Dwight Waldo

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For Dr. Dwight B. Waldo, first president of Western Michigan University, see Dwight B. Waldo.

Dwight Waldo (1913 – 27 October 2000) was an American political scientist and is perhaps the defining figure in modern public administration. Waldo's career was often directed against a scientific/technical portrayal of bureaucracy and government that now suggests the term public management as opposed to public administration. Recognized the world over for his contributions to the theory of bureaucratic government, Waldo is only now taking his place as one of the most important political scientists of the last 100 years.

Born in rural Nebraska, and trained first in a local Wesleyan college and then a Nebraska normal school as a teacher, Waldo was eventually educated in political theory at the University of Nebraska (MA) and Yale University (PhD) where he was advised by Francis Coker and others.

He came to shape much of the future of scholarship in the field of Public Administration. His Yale dissertation was reworked after civil service during World War II into a classic (perhaps the classic) work of public administration called The Administrative State, published in 1948. Also famous for a debate on the nature of bureaucracy in Public Administration Review with Herbert Simon just after World War II, Waldo framed public administration as an essential element of democratic governance. Eventually he taught at the University of California, Berkeley and the Maxwell School at Syracuse University where he influenced many future scholars of government.

He had profound influence on a number of young academics in the late 1960s by organizing the Minnowbrook Conference. Others deeply indebted to Waldo for guidance and sponsorship include H. George Frederickson and Gary Wamsley.

His many friends included Leonard D. White, Harold Seidman, Lynton K. Caldwell, Paul P. Van Riper, Emmette Redford and Frederick C. Mosher, whom Waldo called "the doyen of public administration."

[edit] Further reading

  • Brian R. Fry: Mastering Public Administration: From Max Weber to Dwight Waldo (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1989)
  • Brack Brown & Richard J. Stillman, II: A Search for Public Administration: The Ideas and Career of Dwight Waldo (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 1986).
  • See also H. George Frederickson and Frank Marini: "Bureaucracy and Democracy: Essays in Honor of Dwight Waldo" and "Modern Comparative Administration: Essays in Honor of Dwight Waldo," Public Administration Review (May/June 1997, Vol 57, No 3., and June/July 1997, Vol 57, No 4).

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