ABSTRACT
So far we have been concerned largely with the complex manoeuvres and manipulations related to the formulation of government policy through its various stages, from the electoral process to the point where president and Congress issue their authoritative decisions. All of this has been eminently ‘political’, but in this chapter we turn to an area in which the importance of political influences is just as great but not so obvious. Administration may suggest simply the putting into effect of decisions taken elsewhere, and some civil servants and reformers in the past have argued that politics and administration should be kept in quite distinct compartments. According to this view the civil service should simply be the neutral instrument of the democratically elected politicians, and should not itself have a policy-determining role. There have been attempts in the United States to implement this view, in particular in the case of those agencies that have been given regulatory functions in the industrial and commercial field. The proponents of this view argue that, once its goals have been set for it, the only function of the bureaucracy is to pursue those goals with the maximum efficiency, free from the considerations of personal gain or political advantage that would cloud their judgement or affect their behaviour if they were involved in any way in political intrigues. But this simple view of the nature of administration just will not do. The executive is deeply involved in politics at many levels. Much of the legislation that eventually is enacted into law is first formulated in the departments and agencies of the government, and pressure groups and members of Congress are of course well aware of this, and may attempt to influence administration proposals at a very early stage. The exact way in which the constitutional and statutory powers of the government are exercised may make a very considerable difference to these policies in practice, because so much discretion is inevitably left to those who implement the law. The officials who form the administration may well be overtly involved in politics both by attempting to influence Congress in matters relating to their agencies, particularly appropriations, and by being influenced by Congressmen in the way they carry out their administrative duties. Furthermore, the departments of the government may battle with each other where their
interests, or the interests of their ‘clients’, conflict, and even within a single department such conflicts may arise and become very sharp indeed. Thus the idea that the administrative agencies of government can be isolated from political problems is a chimera, and in America there are a number of social and political factors that increase the extent to which the officials of the government may become involved in political issues.
