Yet, as administration scholars accepted efficiency as their central principle, they also accepted democracy—a notoriously inefficient basis of organization—as the central principle of the American political system. This presented a problem in developing administrative theory. The formative era of administrative scholarship, with its focus on the scientific method, its guiding principle of efficiency, and its position in the shadow of business, meant that it developed in a decidedly undemocratic context. Not only was democracy not synonymous with efficiency and various other business and scientific practices incorporated into public administration orthodoxy, but also it was quite possibly hostile to them (Waldo 1952, 85). How could the principle central to the American political system be squared with the forces driving the theoretical development of public administration as a discipline?