Leonard D. White the Federalist 1948

Federalists

Although it is now a ripe 65 years old, Leonard D. White's 1948 publication The Federalists remains highly relevant to studies of American history, politics, and governance. The Federalists is a seminal tome, and a benchmark with which to judge and evaluate subsequent writing on the subject of American public administration and its political and historical context. When it was published, reviewers were already calling the book "the first installment of what may already be called the definitive history of American public administration," (Hart, 1948, p. 703). As definitive as it was in 1948, the Federalists has been unsurpassed in the exact subject and content that Leonard White addressed. The language, packaging, and overall feel of the book might give away its age, but its endurance is due to more important matters such as erudite scholarship, reliance on primary sources, and unrelenting thoroughness.

One of the most enduring aspects of The Federalists is that White successfully carries out his mission, and accomplishes the goals of outlining the first chapter in the saga of American public administration by examining its key historical players. As the title suggests, The Federalists is about the type of administrative functions that evolved in the American government first under George Washington and John Adams. The author discusses of course the Federalist papers and the raging debates about federalism and republicanism, but does so not just from a political philosophy or historical perspective but from a squarely practical and administrative one too. White analyzes how political philosophy informs public policy and its execution.

The Federalists also explores the ways federalist philosophy and practice impacted the evolution of American public consciousness, American constitutional law, and American norms of governance and power. In this way, White's book is not only useful to the student of politics and government but also of constitutional law, management, and leadership. Several of White's chapters address specific leadership traits and styles of presidents and key federalist figures that were formative in laying the foundations of the new nation.

In a retrospective review of The Federalists, John (1996) notes that White presents the federalists as being "sincerely committed to the establishment of an energetic central government that would serve the public good," (p. 1). This concept and vision of the strong centralized government was somewhat elitist, or at least appears that way in the perfect vision of historical hindsight. White (1948) acknowledges the elitism inherent in the federalist argument and therefore sets the stage for a poignant analysis of how an elitist government "for the people, but not government by the people" morphed into one that was more egalitarian in tone, if not in actual practice or impact (p. 507). As Hart (1948) points out in the contemporary review of White's tome, White does not begin such a poignant analysis in The Federalists, but invites his readers tacitly to do so. Moreover, White's subsequent books in the series that starts with The Federalists amply rounds out the full picture of American public administration history. Taken as a whole, the series of books that begins with The Federalists, and which includes The Jeffersonians, The Jacksonians, and The Republican Era are collectively about "political and economic structure, the organization of the international order, popular culture, the stock of available communication and organizational technologies, and executive talent," (Roberts, 2009, p. 764). A critical analysis of the first founding fathers of the United States of America, in terms of the structures, processes, and institutions of government they instated, was well in order when White published The Federalists and remains so in 2013.