Public Administration Ethics

Public Administration and Politics

The process of public administration and the process of politics in the United States contain a clear dichotomy in their functions and operations. This dichotomy has become ever more evident as the field of public administration has evolved through history.

As a process, public administration in the United States is as old as the governmental system. The process of public administration involves effecting the intent or desire of a government; putting public policy decisions into effect in an efficient manner. The political process, on the contrary, involves the institutions and legal systems by which the decisions on public policy are made, not their actual implementation. This is the dichotomy between politics and public administration.

The word "administration" does not even occur in the U.S. Constitution or any state constitution. Therefore, the general question of how administration (or management) relates to the political system is left in contention. The field of public administration has traditionally shown a bias against politics or legalism. The nation's first textbook on public administration makes this point clear: "the study of public administration should start from the base of management rather than the foundation of law."

Although explicitly stated in White's original textbook, this dichotomy between public administration and politics was recognized by scholars and practitioners well before the textbook. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson gave attention to the special problems posed by effecting public policies as opposed to creating public policies and occasionally wrote about these problems. Woodrow Wilson also highlighted the dichotomy in an essay that is often taken as the symbolic beginning of a separate field of public administration. Wilson wrote in 1883 that "it is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one."

This dichotomy is widely recognized in contemporary public...