With the awarding of the Section's first Simon Book Award for PA books of significance, one wonders which was the most signficant PA book of the 20th century. Tough question -- and we want you to help us answer it.

The Debate

This is the first year for the awarding of the PA Section's Herbert Simon Book Award, and the honored titles will be recognized at the Section's Business meeting at noon on Friday, September 2. When the idea for the award was being considered at last year's APSA in Chicago, some of us wondered about which of the many outstanding PA books of the past would warrant being called the most influential of the past century. And so was born the panel session we are calling "Before the Simon."

Scheduled for Thursday, September 1 at 4:15, the session is patterned after a BBC show related to the annual awarding of the United Kingdom's most prestigious book award, the Man Booker Prize. Given each year to the most outstanding work of fiction in English by a "Commonwealth" author (Americans need not apply...), it has the status of the Oscars or Emmys for many. The BBC created a TV show televised about the same time as the Booker Prize ceremony called "Before the Booker" in which a Oxford style debate is conducted between two teams, each advocating for a classic work from a selected year or era. And so, was the most significant work published in 1954 the Lord of the Rings or the Lord of the Flies? Or how about 1966: would you support Capote's In Cold Blood or Fowles' The Magus? In each show you would hear a debate between teams advocating each title (and critiquing the 'opposition'), and then the audience would vote.

The "Before the Simon" panel will pit two works regarded by all as classics from the post-World War Two era that are arguably the most cited and referenced PA books of their time: Herbert Simon's Administrative Behavior and Dwight Waldo's The Administrative State. The question on the table at the panel is: which should be deemed the more significant in terms of its contricution to the field of public administration and the more general political science discipline.

The panel will be chaired -- and the debate moderated -- by Ken Meier of Texas A&M, and the advocates for each title. In support of Waldo's classic The Administrative State will be Richard Stillman (University of Colorado-Denver and newly selected editor of PAR) and Camilla Stivers (the current associate editor of PAR from Cleveland State University). Advocating for Simon's Administrative Behavior will be Larry Lynn (Texas A&M) and Bryan Jones (University of Washington). Conducted under Oxford debating rules modified for the occassion, the session will conclude with a vote by the audience which will pass judgment as to which work is indeed worthy of being called the most signficant PA book of the 20th century!

To offer a taste of what is in store at the panel we've asked for a short contribution from advocates from each side -- Cam Stivers for the Waldoites and Larry Lynn for the Simonites.

We hope you will join us for this celebration of the Simon Award launch -- and join in the (serious) fun....

--- Mel Dubnick

Representing Waldo

As I see it, the seeds of the upcoming "gunfight at the APSA corral" were planted several years ago when Socratic gadfly Mel Dubnick had the chutzpah to appear before the PA Theory Network in conclave assembled and tell us that public administration was going to the dogs because it wasn't scientific enough. When I heard him say the sorry state of scholarship in the field showed that Dwight Waldo had won the Simon-Waldo debate, I heard the strains of the "Twilight Zone" theme echoing in my ears. Mel (the impresario of the APSA panel) and I have been joshing each other ever since about who really won that debate.

Fortunately, the "debate on the debate" is not going to be about who won-that is, which of these eminences has had the greatest influence on the field of public administration. The more interesting-and debatable-question is who should have won, or to put it in a more forward-looking way, whose message is most important for the field right now and into the future. The Administrative State has influenced me more deeply than any other single work in the field (evidence enough for some, I admit, that Waldo's legacy has been dubious at best). I look forward to teaming up with Richard Stillman to make the case for naming it the most important PA book of the 20th century. As for what we plan to say to the "Simonizers," just wait until we see the whites of their eyes!

- Cam Stivers

Representing Simon

Nearly 60 years ago, two young scholars published books on public administration that were based on their doctoral dissertations. One, Herbert Simon, already had solid credentials and experience in the field. The other, Dwight Waldo, was an outsider, an academic political philosopher who viewed the field with undisguised contempt. The divergent perspectives of their seminal books defined axes of intellectual tension that endure as leitmotifs of professional discourse to this day.

Simon, who met Waldo's own criteria for creating serious political philosophy-- being close enough to government for first-hand knowledge and seeking to solve problems judged to be important and urgent--left as his intellectual legacy a body of ideas that have been highly influential in the development of public administration as a field of serious scholarship. Waldo's legacy comprises neither ideas nor methods but, rather, a sardonic attitude toward both concepts and empiricism and, specifically, toward Simon's contributions. Yet, ironically, it is Waldo, not Simon, who enjoys iconic status within a profession whose chronic state of intellectual crisis is largely due to Waldo himself.

-Laurence E. Lynn, Jr.