Frank J. Goodnow

Frank J. Goodnow (born January 18, 1859, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died November 15, 1939, Baltimore, Maryland) was an educator, long-time president of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and a political scientist known for his contributions to the study of public administration.

Goodnow earned his law degree at Columbia University (1882) and, after a year of study in Paris and Berlin, taught administrative law at Columbia (1883–1914). He served on the commission to redraft the charter of New York City in 1900. A principal founder of the American Political Science Association in 1903, he served as its president in 1904–05. He went to Baltimore in 1914 to head Johns Hopkins University. During his administration (1914–29) the enrollment and assets of the university increased fourfold. The medical school was expanded, an institute of ophthalmology was established, and international studies and legal research were developed.

As a scholar, Goodnow stressed the study of the governmental mechanism; earlier political science had been limited largely to examining constitutional features. In his most noted work, Politics and Administration (1900), he showed how the popular will is articulated from administration, in which expertise and hierarchy work to fulfill that will. The book influenced U.S. public administration for a half century and contributed to bureaucratic reform.

Other works by Goodnow include Comparative Administrative Law (1893), Municipal Home Rule: A Study in Administration (1895), Social Reform and the Constitution (1911), The American Conception of Liberty and Government (1916), and China: An Analysis (1926).