Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Reform, and Public Administration
It is fast becoming fashionable today to bad-mouth the contributions of scholar-president Woodrow Wilson to American public administration. To be sure, everyone acknowledges that his 1887 essay, "The Study of Administration," published in Political Science Quarterly, was a significant starting point of some kind. 1 For example, Leonard D. White, the preeminent public-administration scholar of the pre-World War II era, wrote that "the study of administration . . . dates from the brilliant essay by Woodrow Wilson."2 Dwight Waldo, arguably the most important public-administration scholar of the pre-World War II era, has referred to Wilson's essay as "the most important document in the development of the field."3 As Robert T. Golembiewski has put it, "Virtually everyone agrees that Woodrow Wilson's 'The Study of Administration' constitutes the birth certificate of the modern study of public administration."4 One could offer a long list of such accolades. Nevertheless, Wilson's standing