John Locke and Public
Administration
Administration & Society
Volume 40 Number 3
May 2008 253-270
© 2008 Sage Publications
10.1177/0095399707313705
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hosted at
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Alex Tuckness
Iowa State University, Ames
John Locke, whose thought greatly influenced the American founding, makes
an important contribution to contemporary public administration theory and
to our understanding of the history of American public administration. Locke’s
theory gives an account of why it is legitimate for public administrators to
sometimes perform functions that are legislative or judicial in nature and
encourages public administrators to interpret directives from those with
greater political authority in light of a respect for rights and the public good.
Historically, Locke put his ideas into practice as he helped oversee the
administration of the early American colonies and made proposals for administrative reform.
Keywords: John Locke; public administration; history; administrative discretion; separation of powers
J
ohn Locke (1632-1704), the philosopher who most influenced the
American Founding, was also a public administrator. He served as a secretary on a diplomatic mission to France, Secretary of Presentations, Secretary
to the Council of Trade, Commissioner of Appeals, and Commissioner of
Trade and Plantations. The last post, his most important and lucrative,
included serving on a board that gave oversight to governmental administration in the American colonies (the “plantations” as they were then
known). He also served in a quasi-public capacity as secretary to the Earl
of Shaftsbury who was the lead proprietor of the Carolina Colony in
America and served as Lord Chancellor (Cranston, 1957). Despite Locke’s
personal experience as a public administrator and his significant influence
on our theories of government, his theory and practice of public administration have not been adequately explored.1
Part of the reason for this neglect is the amount of scholarly attention
devoted to the broader question of the exact relationship of John Locke’s
political thought to the American founding, a matter of some controversy.
Early accounts often portrayed Locke’s intellectual influence as hegemonic
(Becker, 1958, p. 27; Hartz, 1955). Revisionist historians then challenged
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that picture of Locke, arguing that a wide variety of sources influenced
the founding (Bailyn, 1992, pp. 22-34; Pockock, 1975; Wood, 1969).
Subsequent scholarship has argued that the revisionists overcorrected and
that the truth is somewhere in between. Thus, Tarcov in 1984 claimed that
there is a
very real sense in which Americans can say that Locke is our political philosopher. The document by virtue of which we Americans are an independent
people, occupying our special station among the powers of the earth, derives its
principles, and even some of its language, from the political philosophy of John
Locke. Practically speaking, we can recognize in his work something like our
separation of powers, our belief in representative government, our hostility to
all forms of tyranny, our faith in toleration, our demand for limited government,
and our confidence that the common good is ultimately served by the regulated
acquisition and control of private property as well as the free development and
application of science. As for fundamental political principles, it can safely be
assumed that every one of us, before we ever heard of Locke, had heard that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain
inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever any
form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the
people to alter or abolish it. (p. 1)
In this, Tarcov is in line with what is emerging as a “new consensus” about
Locke’s relationship to America: There were many influences on the
American founders, not just Locke, but Locke was of particular importance
(Dworetz, 1990; Huyler, 1995; Tuckness, 2003). Thus, for those who take
an understanding of the American founding to be crucial for understanding
the proper role of public administration today (Rohr, 1986; Cook, 1992;
Wamsley et al, 1990; Wamsley and Wolf, 1996), a clearer understanding of
Locke’s theory should be welcome.
It is telling that in Tarcov’s list Locke’s contribution to public administration is excluded. Locke’s (1988) most famous political work, Two
Treatises of Government, does not treat the topic of administration systematically. Yet, as we will see, what he did write in that classic work has clear
implications for two debates that are ongoing in public administration
today. His account of the separation of powers has important implications
for public administrators who often find themselves exercising powers that
might easily be described as judicial or legislative in nature. His political
thought also addresses the very real question of how public servants should
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act when their convictions about justice conflict with the law or with the
orders of superiors. In addition to this, his far less famous writings and
actions as a public administrator illustrate how these ideas could be translated into practice. Interestingly, long before Woodrow Wilson conceived of
public administration in terms of the politics/administration dichotomy,
Locke had provided a more sophisticated and nuanced way of understanding their relationship to each other.
