ABSTRACT
For almost a hundred years, those interested in public affairs have grappled with the perplexities of the relationship between policy and administration. Woodrow Wilson’s formulation, simplified over time as the dichotomy of policy and administration, defined the terms for discussing the relative roles and proper contributions of elected officials and appointed staff in policy making for half a century. Since 1945, the model of separate spheres of authority has been attacked, rejected, and seemingly destroyed. The challenge has been three-pronged: conceptual, with redefinition of the key terms accompanying the behavioral movement in political science; empirical, as the evidence mounted of extensive contributions of administrators to policy; and normative, expressed most dramatically in the New Public Administration which proclaimed that administrators should make policy to promote values rarely advanced by elected officials. Yet, despite the challenges, the dichotomy model has persisted for two reasons. First, it is partially accurate in describing the relationship between elected officials and administrators. Second, the model provides a normative base, rooted in democratic theory, for assessing the appropriateness of behavior. Alternative formulations either have not provided such prescriptions or contradict democratic theory. It is necessary to recast the policy-administration dichotomy in a form that is normatively and empirically tenable.
