ABSTRACT
The politics–administration dichotomy formulated by Woodrow Wilson, Frank J. Goodnow, and Max Weber did not immediately raise many eyebrows in American Public Administration. This chapter explores whether early Public Administration was really strongly infected by scientific populism and instead concentrates on the criticisms raised against the politics–administration dichotomy itself. In the Public Administration literature, this replacement of 'politics' by 'policy' has led often to very extreme understandings of the dichotomy. The most general tendency is to treat the dichotomy between politics and administration as one between willing and acting, deciding and executing. While most empirical criticisms of the dichotomy are aimed at the separation between politics and administration, most normative criticisms have been directed at the idea of administrative subordination and instrumentalization. Thus, they draw heavily on the heterodox reconceptualization of the dichotomy noted earlier: the idea that the dichotomy turns administrators into passive instruments in the hands of politicians.
