ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to state as precisely as possible the nature of the ethical issue peculiar to bureaucrats. It examines the nineteenth–century debate on civil service reform with particular emphasis on the argument of the antireformers that the proposed merit system was undemocratic. The chapter analyses Woodrow Wilson's contribution to the debate with his attempt to answer the spoilsmen by introducing his contemporaries to the distinction between politics and administration. It reviews political science literature and other sources that have demonstrated the inadequacy of Wilson's distinction and thereby raised the ghost of the spoilsmen's argument. The chapter demonstrates the inadequacy of the dichotomy between politics and administration. It provides a series of brief descriptions of significant but basically routine problems in public management that require some degree of discretionary judgment by career managers and those who report to them.
