Part VI: The Past as Prelude: Were the Predictions of Classic Scholars Correct? Kenneth J. Meier is the Charles H. Gregory Chair in Liberal Arts and Dis- tinguished Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University. He is also a professor of public management in the Cardiff School of Business, Cardiff University (Wales). In addition to his major research agenda on empirical studies of public management, he is interested in race and public policy, methodological innovations in public ad- ministration, and the relationship between democracy and bureaucracy. E-mail: kmeier@politics.tamu.edu S284 Public Administration Review • December 2010 • Special Issue Kenneth J. Meier Texas A&M University Governance, Structure, and Democracy: Luther Gulick and the Future of Public Administration Luther Gulick was both an academic and a reformer. In the latter role, he thought seriously about what the future of public administration might look like. his essay examines his work as a lens through which to view the future of public administration in 2020. Gulick suggests that public administration needs a governance orientation to link scholarship with the realities of practice, a recognition of the bias of structures, a stress on the informal elements of organization, additional research on almost every question, a recognition of the importance of ethics, a stress on the importance of context, and a fundamental appreciation of the role that public management plays in fostering democracy. I n many ways, both the practice of public admin- istration and the study of it in 2020 will be much like they are today. Seeing trends, however, can be facilitated by a historical view; this essay will take the writings of Luther Gulick for this purpose. Although much of academic public administration has dis- missed the contributions of Luther Gulick, this is an unfortunate result of Herbert Simon’s “Proverbs of Administration” (1946) critique of the field, a critique that was perceived to focus on Gulick. his absence of attention to pre-Simon literature is problematic, how- ever, because Simon misconstrued the work of Gulick (Hammond 1990), and, as a result, generations of scholars have not read Gulick’s work and misinterpret his contribution through the eyes of Simon’s critique. 1 Alter- natively, scholars view Gulick as having a single-minded focus on efficiency but do not incor- porate the full range of his work (see Miller 2007, xiii; Rosen- bloom and McCurdy 2007, 3). Because Gulick was a reform advocate, he was much con- cerned with both the future status of public adminis- tration and how that status might be changed through specific reforms (Fitch 1990). Gulick treated public administration as a design science, concerned not just with how things are but how things might be. Gulick’s view of the scope of public administration in this regard was very broad: “he science of administration is thus the system of knowledge whereby men may understand relationships, predict results, and influence outcomes in any situation where men are organized at work together for a common purpose” (1937b,191). As we shall see in this essay, the criterion “in any situation working together for a common purpose” encompasses all aspects of governance, not just the reform of administration. he phrase “influence outcomes” clearly designates public administration as a design science, the particular challenges of which were readily apparent to Gulick. In the conclusion to Papers on the Science of Administration, he noted how much tougher an administrative science is than natural science. “Natural science, after all, has undertaken the comparatively simple and easy task of understanding the mechanistic and mathematical relationships of the physical world and has left to philosophy, ethics, reli- gion, education, sociology, political science and other social sciences the truly difficult and the truly impor- tant aspects of life and knowledge” (1937b, 191). 2 his essay addresses specific works of Luther Gulick that provide insight as to how the scholarship and practice of public administration are likely to be in 2020. hese include a governance orientation to align scholarship with the realities of practice, a recognition of the bias created by organizational structures, a recognition of the role of informal organization, the need for additional research in public administration, the central nature of ethics and val- ues, the role that public manag- ers play in fostering democracy, and the importance of context. The Governance Approach Gulick would view contemporary public adminis- tration scholarship as exceptionally narrow and not [Luther] Gulick treated public administration as a design science, concerned not just with how things are but how things might be. Gulick’s view of the scope of public administration in this regard was very broad. . . .