900, he helped redraft the New York City charter. In 1911, he served on President Howard Taft’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency, and in 1913 he took a leave of absence to become legal adviser to the president of the Chinese Republic. Goodnow was a trustee of the Institute for Government Research and the Brookings Institution. He is remembered as a proponent of progressive policies and a tireless critic of political corruption.

Goodnow also dedicated part of his life to the institutionalization of political science as a discipline. Already a founding editor of the Political Science Quarterly (1886), Goodnow took part in the creation of the American Political Science Association and was chosen to serve as its first president for two consecutive terms in 1904 and 1905. Even though he was a vocal progressive advocate himself, during his presidency Goodnow was particularly concerned with building the reputation of scientific objectivity and the nonpartisan image of the association.

Bibliography:

Fairlie, John A.. “Frank Johnson Goodnow.” The American Political Science Review 34 (1940): 114–117.
Goodnow, Frank Johnson. “The Work of the American Political Science Association.” Proceedings of the American Political Science Association 1 (1904): 35–46.
Haines, Charles Grove, and Marshall Edward Dimock, eds. Essays on the Law and Practice of Governmental Administration: A Volume in Honor of Frank Johnson Goodnow. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1935.
Patterson, Samuel C. “Remembering Frank J. Goodnow.” PS: Political Science and Politics 34, no. 4 (December 2001): 875–881.

This example Frank Johnson Goodnow Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.