The Professional State Revisited: Twixt Scylla and Charybdis?

Frederick Mosher has written that "the professional composition of public agencies has substantially revolutionized their internal anatomy, physiology, and nervous systems, [while] the emergence of professions [has] revolutionized the precepts and practices of public employment."1 As time passes, debts to Professor Mosher grow dearer for his seminal insights regarding the "professional state" and its Janus-like implications for public administration and democracy. Certainly, professionalization -"the evolution of a core of commonly shared and recognized knowledge and expertise by members of a group" with a shared educational experience-has continued apace in the public service at all levels of the Madisonian political system.2 In fact, nearly one-third of today's public workforce claims professional or technical expertise in an identifiable and specialized occupation that requires at least a college degree and offers a lifetime career to its practitioners.