The article begins with an examination of Locke’s theory of separation of
powers. Some object to the legitimacy of the administrative state on grounds
that administrative agencies often combine legislative, judicial, and executive
functions. Administrators also face challenges when pulled in conflicting
directions by legislative and executive branch officials, whether at the federal,
state, or local level. Locke’s theory provides insights into these conflicts. The
article then examines Locke’s view of the propriety of administrators using
their own sense of justice and the public good as a basis for official decision
making. The article then explores the way Locke, as a public administrator,
put his theory into practice and concludes by examining the historical significance of John Locke in U.S. public administration.
The Role of the Administrator
and Separation of Powers
Rohr (1986), in his book To Run a Constitution, gives several examples
of the way a strict interpretation of the idea of “separation of powers” has
been used to undermine the legitimacy of public administration (p. 15). The
way the concept is often taught in high school civics classes, only Congress
exercises legislative powers, only the president (or governor or mayor) and
the executive agencies under his control enforce the law, and only the judicial
branch interprets the law. According to this logic, if the same person or
organization makes a rule, interprets the rule, and enforces that rule, we are
only a short step from tyranny. Yet in practice, administrative agencies often
do all three of these things. Even at the local level, a typical city manager
often performs tasks that involve making rules, interpreting them, and
enforcing them. Rohr’s solution to this problem is to appeal to the understanding of the separation of powers held by the framers and claim that it
was more flexible than the simplified version of separation of powers,
described above, admits. Rohr argues that administrators “should learn to
think like judges, as well as like legislators and executives, because they are
all three of these” (p. 185).
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Locke’s understanding of the separation of powers, correctly understood,
provides support for this claim. At first glance, Locke’s theory of separation
of powers will seem strange to modern audiences. Instead of the familiar idea
of three co-equal powers, Locke argues for the supremacy of the legislative
power over the other two powers (2.150).2 The two subordinate powers are
the executive power, which, as we would expect, is responsible for enforcing
the law domestically, and, puzzlingly, the “federative power,” which is responsible for foreign relations and war. The judicial power is nowhere to be seen.
At first glance, this would make it appear that a public administrator’s highest obligation is to obey Congress, the state legislature, the city council, or
whatever other legislative body sets rules for the given political unit. In fact,
this first impression is mistaken and results from a failure to pay close
attention to how Locke defines terms.
The crucial distinction is between institutions and functions. Because
Locke is committed to the rule of law (2.131), whatever institution has the
authority to make the law is, by definition, supreme. In fact, the form of
government is determined by the composition of the legislature. Initially,
the people have all lawmaking power in themselves, but they can adopt a
constitution (whether written or unwritten) that delegates legislative power
to a king or to an elected assembly. Locke then argued, “And so accordingly
of these the Community may make compounded and mixed Forms of
Government [italics added], as they think good” (2.132). The category of
“mixed forms” was extremely important in Locke’s day because the people
of England had granted final lawmaking power jointly to three institutions:
the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the king. If the people
choose to set up a mixed form, then all those who have a say in determining what the law will be are part of the legislature and therefore supreme.
Thus, if the people give the king a veto, they give him “a share in the
Legislative” (2.151). The U.S. Constitution is thus a “mixed form” in which
legislative power is shared between Congress, the president, and the
Supreme Court. This point will seem strange to our ears because the United
States chose to depart from Locke and not to describe the president as part
of the legislative power even though he had a veto. Yet, as Vile (1998)
pointed out, Locke and the American founders had substantially the same
view; the difference is primarily semantic (pp. 71-72). Locke’s theory of
separation of powers is thus fully compatible with a constitution that sets
up coequal branches that share the power of pronouncing what the law is.
If a constitution is set up this way, then an administrator’s highest allegiance will be to the constitutional structure as a whole, not just to a single
branch.
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This has important implications for public administration. Neither the king
of England in Locke’s day nor an American president in our own possesses
purely executive power because these offices also have a share in the legislative power. Public administrators come much closer to being a “pure case”
of the executive offices Locke had in mind. The power they exercise is one
that is subordinate to those officials who do have legislative power. In Locke’s
day, there was a storm of controversy about whether the Board of Trade would
answer to Parliament or to King William of Orange, and Locke supported the
latter alternative. Rather than always assuming that Parliament should have
more power, Locke believed that the king’s control of the public administration better reflected the constitutional balance of power that the people
had intended.
