The development of modern public administration begins with the bureaucratic theory of Weber and extends to the present day, and different writers have offered a variety of perspectives on these developments, their origins and sources, and the nature of the contributions made by different theorists. They have also considered the issue in terms of specific administrative dimensions and processes. Fry (1989) and Stillman (1991) both consider the historical development of the field of public administration and show how the different elements in the field were elucidated by theorists over the past century. Of necessity, each also shows how these different perspectives contributed to practical application, though Stillman is more interested in examining specifics in the field and in how public administration copes with goals and problems today. Walker (1980) gives attention to the way public administration has developed in terms of the criminal justice system specifically and does not relate this as specifically to theory as do the other two writers.
Indeed, an examination of what Walker has to say about the way the criminal justice system is structured can then be used as an example of the sorts of developments noted by the other two writers in the field of public administration over the last century or so. Walker's history of the administration of American criminal justice extends back before modern public administration to the colonial era. In the earlier sections, Walker shows how the system developed based on both European models and on a reaction against certain European models. The country itself, after all, was created on the same pattern, accepting certain aspects of European governmental structures and theories and reacting against others in order to create a very different model. Walker shows how both the police and the justice systems developed during the nineteenth centuries as rational entities based on certain idea...