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Politics and Administration Dichotomy
Theory & Practice of Public Administration (PA 56)
Aklan State University
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Politics and Administration Dichotomy
At least in the United States, Wilson adjudged public administration as a distinct field of study and practice. His public administration has been a discipline separate from politics, his enduring legacy. To Wilson, the field of administration is a field of business and that administration should be politics-free. Administration should be “removed from the hurry and strife of politics. It is a part of political life only as the methods of counting the house are a part of counting society, and that administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics. Administrative questions are not political questions. Although, politics sets the task for administrators, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices.” Thus, Wilson concluded that politics is a state of activity in things great and universal while administration is the activity of the state in individual and in small things. Politics thus, is the special province of the statesman, while administration is the province of the technical official.
At the turn of 19th century, Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow (1900) made significant studies of the American bureaucratic system. 3 Bureaucracy in the United States, they noted, must work within the framework of a democratic society. But how can professional civil servants, who are not directly accountable to the electorate, be reconciled with the goals of democracy? Woodrow and Frank set up the theoretical base that allowed the political scientists of the century to accept the ideals of democracy together with the efficiency of a professional civil service. They made a distinction between political (policymaking) and administrative (enforcement) officials. To ensure that elected officials always run the democratic system, Goodnow concluded that the political official must always control the administrative officials. This subordination must be clearly defined on an individual and agency level. Administration, then, never initiate policy. They merely follow the policy guidelines laydown for them by the political leaders.
Woodrow Wilson Movement
The political discourse on public administration would not be possible had it not been to Woodrow Wilson’s study of Public Administration, set the tone of the role of government and the administration in the civil society, and the improvement they should separately adapt for successful operation. To Wilson, there should be distinct and separate sphere between politics and administration, an adage dichotomy. This separation is believed to bring about solvency in the efficiency and ineffectiveness of government organization or simply mismanagement. Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson later become the 28th President of the United States.
Wilson noted in his classic essay, “it is the object the administrative study to discover, firstly, what the government can properly and successfully do; and secondly how can it can do
proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and the least possible cost either of money or energy.” He propounded on four thesis of administration as embodied in the essay, to wit: 1. The distinction and separation of politics and administration; 2. The marked difference between public organizations and private entities; 3. Stressing the goal of efficiency by emphasizing on business attitudes in the workplace; and 4. Anchoring effective delivery of public services by professional civil servants chosen in the basis of merits.
Spoils System
Wilson clearly espoused the public administrators’ ethos, which are efficiency, effectiveness, and economy. These cultures are known to be the traditional Es. Recruitment in the civil service is anchored on merits and fitness as a result of the spoil system. Therefore, the question of organizational inefficiency rest on the spoil system of earlier governments in the conduct of administration, characterize by red tape or general distaste. The spoils system 2 is a term derived from the phrase “to the vector of spoils.” Spoils meant that successful candidates, including newly elected presidents, were expected to distribute government jobs to those who have taken the trouble of supporting their campaigns. The spoils system continued at least until 1883 when the Pendleton Act created a civil service commission to employ and control government employees. This act shunned politics of patronage and introduced merits and fitness, a subtle way of bureaucratic cleansing.
Politics and Administration Dichotomy
Course: Theory & Practice of Public Administration (PA 56)
University: Aklan State University
