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Organizing Democracy (Diss)

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Organizing Democracy (Diss) FROM THE SOCIALISM OF INTELLIGENCE TO THE ARISTOCRACY OF KNOWLEDGE: ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICE AND POLITICAL AUTHORITY IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, 1905–1921 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY AARON HORVATH JULY 2021 To Katey You were right: accounting is interesting. And I still can’t spell philanhropy on the first try. iv For forms of government let fools contest; Whate’er is best administered is best –Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733) Early writings are full of assurances that we can adopt the administrative devices of autocracy without accepting its spirit and its ends. –Dwight Waldo, The Administrative State (1948) v Abstract “Government budgeting.” There is little in the phrase to arouse the passions or inspire excitement. And yet, beneath what sociologists have tended to regard as a relatively unremarkable set of bureaucratic procedures, one finds a history full of contingency and heated contestation. More than a mere means of allocating government funds, budgeting—and the specific procedural form it takes—is the financial embodiment of political authority. Budgets may determine who gets what; but budgetary practices determine who gets a say. As such, the history of this seemingly mundane administrative practice is the history of political power, one that centers on inclusion, exclusion, and the privileges of democratic voice. This dissertation chronicles the early career of government budgeting in the United States, tracing its emergence from New York municipal reform movements in 1905 to its codification into federal law in 1921. In its early days, budgeting was promoted as a device for shedding light on government activities, encouraging public debate about collective priorities, and empowering mass democracy. Annual municipal budgets were accompanied with well-attended public exhibits imploring citizens to “come see how your money is spent” and encouraging public participation in the budgetary process. As budgeting moved into federal government, however, proponents recast the practice as a tool for expanding executive authority and minimizing public “interference” in the policymaking process. The budget became, as one proponent put it, a “method of control without violence.” Although the new approach to public budgeting was initially rejected—seen as an instrument of despotism and oligarchic control—it was eventually institutionalized at the very heart of national government. Today, when an American President announces a national budget, our attention is drawn to the amount of vi money to be spent or what it will be spent on—not the fact that the task of determining a national agenda falls with the President and not the people themselves. In a country avowedly committed to the principles of egalitarianism and popular sovereignty, how did such an arrangement come to exist? Drawing on extensive archival materials from the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Taft Commission on Economy and Efficiency, and the Institute for Government Research (later incorporated as the Brookings Institution), I demonstrate how the emergence of the national budget was the result of political and cultural contestation over the meaning of democracy and the proper role of ordinary citizens within it. The ascendence of an aristocracy of knowledge was ultimately predicated on the invention of a unified national interest and a normative reconfiguration of the responsibilities of American citizenship. Contrary to a tradition in organizational sociology that views oligarchy as the natural byproduct of administrative rationalization, my account reveals that oligarchy is anything but inevitable. In the American case, it was the hard-won product of an elite social movement to redefine the character of political authority in democratic politics. vii Acknowledgements There is a ritual order to acknowledgment sections. Authors will typically remark on the loneliness of writing and credit the fellow scholars who had their back along the way. They’ll thank the funders without whom the work would have been impossible, and the research assistants without whom the work would have never gotten done. And at long last, usually in a final paragraph of gratitude, they’ll offer their deepest, sincerest thanks to their long-suffering spouses. I know the ritual well, but not nearly as well as my partner, my person, and my better half—Katey Webber—who, for eight years, has read the acknowledgements section of nearly every book I’ve brought home. She’s so familiar with the rigamarole that she’s probably instinctually flipped to the end to see what I’ve written about her. And sure, she’ll find something there. But it’ll be underwhelming; not at all commensurate with what she’s endured since we moved to California all those years ago. That’s because Katey shouldn’t have to wait until the end to be acknowledged. Katey has a patience and love for me that I’ve never had for myself. She’s proven that one really can blend the comic sensibilities of Rodney Dangerfield with the physical comedy of Charlie Chaplin and all the riot grrrl of Bikini Kill. I’ve been taught by her to stop using passive voice. Katey, through her selflessness, vulnerability, authenticity, and constant drive to build community, has taught me more about society—and what society ought to be—than any book or study ever could. Others who have kept me afloat include Woody Powell, a guy whose class I took because, it was either organizations or demography and, while I didn’t really know what “organizations” were or why anyone would want to study them, it sounded more viii interesting than demography. Best decision I made in grad school. After that first quarter, Woody took me under his wing, entertaining my simplistic pitchfork-and-torch politics while giving me a vocabulary for complexity and an ability to problematize big ideas. His mentorship, co-authorship, and friendship have been indispensable to my intellectual and personal growth over the last eight years. I also want to thank Sarah Soule who I first met in her class on organizations and social movements. Sarah is a constant source of energy and encouragement and a model of how to balance intellectual rigor with compassion and down-to-earth humanity. The many beers and bike rides to and from local watering holes that we’ve shared over the years have been some of my most cherished moments at Stanford. The first time I met John Meyer in 2014, he casually imparted wisdom that has stuck with me ever since. As I ranted about my disgust that powerful people and organizations were effectively granted carte blanche to perpetuate social inequities, John told me that this was a wonderful perspective to have “after five o’clock.” But “before five o’clock” I ought to focus sociologically on how such a systems came to be. John’s wisdom, kindness, and critical perspective have been essential to my education, even if work rarely ends at five. Thanks also go to Barbara Kiviat who, thanks to the pandemic, I have yet to actually meet in person. She has nevertheless been a vital source of encouragement both during the struggles of the 2020 academic job market and during the struggles of writing a dissertation. ix I am thankful to have a dissertation committee that understands, quite correctly, that the thing my dissertation most needs defending from is me. Thanks for helping me to keep it going. At Stanford, I have had the pleasure of existing in multiple worlds at once—both as a student in the Sociology Department and as a member of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS). In the Sociology Department, I am indebted to Mark Granovetter, Doug McAdam, and Cristobal Young whose support, encouragement, and critical attention were indispensable in my early years at Stanford. And without Natasha Newson and Randy Michaud in the front office, the University would have dispensed of me long ago. Thanks for keeping that from happening. At PACS, I have benefitted greatly from my interactions with Lucy Bernholz, Paul Brest, and Rob Reich. Rob is the consummate public scholar; his ability to speak truth to power and bridge between ivory tower and public relevance is something I seek to emulate in my own work. Also at PACS, I want to thank Kim Meredith, Priya Shanker, and Valerie Dao who have looked out for me, believed in me, and given me opportunities to pursue my various (and only occasionally sensible) intellectual interests. Although this dissertation only came together over the last few months, it is part of a larger project that has been several years in the making. At the end of 2017, the National Science Foundation was kind enough to support me with a Dissertation Improvement Grant (SES #1801678) and the funds were sufficient to allow me to visit archives around the country. I traveled to places as far apart as Syracuse, New York (where I got a crappy rental car stuck in a snowbank) and Santa Monica, California (where I drank at the bar where Daniel Ellsberg allegedly released the Pentagon Papers). x Between 2018 and the start of the pandemic, I was able to steal away enough time to visit 13 archives, pull material from 93 collections, and melt a hard drive with 160GB of archival images—only a fraction of which is used in this dissertation. It was one ski mask short of a smash and grab operation and were it not for the incredibly generous archivists, librarians, and historians who helped me along the way, all that smashing and grabbing would have been for naught. In particular, I want to thank the staff the Rockefeller Archive Center, the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Newman Library Archives at CUNY’s Baruch College, and the Brookings Institution Archives.
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