A Transformative Era: Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Development of the American Administrative State

The intellectual history of American public administration holds that the High Noon of public administrative orthodoxy was President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the publication of the Final Report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management in 1937. A striking omission from the field's literature is a serious conversation about how the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson dramatically transformed the American administrative state. Johnson's efforts to create a Great Society and win the War on Poverty provide empirical evidence that legitimates the claim that if Roosevelt was responsible for public administration's High Noon, Johnson is subsequently responsible for the second coming of the administrative messiah.