One objection we have not yet faced has to do with the problem of the
missing judicial power. Granted that Locke’s theory provides an important
place for public administration, why is Locke’s third power the federative
rather than the judicial, and what are the implications of this for public
administration? Part of the reason Locke does not talk of a distinct judicial
power is that he regards the government as a whole as a kind of judge or
umpire, hence his statement that those who have no judge to settle disputes
between them are in the state of nature (2.19). Because the legislative power
is supreme in Locke’s theory, the power of judging in the last instance rests
with that power, or those to whom they choose to delegate it (2.89). Judging
is not a distinct function (the way rule making and rule enforcing are) because
all public officials engage in interpretation, as we will see below.
Although judging is not a distinct function or power, Locke still allowed
courts as institutions to play an important role. Both those we would today
call “judges” and those who are members of the executive branch exercise
a power delegated by the legislative power. Both judges and members of the
executive branch will take the principles laid down by the legislative power,
interpret them, and apply them to specific cases. Courts in some contexts
act as delegates of the legislative power, clarifying the interpretation of the
law for the executive branch. In other contexts, courts make determinations
of fact to determine whether the law applies to a particular case. When they
do this, they are probably better described as assisting with the application
of law rather than its interpretation. Courts are thus institutions that assist
with the enforcement as well as the interpretation of law (Tuckness, 2002,
pp. 127-135). At the same time, when the legislative power passes vague
laws, it effectively delegates interpretive power (at least temporarily) to the
executive branch. Locke would thus regard it a mistake to think that only
judges must interpret the law (a points obvious to those in the field of public
administration) or that officers of the court play no role in enforcing it.
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Table 1
A Typology of Administrative Functions and Institutional Contexts
Institutional-executive
Institutional-legislative
Institutional-judicial
Functionalexecutive
A city manager
A member of the state
oversees the
legislature directs the
enforcement of city
actions of office staff.
regulations.
A member of the state
legislature helps a
constituent via case
work.
A senator advises the
head of a federal
agency during
committee sessions.
Chief justice presides
as justices deliberate
in conference.
U.S. federal courts
effectively assume
administrative
oversight of a public
school system to
combat de facto
racial segregation.
Functionallegislative
A city manager sets
A member of the state
rules to govern the
legislature votes on a
inner workings of
bill.
the office.
A city manager
proposes changes in
the city code.
Chief justice sets rules
for operation of the
court.
State Supreme Court
articulates a new
rule controlling
punishing minors
convicted of murder.
Functionaljudicial
A city manager must A member of the state
decide the merits of
legislature votes on
an official
whether to impeach the
complaint.
governor.
Administrative law
Members of the
judges provide the
legislature vote on
initial stages of
whether to censure a
legal review in
member for ethics
federal cases.
violations.
Chief justice writes an
opinion on a case.
Public officials who do not possess a portion of the supreme legislative
power will often find that their specific duties involve both interpretation
and application.
Locke’s distinction between functions and institutions helps us to understand the role of public administrators more clearly. We must distinguish
between the institutional context in which someone performs a given function
and the nature of the function that the person performs. Both context and
function matter. Consider Table 1, using examples from local, state, and national
government.
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At one point, for example, the courts effectively redesigned the entire
Boston public school system (Rosenbloom & O’Leery, 1997, p. 145).3 In
this case, executive functions occur in a judicial context. Conversely, the
Federal Executive Branch employs more than 1,000 administrative law
judges (most of them in the Social Security Administration) to hear cases,
and the decisions of executive agencies are to be upheld if challenged in
federal court if there is substantial evidence to support their findings
(Lubbers, 1994, p. 290). In these cases, a judicial function occurs in an
executive context.
