Bureau Men, Settlement Women: Constructing Public Administration in the Progressive Era

Two decades ago, Camilla Stivers penned a gendered evaluation of the history of Public Administration, Bureau Men, Settlement Women: Constructing Public Administration in the Progressive Era (2000). In the book, Stivers amplifies the previously muffled voices of women who contributed to changes in governance at the turn of the 20th century. In a subsequent essay on feminisms in Public Administration and the reception of the book, Stivers wrote it “sank like a stone and left few ripples” (Stivers, 2005, p. 365). However, those ripples are a foundational “play book” of arguments for inclusion. Stivers’s sunken stone symbolizes the inclusion of marginalized voices in not just the telling of the history of Public Administration but in the administrative processes examined in scholarship and used in practice.

This is not the first or even second scholastic review of Bureau Men, Settlement Women; however, the book endures as one of the few examinations of the influence and contributions of women on the changes to the sphere of governance. Our contemporary social challenges warrant a reminder of this groundbreaking work. The vitriol aimed at the marginalized begs for Public Administration scholarship and praxis to dive deep, recover the stone, and make some ripples. To see Stivers’s ripples, one need only examine the impetus for the book, some of the gendered examinations, and how the subtlest argument of the book, derived from its impetus, remains its true legacy.

Stivers’s impetus for contextualizing public administration’s history

In the preface, Stivers acknowledged her intellectual inspiration. Stivers (2000) heeded Dwight Waldo’s admonitions in The Administrative State, “to think of public administration as a political philosophy and to think of it historically” (p. ix). Waldo argued the field of Public Administration limits itself by neglecting parts of its past. Most studies of the discipline’s naissance, history, or orthodoxy focus on efficient and effective governance. This orthodoxy created a rather narrow and constrained perspective of a complex field. For Waldo, Public Administration’s history reveals a greater phenomenon, the development of a method at the expense of the development of new ideas. Waldo made his admonitions nearly 75 years ago and yet, it seems, any challenges to the orthodoxy come from the muffled voices of a few scholars, heard and understood by a marginalized audience.

As we move through the early decades of the 21st century and witness social movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and LGBTQ+ Rights Movements, it is evident there needs to be more ripples. The perpetually muffled voices of many of the people administrators serve, want and need to be heard. Much like our beloved discipline of Public Administration’s founders, we have an opportunity, and possibly an obligation, to improve the processes of government. Bureau Men, Settlement Women challenges its readers with a crucial and profound argument, the stories of the past limit the present and future and leave open the question of what remains unknown.

One way to respond to contemporary social movements would be for members of the field to contextualize its orthodoxy, examine its canon, and amplify muffled voices, past and present. Without this contextualization, examination, and amplification, the search for an efficient and effective process of governance, that best meets the needs of the people it serves, might be forever in vain. Admittedly, reevaluating history is not a novel idea. However, each reevaluation of history broadens the perspective of the story being told. Historical evaluations of previously overlooked groups unearth not just different approaches but different injustices. (Stivers, 2000). Stivers wrote Bureau Men, Settlement Women specifically to contextualize the orthodoxy, examine the canon, and amplify the muffled voices of women. Evaluations of the layers in language and social mores highlight the gendered nature of the history of public administration and reveal its inequities. The book challenges the foundations of Public Administration and examines the previously ignored contributions of the Settlement House movement (principally led by women).

The construction of public administration

To contextualize the story of Public Administration, the book begins by detailing the need for a useable past. As Stivers explained, finding a usable past requires the “recovery of ‘aspects … which now lie buried’” (Stivers, 2000, p. 2). Beneath a dominant story of history lies an interconnected web of influences from actions and actors outside of the story told. The web of influences does not mark one story, but marks all stories (told and buried) of the past. Examining the buried stories encourages us to reconsider the stories we already know (Stivers, 2000). The telling of the stories of Settlement Women encourages us to reconsider changes in municipal government developed by the Municipal Research Bureaus.

For example, often absent from the history of public administration, initial efforts for reform in New York City were political (Stivers, 2000). The political campaigns of reformers argued for good government or “at least expressed an interest in using government to better the conditions of people’s lives” (Stivers, 2000, p. 33). Arguing for good government projected feminine images (Stivers, 2000). Goodness implied feminine features, not masculine characteristics. To combat the reform campaign, machine party politicians insulted and accused male reformers of being concerned with the work of women (Stivers, 2000).

The failure of these efforts was in part because of the language of the campaigns (i.e., their feminine rhetoric) and in part because of their political nature. In response to the machine party politicians, the reformers overhauled the campaigns with the development of a nonpartisan, apolitical method for change, the research bureau. With the establishment of the New York Municipal Research Bureau, reformers began to use the masculine language of science and management to project the image of rigor and control (Stivers, 2000). The acceptance of nonpartisan, apolitical methods to governance and the Municipal Research Bureaus illustrates the gendered dynamics of reform at the turn of the 20th century.

