Administration and Politics Dichotomy

Administration and Politics Dichotomy
Catherine R Durham
Grantham University

Politics-Administration Dichotomy has different purposes that shows the field of administration is a field of business.   Politics is a process where among the politicians where disagreements and conflicts are worked out; at the end of this process, laws and policies through legislation are formed.   The purpose of these policies and laws guides or directs the public administration of how to serve the people.   Public administrators applies this skill and knowledge and is called expertise.   In understanding the dichotomy, “administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics” (Wilson, 1887).   Politics-Administration Dichotomy is very much needed today as it is practical and workable.
The politics-administration dichotomy is much needed today as it was a century ago.   In the public administration, you have the politicians on one side and the administrators on the other.   Waldo stated, “Nothing is more central in thinking about public administration than the nature and interrelations of politics and administration.   Nor are the nature and interrelations of politics and administrators matters only for academic theorizing.   What is more important in the day-today, year-to-year, decade-to-decade operation of government than the ways in which politics and administration are conceptualized, rationalized and related one to the other” (1987).   Politicians should have only the power of creating and letting the administrators implementing and enforcing because of how easily personal feelings, greed and favoritism can cause problems for the people, community, and this country.
In using the politics-administration dichotomy among the politicians and public administrations, there is an advantage and disadvantage.   The advantage of using this model is that it checks and balances, which is one of the most predominate systems of the democratic accountability used to shape the U.S. government,...