The Institution of Public Service

Abstract

The retirement of York Willbern from Indiana University's Department of Political Science and School of Public and Environmental Affairs provides a rare opportunity to examine the existence, accomplishments, and prospects of a special enterprise-an institutioncomprised of persons whose lives have been spent attempting to deliver on the promises of government. The institution of public service is that part of a community which concerns itself with the achievement of public objectives and the implementation of public policy. It seems correct to suppose that all communities, towns, cities, states, nations, and even international communities must rely on some form of public service. Whether the service involves the quiet disbursement of public assistance to a neighbor at the back door in the middle of the night, the attempt to find work release locations to ease the transition of convicted felons from overcrowded prisons into the communities to which they must inevitably return, or the management of complex programs into which community treasure must be poured, public service is the basis for all community accomplishment. In other countries a convocation might well discuss an institution populated by elite civil servants and career government employees. In the United States such a limited definition would be inappropriate, for the in-

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