The institutional context in which administrators operate affects the
nature of the role. Within an institutional-executive context, a public administrator will often perform a variety of functions: at times creating rules by
virtue of a delegated legislative power, at others times interpreting rules,
assessing complaints, and enforcing compliance. Locke would, of course,
claim that the distinction between executive and judicial functions is in
many cases not so neatly separated; enforcement requires interpretation of
the law, and application of rules to specific cases is part of the enforcement
process. For our purposes, the important point is that Locke’s theory provides a valuable perspective for assessing Rohr’s claim that public administrators must think like judges, executives, and legislators because they
fulfill all of these functions. This is true, but they do not exercise them in
exactly the same way. Treating administrators as if they did would be to
ignore the importance of the institutional context. Public administrators
perform all three functions, but they do so in different context from the one
in which, say, a senator exercises them, and thus their role is unique, as
Rohr would not doubt agree.
Locke’s clearest summary of his position is given in the following passage:
Of other Ministerial and subordinate Powers in a commonwealth, we need
not speak, they being so multiplied with infinite variety, in the different
Customs and Constitutions of distinct Commonwealths, that it is impossible
to give a particular account of them all. Only thus much, which is necessary
to our present purpose, we may take notice of concerning them, that they
have no manner of Authority, any of them, beyond what is, by positive Grant
and Commission delegated to them, and are all of them accountable to some
other Power in the Common-wealth. (2.152)
Here we see, on the one hand, Locke’s recognition that the details of the
administrative role cannot be determined through abstract speculation; it
instead depends on the particular arrangement that a given people, in their
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constitution, have made. Descriptions of administrative roles must thus, for
Locke, be historically grounded. On the other hand, Locke does see an
important difference between administrative offices and legislative power,
for the power that administrators have is a delegated power, a power that is
accountable to the legislative power as created by the relevant constitution.
One way of interpreting Locke’s position here would be to see administrators as mere tools of the legislative power, robotically carrying out legislative commands. As we will see in the next section, that interpretation is
incorrect. Locke struck an effective balance between the rightful authority
of those entrusted with legislative power to direct the public service and the
rights of public servants to exercise independent moral judgment.
Moral Principles and the Rule of Law
A common objection to allowing officials to appeal to a higher moral
law, conscience, or some other similar principle in the discharge of their
duties is that such appeals will be arbitrary given the disagreement that
exists over moral issues. It is often thought that people in centuries past,
like Locke, were simply naïve in thinking that all people would recognize
the authority of the same moral law. In fact, one of the things that inspired
Locke was his recognition of the deep differences in the way people understood the moral law. Consider the following quotation from Locke’s Essays
on the Law of Nature, written in a stage of life where he is often thought to
have been more optimistic about our ability to know the law of nature
through reason alone.
Secondly, I answer that, although even the more rational of men do not
absolutely agree among themselves as to what the law of nature is and what
its true and known precepts are, it does not follow from this that there is no
law of nature at all; on the contrary it follows rather that there is such a law,
when people contend about it so fiercely. For just as in a commonwealth it is
wrong to conclude that there are no laws because various interpretations of
laws are to be met with among jurisprudents, so likewise in morality it is
improperly inferred that there is no law of nature, because in one place it is
pronounced to be this, in another something different. (Locke, 1997, p. 86)
That laws, whether positive or natural, would be interpreted differently by
different people was something Locke recognized throughout his life.4
Locke continued to think of the moral law and the public good as crucial
terms for politics despite differences of opinion over their content.
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It was precisely because Locke foresaw that there would be divergent
interpretations of both positive and natural law that he insisted any government have a legislative power, which would have the final authority to
interpret the law.5 People will disagree about issues of political morality for
a variety of reasons. Sometimes, as Locke noted, people will be tempted to
interpret morality in a way that promotes their own interests. One of the
chief purposes of government is to provide what Locke called “known and
indifferent judges,” meaning public officials generally, who would fairly
interpret known laws. The alternative is to live with the wrong judgments
that come from people being judge in their own case and the fact that
people are often negligent in seriously studying the demands of political
morality (2.125). In Locke’s system, those with legislative power, ultimately the citizens or those appointed to represent them in this capacity,
have the final say in interpreting the law of nature and drawing up more precise rules (2.135).
Locke qualified this position in two important ways. Locke wrote that
positive laws “are only so far right, as they are founded on the Law of
Nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted” (Treatises, 2.12).
