Inama-Sternegg on Stein’s Handbuch der Verwaltungslehre (1877)

Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg’s 1877 review examines the second edition (1876) of Lorenz von Stein’s Handbuch der Verwaltungslehre mit Vergleichung der Literatur und Gesetzgebung von Frankreich, England, Deutschland und Oesterreich. Its central concern is the adequacy of Stein’s conceptual system. Appreciating the handbook’s philosophical ambition, Inama-Sternegg asks whether its divisions consistently represent the institutions and relationships that administration must address.

Stein’s tendency to force particulars into conceptual categories does not invalidate his effort to connect theoretical foundations with practical conditions. Systematic integration is essential to the developing discipline:

Und in der That ist es auch das System, in welchem für die junge Wissenschaft von der Verwaltung der Schwerpunkt ihrer ganzen Entwicklung liegt.

English translation: And in fact it is indeed the system in which, for the young science of administration, the center of gravity of its whole development lies.

This conviction explains the review’s emphasis on classification rather than a catalogue of comparative information. An administrative system supplies more than intellectual order: its categories determine which connections become visible and which public tasks receive coherent treatment. The demand for synthesis therefore establishes the standard by which Stein’s arrangement must be criticized.

The principal conceptual advance is the incorporation of executive power and government into an enlarged account of the constitution, clarifying the distinction between constitution and administration. Administration cannot simply mean execution of the laws:

Es ist zwar daher die Verwaltung auch Vollziehung; aber nicht allein die Verwaltung ist Vollziehung, und die Verwaltung ist nicht allein Vollziehung.

English translation: Administration is therefore, to be sure, also execution; but administration is not the only thing that is execution, and administration is not execution alone.

Constitutional activity also involves execution, while legislation can serve administrative purposes. The distinction enables administration to be understood through the relationship between state activity and the independently operating forces of human life. Yet the revised framework is not consistently realized in the handbook’s organization.

Inama-Sternegg first objects to uneven compression of subjects treated in Stein’s larger work, then identifies substantive gaps. Property and possession require a unified discussion comparable to that of population. Treating land registers under real credit obscures their broader administrative significance, including surveying, property statistics, and the ordering of landed ownership. Dispersed treatments likewise fail to establish a comprehensive account of state authority over the distribution of wealth.

Ecclesiastical affairs present a second omission. Religious life cannot be exhausted by its relation to instruction, because the church also shapes personality and social organization. Although the fundamental church–state relationship belongs to constitutional theory, its continuing institutional regulation falls within social administration. The reviewer thus distinguishes the principles defining the state from the administrative arrangements governing its relations with organized social forces.

His criticism of policing similarly separates a general function from a distinct substantive field. He accepts danger as policing’s object and security as its purpose, but rejects the placement of security police alongside health and education. Security is a condition of orderly activity throughout administration, not a coordinate sphere of human life. Police organization and powers belong to the theory of executive authority; particular preventive measures belong within their respective administrative fields. Associations and assemblies should not be understood primarily through their potential dangerousness, while insurrection and martial law raise constitutional questions.

These objections apply the review’s explicit criterion of systematic adequacy:

Denn es ist natürlich nicht genug, überhaupt ein System zu haben, sondern es muss dasselbe auch vollständig und sachgemäss geordnet sein, wenn es seinen Werth ganz haben und seine Aufgabe ganz erfüllen soll.

English translation: For it is naturally not enough to have a system at all; rather, that system must also be completely and appropriately ordered if it is to have its full value and to fulfil its task entirely.

The concluding critique concerns social administration. Stein’s concept of society is more comprehensive than its administrative application. Marriage, family, church, municipality, and communities of interest deserve examination as institutions shaping social relations and distributing resources. A concentration on workers threatens to reduce the social question to the labour question; the inclusion of poor relief and measures against high prices also blurs distinctions between social, personal, and economic administration.

Inama-Sternegg calls for the fuller development of Stein’s own theoretical achievement. Administration must recognize the independence of social forces while considering how the state can support or restrain them. The review’s constructive force lies in this demand for consistency: administrative science needs a system broad enough to encompass the institutions its theory identifies, and precise enough to distinguish their different relations to public authority.