Additionally, independently and privately organized, research bureaus replaced the language of politics with the language of business. To secure the support and the funding of industrialists, like John D. Rockefeller, reformers identified issues and presented solutions in terms the industrialists understood (Stivers, 2000). Describing municipal reforms in masculine terms like facts, analysis, science equated municipal governments to businesses and legitimated the changes for which the reformers argued (Stivers, 2000). Business makes the most from the least amount of money or operates efficiently while maintaining effectiveness. Later Bureaus, in other municipalities, like Philadelphia, adopted New York’s model and argued for “business like” methods to improve efficiency and effectiveness in municipal government (Stivers, 2000). Thus, the Bureaus defined the subsequent discipline of Public Administration in terms and ideas that are typically understood as masculine.

Conversely, reform women focused on improving the lives of the marginalized. Using the language of home and family, Settlement Women defined good government in terms of care and social rights rather than power and individual liberties (Stivers, 2000). A focus on good government in terms of social rights distinguished the Settlement Movement from the Municipal Research Bureaus. The Settlement Movement asked how can the government help people; the Research Bureaus asked how do we prevent the government from misusing our money.

For the settlers, the first step in the improvement of the wretched conditions in the cities was to understand the people who lived in the conditions (Stivers, 2000). One cannot help someone they do not understand. Settlement houses existed in and Settlement Women lived in the neighborhoods they served (Stivers, 2000); the space where the poor and disadvantaged dwelled. Each city, each neighborhood and each home had specific challenges. Only by living in each city and each neighborhood with those who needed the most help could one understand the social condition. The Settlement Women walked the same streets and shopped in the same stores and at the same food carts as the people they served. Living life with the people they served, allowed settlers to develop remedies to improve the home, the neighborhood, and the city.

Although the approach differed from the Municipal Research Bureaus, the Settlement Movement did not disparage method, system or fact. Settlers viewed scientific knowledge through the opposite side of the lens. Settlers collected information through interactions with the subject, not observations of the subject. As Stivers described, “for settlement residents, facts were a different phenomenon, than the facts the bureau men sought to pile up, because they were arrived at by means of connection with the field of study rather than an investigative posture of objectivity” (Stivers, 2000, p. 95). By living in the neighborhoods with the people they served, settlers developed relationships with residents. These relationships allowed settlers to understand the challenges residents faced. Understanding the challenges allowed the settlers to develop focused solutions and make government better. A different approach, a different method, but the same notion that things needed to change.

Bureau men, settlement women’s true legacy

Bureau Men Settlement Women remains an important contribution to the field of Public Administration because it amplifies the voices of women. However, its legacy is much more than just what it presents on the pages of the book. It is not just a gendered evaluation, but a reminder to understand our limitations, examine our past, and develop new processes of good governance. Hidden underneath all of the layers, all of the studies, and all of the perspectives, there is a commonality. As public administration scholars, we all want to understand, examine, and develop improved processes of government. However, to develop improvements, we need to acknowledge perspectives other than efficiency and effectiveness.

Some see Stivers’s work as telling a different history. But history does not actually change, only versions of history change. Stivers’s version of the construction of Public Administration includes the muffled voices of what Simon de Beauvoir defined as the “Other.” As Beauvoir explained, women exist as the other because they are defined in terms of men (Beauvoir, 1949/2011). Public Administration remains focused on efficiency and effectiveness because we’ve defined the field in those terms. The field’s “Other” is any examination, process, or solution outside the bounds of efficiency and effectiveness. The concept of the “Other” exemplifies the true legacy of Stivers’s groundbreaking work and presents a thought-provoking perspective to the field.

In 2008, Stivers wrote that arguing about an appropriate method for inquiries into public administration was akin to the myth of Sisyphus (Stivers, 2008). Like the Settlement Women examining the scientific method through the opposite side of the lens, contemporary scholars on the “other” side of method, are always pushing a rock to the top of a hill, only for it to roll back to the ground. Bureau Men, Settlement Women offers a glimpse of what getting over the hill may look like. The other side of the hill understands and accepts the many muffled voices waiting to be heard.

Michelle L. DiStefano
Research Associate, Pace Center for Girls, Jacksonville, FL, USA
[email protected]

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Michelle L. DiStefano

Dr. Michelle L. DiStefano works as a Research Associate and Program Evaluator for the Pace Center for Girls, a non-profit organization focused on improving the lives of girls and young women who are at risk of becoming part of the Juvenile Justice system. She earned her Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Public Affairs from the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University and an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Rutgers University. She taught at the University of North Florida and Cleveland State University.