There are two ways in which this position allows scope for officials to
appeal to their own understanding of justice and right. First, the phrase “are
only so far right” reminds us that the overall legitimacy of any system of
law and government depends in part on whether its substantive features
square with the demands of basic justice. Although occasional lapses do not
cause the system as a whole to become illegitimate, a government that systematically ignores the public good or deprives the people of basic rights
ceases to be legitimate. This aspect of Locke’s account is important for
public administrators. Adams and Balfour (2004) pointed to instances of
“administrative evil,” most poignantly in the Nazi regime, where administrators dutifully carried out their tasks without correctly assessing whether
the larger enterprise in which they were involved was legitimate. Locke’s
account provides both a reminder and a justification for administrators to
ask these questions.
The second role of higher law for public administrators comes in
Locke’s statement that positive laws are to be “regulated and interpreted”
by natural law. Because, as we saw above, Locke did not draw a sharp distinction between executive and judicial functions, he means for this insight
to apply to administrators as well as judges. A perennial question for public
administrators is whether administrators may use their own understanding
of justice and morality in carrying out their duties. Locke gives a balanced
answer. On the one hand, those invested with legislative power (who, using
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Locke’s definitions, might sometimes be located in the judicial or executive
branch) are entitled to make authoritative interpretations of the higher law
(both moral and constitutional), as long as the system as a whole retains
legitimacy. Locke recognized that there would be disagreement about what
the higher moral law requires and saw the need for coordination of various
government officials and also for the decisions to be made by those authorized by the people to do so. But on the other hand, Locke also realized that the
directives from those with legislative power (again, this could be a governor
or president as well as a representative assembly) will require interpretation
and permits, even requires, public servants to interpret the instructions they
are given in light of this higher law.
One concern this may raise has to do with cases where public servants
are too free in their interpretations of legislative directives. We get an
insight into how Locke would have dealt with this problem if we look at his
understanding of prerogative. Prerogative, for Locke, is the power of the
executive to act beyond, or even contrary to, the letter of the law where this is
necessary to promote the public good. Locke makes it clear that prerogative
may be limited at any time by the people, or by their supreme representative
(2.163). In other words, if executive officers take too many liberties, the
legislative power retains the right to limit the use of prerogative. In practice,
the legislative power has severely limited prerogative since Locke’s time to
the point where we no longer use the word. Locke’s theory would hold that,
in principle, administrators could be given this power again if authorized by
the people. In any case, the principle illustrates how the legislative power
retains the authority to reduce the discretionary power of administrators if
it believes the public good demands it.
The specific moral tests Locke proposes are also sensible for public
administrators to use. The first has to do with whether or not a given interpretation of a rule would jeopardize basic rights to life, liberty, health, or
property. Most Locke scholars now affirm that Locke’s right to property
was not a doctrinaire libertarianism as some have suggested but instead
allowed considerable room for government intervention in the economy
(Sreenivasan, 1995; Waldron, 1988). The second requirement is that public
power be used for the public good rather than the private gain of those who
happen to have power or serve in government. Both principles are salutary
for administrators to consider when interpreting the rules that define and
guide their official conduct.
The decision tree presented in Figure 1 summarizes Locke’s approach.
The administrator must first assess the legitimacy of the government as
a whole. There must be some cases, for example, when a regime commits
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Figure 1
A Lockean Scheme of Administrative Deference and Discretion
Is the government
legitimate?
Has Leg. given clear
instructions?
Adm.
defers to
Leg.’s
interprettation of
higher
law.
Yes No
Yes No
Adm. appeals to
higher moral law.
Adm. uses concern for rights
and public good to interpret
what is vague in Leg.’s
instructions.
Note: Adm. = administrator; Leg. = legislative power, as defined by the constitution.
genocide, where the government’s laws and decrees lose all legitimacy and
the administrator is not morally bound by them. In the more normal case,
the administrator is required to defer to the judgments of elected officials
when these are clear but is encouraged to use concepts such as rights and
the public good in the interpretation of those principles if instructions from
elected officials are vague.
