stration. The need to successfully carry out large-scale projects demanded a new heightened quality of planning. The laissez faire attitudes of earlier epochs had now been almost entirely abandoned in the wake of domestic (Depression) and foreign (war) pressures to make sure that social projects were realized in the most efficient way possible. The fears of government that is ôtoo bigö or ôcounter-productive to free enterpriseö had clearly been sacrificed to national mobilization. Planning in public administration became of central importance and politically acceptable as social demands for efficiency in governmental programs reached new heights.
During the Great Depression and World War II, planning in governmental administration was easily accepted by academics and the public alike. But in order for the planning function to continue to be acceptable after the war, the field of public administration had to integrate social planning with a renewed emphasis on market forces. In addition, even what was left of government planning had to gear towards planning for peace. For example, nearly 3 million men and women had served in the armed forces who now had to be discharged back into civilian occupations. This task would require careful planning. So, too, would the conversion of a war-time economy to a peace-time economy. The Full Employment Act of 1946 represented the national economic policy immediately following the war and obviously would require a major role for planning in public administration.
As the decades wore on, planning in the public sector remained important. President Eisenhower ensured that the United States would remain on alert and ready for war, if necessary, throughout the period of the Cold War (Leuchtenburg, 1983, p. 5). The Great Society of President Johnson in the 1960s kept social planning in the limelight. Federal grants to state and local government for education, welfare and infrastructural developmen...