The Leonard D. White Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public administration.
Citation from the Award Committee:
The 2025 Leonard D. White Award for the best dissertation in public administration is given to “Structuring Democracy”. “Structuring Democracy” follows in the tradition of canonical public administration texts, such as Frederick Mosher’s “Democracy and Public Service,” by providing a theoretical foundation for the role of administration in U.S. democracy.
Focusing on the separation of powers in the U.S. federal system, “Structuring Democracy” posits that a genuine manifestation of Madison’s vision of the separation of powers transcends checks-and-balances. Rather, the dissertation argues for a conception of the separation of powers that rests on the idea “that the legislature is supreme in government” (pp. 76-77) and that independent administrative bodies enhance democratic accountability by deliberating in the process of policy implementation. Such deliberation involves publicly interpreting legislative decisions so as to expose the reasoning that executive agencies use when implementing legislation, thereby allowing the voting public to better understand and assess past legislative performance in their future voting decisions.
This vision of the separation of powers carries important implications for public administration. It emboldens a constitutionally grounded critique of presidential managerialism, pointing out that such efforts prioritize efficiency at the expense of the Constitution’s emphasis on articulating and acting upon an understanding of legislative intent. Executive branch agencies should engage in “deliberative reason-giving” that reveals the logic of policy execution, enhancing fidelity to the legislative mandate under which the executive branch acts. It also emphasizes due process, suggesting that judicial review of administrative activity ought to focus on whether the execution of legislative decisions transparently considered and adhered to the factors underlying legislation.
“Structuring Democracy” makes a bold challenge to popular conceptions of the separation of powers and the expansive assertion of executive branch power. Through this argument, the dissertation connects with issues in public administration that date back a century. In his “Introduction to the Study of Administration,” Leonard D. White wrote that “Administration must be correlated with other branches of government, as well as adjusted to the immense amount of private effort which in America far more than elsewhere supplements public enterprise” (1926 [1992], p.59). “Structuring Democracy” illuminates this “correlation” in the U.S. federal system through a distinctive contribution to public administration scholarship. “Structuring Democracy” is therefore a worthy recipient of the Leonard D. White Dissertation Award.
David B. Froomkin is an assistant professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center, where he is also an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Political Science. He works primarily on separation of powers theory. He received a B.A., cum laude, from Columbia University in 2015, a J.D. from Yale Law School in 2022, and a Ph.D. in Political Science (awarded departmental distinction and university distinction) from Yale University in 2024. His scholarship on the separation of powers and administrative law has been accepted for publication in journals including the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Yale Journal on Regulation, and Political Studies.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Thomas Birkland (Chair) of North Carolina State University, Dr. Shelly Arsneault of California State University, Fullerton, and Dr. Tim Johnson of Willamette University