A bureaucratic-centered image of governance: The founders' thought in modern perspective

This article contributes to the "bureaucratic-centered image of governance" research program advocated by Hill (1991). It examines political thought about bureaucracy during America's formative period, making the central argument that conventional wisdom about the founders is wrong: What is now called bureaucracy was quite important to their thinking. At the same time, however, the conceptual schema within which they analyzed bureaucracy was radically different from the present schema. This difference illuminates important attributes of contemporary debates about the power of bureaucracy. These themes are explored by examining three works comprising the canon of the Republican synthesis, a recent interpretation of revolutionary and immediate postrevolutionary political thought.