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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.
Keywords: President's Committee on Administrative Management (1937); executive branch management; unity of the executive
In January 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt submitted to Congress a study entitled Administrative Management in the Government of the United States, produced by the President's Committee on Administrative Management (Brownlow, Merriam, & Gulick, 1937).1 This 53-page document, commonly referred to as the Brownlow Report-named in honor of the committee's chair, Louis Brownlow-has been widely cited in both the public administration and political science literature as a landmark study specifically designed to improve executive branch management. President Roosevelt appointed Charles E. Merriam and Luther Gulick as members of the committee. In addition, the committee appointed Joseph P. Harris as director of research. Although Harris did not serve as a committee member, he was an integral figure who helped to shape the operational structure of the Brownlow Committee's findings and, according to James Fesler, played a significant role in organizing the Brownlow Project.2
The final report that Roosevelt approved was accompanied, as part of the President's Committee on Administrative Management, by five other studies that were not only led by Brownlow, Merriam, and Gulick and supervised by Harris but were also commissioned by the president. These five papers included nearly 300 pages of text. Although the substantive nature of the recommendations made by these authors was highlighted in the final report, to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the value-added dimension that these recommendations bring to public administration generally and...