John Locke as a Public Administrator
Although it is widely known that Locke’s theories influenced the general
theories of government used in the United States and many other Western
countries, it is less widely known that Locke was an important figure in the
history of public administration and that we can see practical examples of
how he put his own theories into practice while serving as a public administrator. As Spicer (2001, pp. 27-31) noted, the process of developing the
modern apparatus of public administration began in the late 15th and early
16th centuries. Locke, living at the end of the 17th century, was present at
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another step forward in that developmental process, a step particularly
important for public administration in America.
Locke was appointed to serve as one of the initial members of the Board
of Trade and Plantations in England. It was an important step forward in the
history of public administration, taking responsibilities previously held by
members of the House of Lords. According to Laslett (1957), it marked
“the beginnings of specialized knowledge in administration.” In fact, he
remarked, “The evidence shows that Locke helped bring it into being and
dominated its earlier history” (pp. 372-373). One of Locke’s foremost biographers, Maurice Cranston (1957), wrote,
But the range of his activities should not be mistaken for evidence of restlessness, boredom, or wayward curiosity. Nor again was his public service
prompted by a sense of social responsibility alone, though that was certainly
there. It was prompted also by a sense of responsibility to himself and his
calling. Locke believed that a life of action was a necessary part of the life of
reason and that man could not discover truth by sitting still and thinking, but
only by personal experience of life. (p. 419)
Locke would thus be supportive of scholars who assist practitioners in the
administration of government and would see such involvement as facilitating their understanding of administration.
The scope of the Board of Trade’s responsibility was vast, advising the
king on trade policy and overseeing the administration of the American
colonies. For our purposes, it is this latter area that is of interest. Locke
seems to have been the most influential and powerful member of the board
during the years he served on it, playing a crucial role in evaluation of personnel, payroll issues, and the like. Locke was instrumental in removing
both the governor of New York and of Virginia (who were, of course,
appointed administrators rather than elected politicians in Locke’s day) for
reasons of maladministration (Cranston, 1957, pp. 420-423). Our most
detailed information about his specific thoughts on public administration
comes from a manuscript titled “Some of the Chief Grievances of the
Present Constitution of Virginia, With an Essay Towards the Remedies
Thereof” written in 1697 or 1698. The title and first 15 words are in Locke’s
handwriting, whereas the rest is in the hand of his amanuensis. Although
there is dispute about whether Locke was the primary author (James Blair,
president of the College of William and Mary, was also closely involved),
most scholars take him to be at least a secondary author, and all acknowledge that he was an advocate for the report’s recommendations. There are
thus good reasons to take the recommendations of the report as indications
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of Locke’s views on public administration, at least where these are not in
conflict with positions we know Locke held in his other writings.6
One example of misadministration was in land policy. Under the official
policy, each “adventurer” coming to Virginia had the right to purchase 50 acres
of land to encourage immigration. There were many problems with the
administration of this policy. Locke and Blair described,
Constant abuse at the Secretary’s Office, where the Clerks sell to any man
Rights for as much Land as he pleases at the rate of five shillings, or less for
every right, that is every 50 acres. By this trick the great men of the Country
have 20, 25, or 30 thousand Acres of Land in their hands, and there is hardly any
for the poor People to take up, except they will go beyond the inhabitants much
higher up than the Rivers are navigable, and out of the way of all business.
(Kammen, 1966, pp. 154-155)
The description of this as an “abuse” of office indicates that Locke saw it as
an issue of corruption. He therefore recommended stricter rules governing
the granting of large tracts of land and a requirement that both the governor
and key officials (the secretary, auditor, judges, attorney general, various
clerks, the collector, and the naval port officer) reside in the largest town
and have their offices there to encourage the town’s growth.
In addition to problems of corruption, there were also problems with
administrative negligence. Apparently, the tax collectors were frequently
delinquent in their duties. Locke and Blair wrote,
These being great men think it below them to do the Duty of Collector, i.e.,
to go on board of the Ships, and to examine the passengers and inspect the
Cargoes, to wait to leisure of merchants and mariners for entering and clearing
of Ships, and to give an account when required to produce their Books and
accounts to the Comptrollers. (Kammen, 1966, p. 168)
The governor would award these high-paying positions as favors to those
he wanted to support him and did not care whether the men actually did the
job. Locke and Blair therefore insisted that these offices only go to men
willing to go on board ships and wait as necessary and that all collectors
keep accurate records of their accounts to verify that they were actually
making the inspections on the ships. He saw the value of requiring accurate
records as a way to increase governmental performance and integrity.
