Politics and Administration

Historical Context

Public organizations regulate private behaviour and provide public services and goods. When democratic governments elaborate public decisions, they have to articulate them through specific organizations and processes that comply with desires expressed by the citizens. Politics frame the constraints, public policies set the rules and administration transforms them into individual cases. The first model so designed emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century. Employees claimed their professionalism and scholars saw ‘neutrality’ as the focus of their understanding of public administration (Vivien, 1845). According to Luc Rouban in his chapter, this quality is the founding myth upon which the civil service was built as an accurate occupation separated from politics. It has given shape to know-how in the public service and it has provided for the emergent status of the civil service. The same path was followed later in the United States, when the crucial implication of the theory was accepted, namely that positions in [Page 294]the civil service were no more to be considered rewards; they were to be distributed according to expertise, as was the case for any job. The bureaucracy was a tool in the hands of elected officials and its legitimacy followed from that. The rule of law regulated its actions. Publicness implied specificities, privileges and commitments. This classical view of the relationships between politics and administration was generally accepted at the end of the nineteenth century.

Based on these principles, two different approaches to bureaucratic action were promoted. In Europe, the mainstream position was derived from the ‘State of Law’ under the direction of German and French schools of law, law being understood as a science for action in the public sector (Duguit, 1903). A theoretical and ideological division between politics and administration characterized these developments. Their relationships were structured according to such concepts as control and hierarchy. Research methods were directed by the deductive thinking of lawyers and they concentrated on the conditions under which rules and regulations were enforced. On the other hand, during the same period, American students of public administration were urged by Woodrow Wilson (Wilson, 1887) to build on a true science of public administration, separated from politics and oriented toward the search for efficacy. He strongly recommended relying on the experience of private management. Consequently, scientific activity was based on observation to set up instructions.

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