The President’s Committee on Administrative Management

Abstract

The final report of the President’s Committee on Administrative Management has been widely cited as a landmark study designed to improve executive branch management. This observation, however, does not tell the complete story of its constitutional complexity. In addition to the report that President Roosevelt submitted to Congress in 1937, he commissioned five additional studies that, individually and collectively, reveal the untold story of the Brownlow Project. They emphasize not only the improvement of public management but also the improvement of democracy within the American administrative state. Alexander Hamilton’s argument regarding unity of the executive—and his understanding of the imperative nature of this philosophical principle on the American constitutional republic—connects these documents. Together, the papers underscore that the legitimacy of American public administration can be found only within its constitutional heritage.