A related problem had to do with conflict of interest. One of jobs of the
collectors was to bring charges if an enemy ship whose cargo could be seized
as a prize of war were found at port. The collectors were also members of
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the council, and the council had jurisdiction to hear such cases. Thus,
assuming they were actually doing all parts of their job, a person would be
both prosecutor and judge in the same case. Locke and Blair recommended
“that none of the Council be made a Collector or Naval Officer” (Kammen,
1966, p. 169). Locke would thus be broadly in favor of laws to restrict
situations that would create for public administrators a conflict of interest.
Although a given administrator exercising more than one power is not necessarily illegitimate, it is dangerous in a context like this one where there is
little recourse for appeal and great dangers of arbitrary decisions.
One of the more overarching problems had to do with arbitrary administration. Because the council, the judges, and all other administrative officials
held their position at the pleasure of the governor, these officials lacked the
independence to be a check on arbitrary power. Locke and Blair wrote, “Let
the Gentleman who shall be named to be of the Council hold their places
(not during the Governor’s but) during the King’s pleasure” (Kammen,
1966, p. 161). They also recommended an independent judiciary so that the
governor would not be judge in his own case (p. 162). Another problem was
that the governor was keeping his official instructions from the king secret,
making it impossible for lower officials to know the larger mandate they
were to be carrying out. Locke insisted that this be made a matter of public
record (pp. 162-163).
These recommendations also have important implications for public administration. Because Locke is associated with the idea of separation of powers, it
is tempting to think that in his mind the only way to check executive power
would be with legislative power. In reality, Locke realized that public officials
who were harder for the executive to fire could be an important check on
arbitrary power. Having the public officials under the governor appointed
and terminated by the king is somewhat akin to civil service protection that
keeps a mayor or an agency head from being able to fire any employee who
refuses to cater to his or her whims. The king was less likely to micromanage and less likely to have an interest in furthering any corrupt schemes the
governor might be involved in. Given the possibilities open to Locke at the
time, it was a wise recommendation.
In addition to these structural problems, Locke also saw a personnel problem. Locke and Blair, believing the current governor corrupt, insisted that in
the choice of a governor the principal considerations were the following:
That he be a Man of a Generous public Spirit, and not some poor noble Man,
or great Gentleman of a broken fortune, or if a Man of public Spirits cannot
be found he might be induced with hopes of some reward to build towns.
(Kammen, 1966, pp. 157-159)
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One important lesson to be learned from these recommendations is that
Locke thought virtue important for public servants. Locke’s theory is
closely associated with liberalism, and critics of liberalism claim that it
cares only about the protection of rights and is inattentive to issues of the
public good, the need for virtue, and the problem of corruption. Locke’s
actual practice as a public administrator tells a different story. Concern for
the public good, the need for virtue, and above all, the problem posed by
corruption figure quite prominently in his recommendations.
If we look at these recommendations together, we see that Locke’s actual
practice as a public administrator complements his theoretical perspective
described above. One theme that cuts across both his theory and practice is
the importance of the rule of law. The same man who helped justify the
overthrow of illegitimate governments adamantly desired that public officials
obey the law in cases where the government is legitimate. In his theoretical
work, he regarded legislative power as supreme and asked public officials
to submit to it except in extraordinary cases for the same reason. A second
theme is the inescapability of judgment and the corollary need for impartiality in decision making. Locke realized, both in his theory and practice,
that laws would still need to be interpreted and applied and that there was
no substitute for officials who would do so with fairness and a regard for
the public good. As an administrator, he argued for institutional reforms
that would make it easier for officials to make right judgments.
Locke and U.S. Public Administration
For a long time, it was common to begin discussions of the history of the
field of American public administration with Woodrow Wilson. More
recently, John Rohr has challenged public administrators to see themselves
as part of a tradition dating back to the framers of the U.S. Constitution.
Madison and Hamilton, for example, wrote about issues of administration
in the Federalist Papers, and substantial time was spent at the constitutional
convention discussing issues related to administration (Rohr, 1986). This
article seeks to push the origin of American public administration back still
further, to the work of John Locke.
