Administration and Politics Dichotomy - Research Paper Example

Administration And Politics Dichotomy Administration and Politics Dichotomy An administration and politics dichotomy is a contradictory relationship between political policies and administrative processes in putting these policies in effect. Woodrow Wilson was the first to point out the existence of this conflicting theory which has been debated over for years and years by the politicians and scholars. Wilson believed that administrative decision should be made without any involvement of politics.

There have been arguments over the connection between the administration and politics for years and years and it continues to be a major problem of power for the developing countries. He came up with this theory because of the increased rate of corruption, urbanization and migration. He thought that jobs were given out to people who were under-qualified for public service jobs, which resulted to more inabilities. That is why he wanted to discover what a government could do more efficiently and in what ways without any involvement from the politics.

In his investigation he figured the existence of politics and administration distinction which became known as “politic- administration dichotomy”. He thought that politics should only determine what government should do by the elected persons and administration should be responsible to put these policies to work by the civil servants. (Overeem, 2012)In my opinion Wilson’s theory has proved workable for politics being the expression of policies for the well-being of the nation and its people and administration being the body for executing these policies in the best possible way.

It has proved to be practical in the United States which helped the US to move from a rural agricultural society to an industrial nation. Although some have contradictory believes about this study can work very well in a small town where day to day managerial decisions are taken by the community or the aldermen of the society, who are also law-makers of the community, whereas this form of government cannot work on one coming out of a dictatorship, communism and socialism and is known as a third-world nation.

One advantage of administration-politics dichotomy is that administrative matters and decisions would not be driven by politics. Although politics provides work to administration but it should not be able to make it do what it wants and should not affect laws and regulations. The purpose of politics is to provide guidance to the public administrations, it’s their job to be the voice for the public and make it heard by the administrators. Whereas, the job of a public administrator is to put these policies, formulated for the best interest of people, to work!

The politicians are not to get involved in administrators and public administrations work. (Schultz & Maranto, 1998). Public administrators are the neutral parties that are supposed to carry out policies decided by the council. In order to be the neutral party they have to minimize the affiliation with the political parties and not get involved in the battles of political elections and make biased decisions not based on rationality. REFERNECESOvereem, P. (2012). The politics-administration dichotomy: Toward a constitutional perspective.

Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis.Schultz, D. A., & Maranto, R. (1998). The politics of civil service reform. New York: P. Lang.