Last weekend, I attended the 120^th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA).  As usual, I had a delightful time connecting with kindred spirits who think about government institutions, how they work, and who gets to influence public policy.

And I could not help but think back to those who attended the same conference in 1904.  Max Weber, one of the leading theorists on bureaucracy, had just published his essay on objectivity in social science and policy.  In that piece, he emphasized the connection between practical perspectives on social problems and scholarly studies of the structures of political power.  

That same year, a committee of political scientists sought an effective practical role for those who studied political institutions.  That committee included soon-to-become President Woodrow Wilson, who wrote the foundational essay on “what the government can properly and successfully do and. . .how it can do these things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost of either money or of energy.”

As a member of the committee and principal founder of APSA, administrative and constitutional law Professor Frank J. Goodnow reinforced Weber and Wilson’s insights and stressed how politics and administration affect democracy. 

Fast forward over a century and, despite their common foundations in seeking to understand the dynamics of administrative policymaking, those who devote their professional lives to administrative statecraft largely have placed themselves in intellectual silos.  

Put by Professor Gillian Metzger, even accepting their common concern with administrative governance, “the fields of administrative law [, political science,] and public administration interact largely as passing strangers, acknowledging each other’s existence but almost never engaging in any sustained interchange.”

My experience at APSA reinforced Professor Metzger’s observation.  I was on a panel chaired by Professor Lauren Bell, who formerly served as an APSA congressional fellow on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as a Supreme Court fellow at the United States Sentencing Commission.  The panel’s members included Professors George Krause, who studies the implications of shared power arrangements for administrative governance, and Jason Byers, who integrates data science with exploration of administrative policymaking.  In addition, Professor Pamela J. Clouser McCann, an expert on intergovernmental relations who previously worked as a genetic counselor for state agencies in North Carolina and Michigan, shared her insights on congressional delegation of policymaking authority to state, local, and tribal governments.

Yet, despite the intellectual powerhouses on my panel, I could not help but think about the missing voices – scholars steeped in administrative law and those with decades worth of practical experience in federal administration.  Not to mention those who represent the perspectives of people who are affected by administrative governance on a daily basis.  The very things that motivated APSA’s first annual meeting.

Such gaps in viewpoint are not unique to my experience at APSA.  In my previous work as senior attorney advisor at the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), I constantly puzzled over the lack of communication between government officials and scholars who study administrative and constitutional law, political science, and public administration.  

ACUS’s recently adopted recommendations provide nice examples.  The extensive scholarly reports on which these recommendations relied spoke to the ambiguities Congress should avoid when drafting statutes that provide for judicial review of agency actions; best practices for agencies as they manage and respond to congressional constituent service inquiries; whether, when, how, and how often Senate-confirmed officials participate in federal adjudication; and how federal agencies respond to requests for advice from members of the public.

Each of these topics involve research questions with which generations of scholars across a variety of disciplines have grappled.  Yet the reports primarily spoke to administrative law scholars.  Great for us!  But not so great for administrative governance.  

Because of a lack of shared language, research methods, and networks, many of us who study the administrative state do not have the broad reach we should.  This blog series hopes to change that.

By definition, statecraft is the art of conducting government affairs.  This series highlights the important work being done by those in government, the academic academy, and good governance organizations to promote statecraft in the administrative context. 

At least once a month, this series will highlight timely research from a variety of governmental perspectives and scholarly disciplines.  In the lead-up to the 2024 election, that means election administration.  For, as the Presidential Commission on Election Administration put succinctly a decade ago, “election administration is public administration.”

In November, as we all take time to reflect on Election Day, the series will highlight scholarship that explores how and when the administrative state is designed to be responsive to political change (or not), as well as research that examines the dynamics of public participation in the administration of regulatory programs.

Then, just as the president-elect will be vetting prospective appointees to serve in the next presidential administration, December’s post(s) will explore scholarly insights on the appointment and confirmation of political appointees and the impact these appointees may have on federal administration.

Considered individually or as a cohesive whole, it is my hope that the posts in this series help build intellectual bridges both across and within fields of study and promote substantive progress in administrative governance.  Just as the founders of APSA wanted.