When the United States became an independent nation, it retained many
of the ideas about law, government, and administration that were in use during the days of English rule. During the days when public administration in
America was largely in the hands of men appointed by the king, John Locke
saw the need for substantial administrative reform. Throughout most of his
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adult life, he had a strong interest in the American colonies and the government and administration of them. On the basis of the historical records,
he recognized the need for a board of experts independent of Parliament to
advise the king and oversee the administration of the American colonies.
The Board of Trade, as Laslett (1957) and others have noted, was an
extremely important step forward in the history of administrative practice.
Thus, when the framers of the U.S. Constitution began to deliberate on the
principles, powers, and procedures that would shape the administration of
government, they owed a double debt to John Locke. On the one hand, and as
many have noted, the clear similarities between the Declaration of Independence
and Locke’s Second Treatise show the influence of Locke on their thinking
about the purposes of government and the conditions of its legitimacy. The
ideas of the past continue to affect public administration today. Even now
Locke’s treatment of separation of powers and the appropriate use of independent moral judgment by public officials can teach us much.
Their second debt to Locke is less well known. Locke’s practical activities
in public service and his importance in advancing the quality of governmental administration in the American colonies is another important legacy.
Perhaps part of the power of Locke’s ideas stems from the fact that he was
a man who knew about the administration of government as well as the
philosophy of government. Locke saw the importance of impartial, publicspirited administrators who were committed both to the rule of law and to
the higher principles of respect for rights and pursuit of the common good.
He saw the need for protecting civil servants from undue interference by their
immediate superiors in the carrying out of their tasks, while still recognizing
that in most cases those entrusted with legislative power must be able decide
the rules that shape and direct the future of a nation. Locke deserves an
important place both in the history of public administration and in our
thinking about public administration today.
Notes
1. The only other study on Locke and public administration is Griffith (1997). Griffith does
not explore in any detail the themes discussed below, focusing instead on what Locke’s theory
implies about the general purposes of government. Griffith’s interpretation of Locke is also
heavily dependent on the followers of Leo Strauss, whose interpretation of Locke makes
Locke very similar to Hobbes. Strauss’s position is a minority position among contemporary
Locke scholars and quite different from the way the American founders read him. Following
the majority of scholars, I assume in this article that Locke’s belief in a higher moral law can
be taken to be sincere.
2. All references in the form (2.XXX) refer to Locke (1988), the Two Treatises, by treatise
and section number. The spelling (including use of the possessive) in the quotations from
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Locke and Blair have been modernized, but the capitalization and punctuation is left as in the
original unless otherwise noted.
3. For a discussion of when intervention by federal courts is appropriate, see Wise and
Christensen (2005).
4. As Catlaw (2005) pointed out, Locke thought, given the possibility of disagreement, the
law could be used as a tool to make judgments more certain and predictable (p. 455).
5. Locke wrote,
For the power of making laws and of interpreting them to others are so areas of kin that
they are always thought to belong to and be inseparable from the legislative according to
the known rule ejus est interpretari cujus est condere for he rules not who makes laws,
but who declares what the laws signify. (Unpublished manuscript held in the Locke room
at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, shelf mark MS Locke c.34, p. 21)
6. Cranston (1957, pp. 421-424) implicitly and Ashcraft (1969, pp. 742-743) explicitly
took Locke to be the primary author. Kammen (1966, pp. 147-148) took James Blair to be the
primary author and Locke the secondary author. Laslett (1957, p. 400) believed that Blair
wrote the report at Locke’s request and that Locke was the one most instrumental in making
sure that the report’s recommendations formed the basis for the instructions of the new governor. However the authorship question is determined, the report is surely, at least in general,
in line with Locke’s views.
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Alex Tuckness is an associate professor at Iowa State University and director of the Public
Policy and Administration Program. His research and teaching interests include public administration ethics, the political thought of John Locke and of the American Founding, and public
law. He has published a number of scholarly articles and a book with Princeton University
Press and was a Faculty Fellow in Ethics at Harvard University’s Center for Ethics and the
Professions.
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