ABSTRACT
In his classic 1887 article, “The Study of Administration,” then college professor and future Princeton University president, New Jersey governor, and U.S. president Woodrow Wilson wrote that “administrative questions are not political questions” (p. 210). If this were ever true, it is not so today, as administrative questions have clearly become the grist of national, state, and local politics in an era of divided government at all levels of the American political system. Not only do actors in the American political process monitor, raise questions about, and commence reforms of administration on a routine basis, they also pursue their policy preferences via administrative means. Moreover, the political process shapes the tasks and capacity of administrators to meet both their statutory and constitutional duties, especially in an era of what political scientists call “affective partisan polarization” (Iyengar, Sood, & Lelkes, 2012). In contrast to conventional partisanship where compromise is viewed as necessary and political opponents as still worthy of respect, affective partisan polarization occurs when compromise is seen as traitorous and opponents as villains to be vanquished.
