The Planning-Programming-Budget System (PPBS) found
its roots squarely with RAND, but reflected a broader trend in public
administration dating back in the U.S. to the late nineteenth century.
If the
logic of military unification derived from German concepts of administration
and the general staff, then the PPBS derived from the German historical school
of economics.[1] Essential
to the German tradition is analytical holism and a rejection of the “fictitious
individualistic assumption” of classical liberals. Because markets produced
social and economic failures, particularly monopoly, a new class of expert were
required to identify remedies using the administrative state.
The economist as
an American profession was built on men schooled in Germany, who then
solidified their expertise by creating university departments, prestigious
associations, and new government bureaus on statistics and regulation.
To
justify its role for guiding government, the economic expert relied on the
legitimacy of the scientific method. One top expert, Henry Farnam, compared the
evolution of the economic sciences to the medical sciences. He found that
surgery was once primitive and dangerous, but advances in science had made it
most beneficial to society. Similarly, the economic expert had by 1910 enough
scientific knowledge to make its reforms “more effective and less dangerous.”[2]
The analogy was repeated over 50 years later by Alain C. Enthoven, Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Systems Analysis, who said “My general impression is
that the art of systems analysis is in about the same stage now as medicine
during the latter half of the 19th century; that is, it has reached
the point at which it can do more good than harm.”[3]
 |
| Alain C. Enthoven was 31 when he became head of the Office of Systems Analysis |
[1]
F. A. Hayek traced the ideas inherent in the German school, particularly
logical positivism, back to the French Revolutionaries and the Ecole
Polytechnique – but he attributed its spread to the U.K. and U.S. through
Germany. This form of rationalism also finds precedent thinkers such as Francis
Bacon, who opposed Copernican Astronomy, and Lord Kelvin, who denied evolution
because he calculated the Earth too young for its emergence. Ultimately
analytical holism goes back to Plato, who believed in a “Guardian” class to
guide policy and abhorred asymmetries so much that he thought humans should use
both hands with equal dexterity.
[2]
Leonard, Thomas C. Illiberal reformers,
Princeton University Press, 2016, pp. 22, 33
[3]
“Planning Programming Budgeting” Inquiry of the Subcommittee on National
Security and International Operations (Jackson Committee), U.S. Senate, U.S.
Government Printing Office, Washington: 1970, pp. 127
No comments:
Post a Comment