Trying to Professionalize Expert Knowledge (Part I): The Short Life of the Municipal Administration Service, 1926-1933

Mordecai Lee

doi:10.22140/pv.525

Trying to Professionalize Expert Knowledge (Part I): The Short Life of the Municipal Administration Service, 1926-1933

Public Voices ◽

10.22140/pv.525 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 9 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mordecai Lee

Keyword(s):

Best Practices ◽

Public Administration ◽

Expert Knowledge ◽

Building Blocks ◽

Early History ◽

Short Life ◽

Organizational History ◽

Municipal Administration ◽

History Of ◽

Wide Dissemination

One of the building blocks of the professionalization of American public administration was the recognition of the need for expert knowledge and the wide dissemination of that information to practitioners. Municipal civil servants could adopt and adapt these best practices in their localities. Such was the purpose of the Municipal Administration Service (1926-1933), initially founded by the National Municipal League and funded by the Rockefeller philanthropies. This article is an organizational history of the Service. It presents the life cycle of the agency, including its operations, funding, problems, and the behind-the-scenes public administration politics which led to its demise. In all, the Municipal Administration Service captures the early history of American public administration, its attempt to demonstrate that it was a full-fledged profession with recognized experts and managerial advice that ultimately proved unable to perpetuate itself.

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Trying to Professionalize Expert Knowledge (Part II): A Short History of Public Administration Service, 1933-2003

Public Voices ◽

10.22140/pv.509 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 29

Author(s):

Mordecai Lee

Keyword(s):

Best Practices ◽

Public Administration ◽

Expert Knowledge ◽

Short History ◽

High Quality ◽

Organizational History ◽

The Us ◽

History Of ◽

Applied Knowledge ◽

Important Building Block

An important building block for the professionalization of public administration in the US was the establishment of a service of experts to research, advise, consult, and disseminate high quality applied knowledge. Then practitioners around the country could adopt and adapt these best practices in their localities. That was the purpose of Public Administration Service (PAS), which existed from 1933 to 2003. This article is an organizational history of the Service, how it evolved, and why it dissolved. PAS’s life-cycle serves as something of a synecdoche of 20th century American public administration as a whole: its rise, golden years, and slow demise.

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Public Administration In Ancient China: The Practice and Thought

Public Voices ◽

10.22140/pv.422 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 25

Author(s):

Vatche Gahrielian

Keyword(s):

Public Administration ◽

Political Thought ◽

Civil Service ◽

Early History ◽

Military Strategy ◽

Public Administrators ◽

Ancient China ◽

Sun Tzu ◽

History Of

Modem public administrators can gain useful insights by studying centuries old administrative phenomena and philosophical teachings. This essay discusses the development of Chinese civil service and the important role it played during the early history of Chinese civilization. Approaches to public administration and governance in three important streams of political thought of ancient China-Taoism, Confucianism and Legalism - are explored, as well as similar ideas in Sun Tzu' s classic treatise on military strategy.

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A Brief History of the International Test Commission

The ITC International Handbook of Testing and Assessment ◽

10.1093/med:psych/9780199356942.003.0003 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 29-34

Author(s):

Thomas Oakland

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Best Practices ◽

Test Development ◽

Test Construction ◽

Early History ◽

Exchange Of Information ◽

Ethics Code ◽

History Of ◽

Inkblot Test ◽

Test Use

Chapter 3 highlights the history of test development and test use and the development of the International Test Commission (ITC). The chapter addresses the early history of psychological assessment and the emergence of the discipline of psychology in the first half of the twentieth century. With the emergence and widespread use of the Stanford-Binet and Rorschach Inkblot Test, Jean Cardinet envisioned an international test commission that would develop an ethics code, standards for test construction and evaluation, and create a journal to promote an exchange of information. Now the ITC’s primary goal is to assist in the exchange of information on test development and test use among its members and affiliate organizations, as well as with non-member societies, organizations, and individuals who desire to improve test-related practices. The ITC continues to engage in formulation of policies and best practices related to test development and test use.

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Device and Composition in the Greek Epic Cycle

10.1093/oso/9780190614843.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Benjamin Sammons

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Building Blocks ◽

Large Scale Structure ◽

Early History ◽

Narrative Construction ◽

Essential Difference ◽

Trojan War ◽

Greek Epic ◽

History Of ◽

Ancient Times

From a corpus of Greek epics known in antiquity as the “Epic Cycle,” six poems dealt with the same Trojan War mythology as the Homeric poems. Though they are now lost, these poems were much read and much discussed in ancient times, not only for their content but for their mysterious relationship with the more famous works attributed to Homer. This study shows that these lost poems belonged, compositionally, to essentially the same tradition as the Homeric poems. It demonstrates that various compositional devices well-known from the Homeric epics were also fundamental to the narrative construction of these later works. Yet while the “cyclic” poets constructed their works using the same traditional devices as Homer, they used these to different ends and with different results. The essential difference between cyclic and Homeric epics lies not in the fundamental building blocks from which they are constructed, but in the scale of these components relative to the overall construction of poems. This sheds important light on the early history of epic as a genre, since it is likely that these devices originally developed to provide large-scale structure to shorter poems and have been put to quite different use in the composition of the monumental Homeric epics. This study includes many new suggestions about the overall form of lost cyclic epics and about the meaning and context of the few surviving verse fragments.

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Towards the Centre: Early Neoliberals in the Netherlands and the Rise of the Welfare State, 1945–1958

Contemporary European History ◽

10.1017/s0960777318000887 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 30-43 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bram Mellink

Keyword(s):

The Netherlands ◽

Welfare State ◽

Early History ◽

The Political ◽

European Welfare State ◽

History Of ◽

Anglo American ◽

Wide Dissemination ◽

The Welfare State

Although scholars have recently taken an increased interest in the history of neoliberalism, the ‘breakthrough’ of neoliberalism under Thatcher and Reagan still captures most of their attention. Consequently, the neoliberal project is primarily taken as Anglo-American, while its early history is mostly studied to explain the political shift of the 1980s. This article focuses on the early neoliberal movement in the Netherlands (1945–58) to highlight the continental European roots of neoliberal thought, trace the remarkably wide dissemination of neoliberal ideas in Dutch socio-economic debates and highlight the key role of these ideas in the conceptualisation of the Western European welfare state.

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Some early history of replica techniques for electron microscopy

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100130018 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 50 (2) ◽

pp. 1076-1077

Author(s):

Robert M. Fisher

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Electron Microscopy ◽

Optical Microscope ◽

Early History ◽

Bulk Materials ◽

Thin Sections ◽

Transmission Electron ◽

Reflected Light ◽

History Of ◽

Electron Microscopes

By 1940, a half dozen or so commercial or home-built transmission electron microscopes were in use for studies of the ultrastructure of matter. These operated at 30-60 kV and most pioneering microscopists were preoccupied with their search for electron transparent substrates to support dispersions of particulates or bacteria for TEM examination and did not contemplate studies of bulk materials. Metallurgist H. Mahl and other physical scientists, accustomed to examining etched, deformed or machined specimens by reflected light in the optical microscope, were also highly motivated to capitalize on the superior resolution of the electron microscope. Mahl originated several methods of preparing thin oxide or lacquer impressions of surfaces that were transparent in his 50 kV TEM. The utility of replication was recognized immediately and many variations on the theme, including two-step negative-positive replicas, soon appeared. Intense development of replica techniques slowed after 1955 but important advances still occur. The availability of 100 kV instruments, advent of thin film methods for metals and ceramics and microtoming of thin sections for biological specimens largely eliminated any need to resort to replicas.

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