August 27, 2025

Madison's Managers: Public Administration and the Constitution

22 minutes

Explores how managerial discretion, inherently present in public tasks, can be reconciled with Madisonian constitutional design, emphasizing a "precept of managerial responsibility." The authors integrate traditional thought with contemporary social science and formal theory, particularly contract economics and social choice theory, to argue that the public personnel function is crucial to ensuring administrative actions reflect popular will. The text also traces the evolution of administrative law and the politics-administration dichotomy, asserting that traditional public administration, contrary to later critiques, aimed to establish a legitimate constitutional role for public management. Ultimately, the work advocates for a public management defined by individuals possessing judgment, balance, rationality, and accountability to uphold constitutional values.

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