ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview and assessment of various alternatives to the politics–administration dichotomy. It discusses alternatives to the dichotomy that resemble what Harmon calls splitting strategies. The chapter addresses the pertinent question whether any of these alternatives offers a 'viable substitute' to the politics–administration dichotomy, and if not, which requirements such a substitute would have to meet. It discusses some typologies developed for the empirical study of political-administrative relationships. The chapter explains three examples of 'quasi-alternatives' in which this is the case. The first example is Herbert Simon, who has offered an important critique of the instrumentalist view of public administration. Another example of a quasi-alternative to the dichotomy that departs expressly from the instrumentalist interpretation is offered by the German sociological theorist Niklas Luhmann. A third—and again very different—example of a quasi-alternative is offered by principal-agent theory.
