Abstract
The sharing of authority with private and quasi-private institutions is a central feature of modern government. Novel administrative arrangements have emerged which present intricate new problems for the public and for the private sectors. Indeed, the intermingling of functions, the relationships of financial dependence on the government, and the interpretation of highly skilled manpower cadres have obliterated many of the traditional ‘public-private’ distinctions. A new type of public sector has emerged, drawing heavily on the energies of society outside of the formal government.1 This development is paralleled by the transformation of parts of the private sector into something more ‘public’ in character. These developments have stirred wide criticism—both from those who fear ‘creeping nationalization’ and the aggrandizement of public power and from those who are afraid that government will be dominated by private interests. The papers in this volume analyze various aspects of this ‘new’ political economy and especially seek to clarify the broad public policy issues resulting from the new developments. The aim of the introductory chapter is to provide the context so that the reader can see more easily the connecting threads among the several chapters.
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Notes
See Bruce L. R. Smith and D. C. Hague, The Dilemma of Accountability in Modern Government: Independence vs. Control ( Macmillan and St Martin’s Press, New York and London, 1971 ).
Anthony Barker, D. C. Hague, and W. J. M. Mackenzie, Public Policy and Private Interests: the Institutions of Compromise ( Macmillan, London, 1874 ).
Robert Gilpin, France in the Age of the Scientific State ( Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1968 ).
Hoover Commission, Report on General Management of the Executive Branch 1949, p. 1.
Luther Gulick and L. Urwick (eds.), Papers on the Science of Administration (New York, Institute of Public Administration, 1937) pp. 1–45, esp. p. 6.
Harold Seidman, Politics, Position, and Power: the Dynamics of Federal Organization ( Oxford University Press, London, 1970 ) pp. 29–30.
See inter alia Don K. Price, The Scientific Estate ( Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1965 );
Michael D. Reagan, The Managed Economy (Oxford University Press, New York, 1963 );
H. L. Nieburg, In the Name of Science (Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1970); Alan Pifer, ‘The Quasi Non-governmental Organization,’ 1967 Annual Report, Carnegie Corporation of New York City; Kenneth Boulding, The Grants Economy (Wadsworth Press, forthcoming); and John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose.
Robert A. Lively, ‘The American System: A Review Article,’ in Stanley Cobin and Forest G. Hill (eds.), American Economic History: Essays in Interpretation (J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1966 ) pp. 178–96.
For a discussion of the early development of the doctrine of ‘affected with a public interest,’ see Dexter Merriman Keezer and Stacy May, The Public Control of Business (Harper and Brother, New York, 1930) chs. v and v1. For later cases and commentary see William B Lockhart, Yale Kamisar, Jesse H. Choper, The American Constitution: Cases and Materials (West Publishing Co., St Paul, 1970) pp. 319–46, especially note Nebbia v. New York 1934, p. 320: ‘It is clear that there is no closed class or category of business affected with a public interest….’
See John Rawls, A Theory of justice (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1971), as an example of the changing conceptions of equality and differential rewards as being justified only if leading to greater benefits for society’s disadvantaged: in an earlier day the individual was thought to deserve whatever his efforts would gain and by advancing him or herself the overall interest of society would be advanced. II. See Don K. Price, The Scientific Estate op. cit., ch. 2.
Walter Dean Burnham, one of the chief advocates of the erosion-of-theparties thesis, sees a ‘top-bottom’ coalition against the ‘great middle’ as a likely basis for future political battles in the U.S. See his Critical Elections (Norton, New York, 1970 ). This thesis is imaginative and has considerable appeal; its chief difficulty is that it does not conform to the available evidence. Cf. James Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System ( The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1973 ).
On Britain’s ‘civic culture,’ see John M. Gaus, Great Britain: A Study of Civic Loyalty ( University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1929 ).
On the multinational firm, see Raymond Vernon, Sovereignty at Bay (Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1971 ).
From a background paper by John J. Corson prepared for the Anglo-American Conference on Accountability held at Williamsburg, Va., September 1971. See also Corson, Business in the Humane Society ( McGraw-Hill, New York, 1971 ).
On the origins of the anti-power attitudes in the U.S., see James S. Young, The Washington Community: 1800–1828 ( Columbia University Press, New York, 1966 ).
Charles Schultze, et al., Setting National Priorities, the 1973 Budget ( The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1972 ).
See R. W. Nichols, ‘The Coming Salting of Defense R and D,’ Innovation, No. 26 (Nov. 1971) pp. 45–56.
Arthur Miller, ‘Accountability and the Federal Contractor,’ Journal of Public Law, Emory University Law School, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1971) pp. 443–478
E.g., John Saloma, Congress and the New Politics ( Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1969 ).
See, inter alia Raymond H. Dawson, ‘Congressional Innovation and Intervention in Defense Policy: Legislative Authorization of Weapons Systems,’ American Political Science Review Vol. Lv1, No. 1 (Mar 1965) pp. 42–57;
William E. Rhode, Committee Clearance of Administrative Decisions (Michigan State Bureau of Social and Political Research, East Lansing, Michigan, 1959);
and Joseph P. Harris, Congressional Control of Administration (Doubleday and Co., Anchor Books, Garden City, New York, 1965 ).
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Smith, B.L.R. (1975). The Public Use of the Private Sector. In: Smith, B.L.R. (eds) The New Political Economy: The Public Use of the Private Sector. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02042-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02042-3_1
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