As a subfield, public administration first appeared separately in the annual listing of doctoral dissertations in the American Political Science Revi… - Mary E. Guy

By the late 1800s and into the early 1900s, political science courses had begun appearing on college campuses. This was followed by the establishment of political science departments and degree programs.

A century ago two fields, political science and public administration, were one. At the 1939 meeting of the American Political Science Association, public administration created its own professional organization, and the two fields’ paths have since diverged.

When I was president of the American Society for Public Administration, I grappled with questions of where that field was going, how it could make itself relevant to those who must steer the business of government on a daily basis, to those who must respond to citizens 24/7... Now I find myself asking a similar question, but this time in terms of political science. Happily, I see glimmers of light, giving hope that the field is returning to that which made it relevant in the first place: a search for guidance and truths about what it takes, as first Woodrow Wilson (1887), then Marshall Dimock (1937), and more recently John Rohr (1986) remind us, to "run a constitution."