From the days of independence well into the 1920s, much of the American study of government was defined as the study of political, constitutional, and institutional history. The historical and comparative perspective of Woodrow Wilson on government is illustrative of late 19th-century public administration scholarship, which is characterized by a) notions of the organic state and b) the awareness of an emerging administrative state and its centralizing tendencies. In this article the meaning of Wilson’s The State for the development of administrative history and for his philosophy of governance is explored. Is he one of the founders of American administrative history? Is there more continuity or is there more change in his ideas about governance?
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