T h e Po l i t i c s - A d mi n i s t r a t i o n Di c h o t o my i n t h e Co n t e x t o f t h e
S e p a r a t i o n o f Po w e r s
Mavrot Céline, Pascal Hurni, and Christian Rosser (Centre of
Competence for Public Management, University of Berne)
Paper Prepared for the Panel ‘Political Theory’ at the Annual Conference of the Swiss
Political Science Association in Geneva, January 7-8, 2010.
Abstract
This paper aims to contribute to the clarification of the politics-administration dichotomy as
one of the identity-establishing ideas of public administration research and theory. It is
discussed in what respect the dichotomy relates to a more basic discourse about the separation
of powers doctrine within political theory. Depending on the spatiotemporal context, the
interpretations of the separation of the political and the administrative spheres have varied
considerably. Therefore, we conduct a hermeneutical analysis of primary sources and examine
the different levels of meaning of the politics-administration dichotomy and place them in the
respective context of the separation of powers in France, the United States, and Germany.
Using the politics-administration dichotomy as an example, we will show how ideas change
according to different contexts. If these contexts are disregarded, understanding remains at
best fragmentary, if not misleading.
1
Introduction
For more than a century, scholars of Public Administration have claimed that administration
requires in some way or another to be separated from politics.1 It is generally acknowledged
that the politics-administration dichotomy was an identity-establishing concept in research
and theory about public administration which has provided much controversy until today (e.g.
Rosenbloom 2008; Snellen 2006; Svara 2001; Kettl 2000; Holzer/Gabrielian 1998; Henry
1987). Several authors hold that the “separation of politics and administration found a longlasting anchorage in the doctrine about the separation of powers” (Luton 2003, 179; cf.
Overeem/Rutgers 2003; Rutgers 2001 and 2000; O’Toole 1987; Rosenbloom 1983).
Considering the connection between the politics-administration dichotomy and the trias
politica, it is surprising that the relation of the two concepts is only rarely discussed in the
literature (Rutgers 2000, 299). This case study compares the French, the German, and the U.S.
controversy on the politics-administration dichotomy to contribute to filling this gap.
The only unambiguous conclusion that may be derived from the politicsadministration dichotomy is that administration is not politics (Rutgers 2001, 6). The concept
does not, however, define what administration is in relation to other constitutional branches of
the state. “In the most common view, the dichotomy of politics and administration somehow
reflects the separation of legislative and executive” (Overeem/Rutgers 2003. 174). However,
as the position of the administration within the state and its three powers has traditionally given way to different interpretations in Continental Europe and the U.S. (Rutgers 2000), the
picture appears to be slightly more complex. In the following, we therefore discuss where
French, German, and U.S. scholars of Public Administration saw the appropriate position of
administration among the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. It may be illuminating
to concentrate our analysis on the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, for the post-war period was a time
when the appropriate position of administration provoked fierce controversies on both conti1
We use upper case letters to refer to the scientific discipline ‘Public Administration’, whereas we use lower case letters to refer to the
practice.
2
nents. The politics-administration dichotomy provided the counterparties with a bone of contention.
The paper is structured as follows: First, we illustrate how the politics-administration
dichotomy was discussed in the U.S., before we turn to the discussion of the French case, and
then close the empirical section with the German debate. The concluding section compares
the three cases. As regards method, we conduct a hermeneutical analysis of primary sources.
More precisely, we concentrate on academic texts of scholars of social-science-based Public
Administration and/or administrative law to examine the different levels of meaning of the
politics-administration dichotomy and place them in the respective context of the separation
of powers in France, the United States, and Germany.
The United States: From ‘Top-Down’ Scientific Management to ‘Bottom-Up’ Political
Administration
Several scholars (e.g. Yang et al. 2008, 29; Rosenbloom 2008, 59 and 1993, 504; Overeem
2005, 318; Overeem/Rutgers 2003, 163; Svara 2001, 178; Henry 1987, 45-48) interpret the
American academic discourse on the politics-administration dichotomy during the post-World
War II period as a reaction of mainstream political scientists such as Gaus (1938; 1949), Dahl
(1947), Long (1949), Appleby (1949), and Sayre (1951; 1958) against the highly influential
scientific management principles of, for example, White (1926), Willoughby (1927), Gulick,
and Urwick (1937). In his article on Public Administrative Theory and the Separation of
Powers, Rosenbloom (1983) distinguishes between three disparate approaches to the
fundamental question of what constitutes public administration and labels them ‘managerial’,
‘political’ and ‘legal’. In America, Public Administration researchers have always favored a
social science perspective rather than legal perspective. We therefore contrast the managerial
with the political perspective to illustrate how the post-war administrative discourse was
characterized by two interdependent ideational changes: the renunciation of the politics3
administration dichotomy and the rebalancing of the executive and the legislative power. In a
nutshell, we illustrate that the managerial approach has contemplated an extension of
executive authority, stressing the value of efficient policy implementation. The political
approach gave more thought to administrative representativeness, responsiveness, and
accountability. It regarded public servants as supplementary law and policy makers and was
accordingly concerned more about legislative functions of administration.
The advocates of the managerial approach found their source of inspiration in the private sector and, as a consequence, aimed at businesslike administration or management based
on deducible scientific and thus stable principles (e.g. POSDCORB). With regard to administrative values, efficiency was regarded as the main goal of public administration (Yang et al.
2008, 29; Rosenbloom 1983, 220). As a means to achieve satisfactory administrative efficiency, the proponents of scientific management envisioned a businesslike division of responsibilities within government. For example, Gulick (1937, 10) stated that a “combination of incompatible functions in the same office may be found in the common American practice of appointing unqualified laymen and politicians to technical positions or to give technical direction to highly specialized services. […] we are faced here by two heterogeneous functions,
‘politics’ and ‘administration’, the combination of which cannot be undertaken within the
structure of the administration without producing inefficiency.” To guarantee efficient governance, administration had to be insulated from the influence of policy making and partisan
politics. Furthermore, the bureaucracy was supposed to be organized as a hierarchically controlled, professionalized, rational, rule-bound, politically neutral, and meritocratic body of
civil servants (Rosenbloom 1983, 220).
Scientific management intended to take ‘inefficient’ effects of volatile policy making
and meddlesome partisan politics out of administration. As administration was considered a
subordinate part of the executive branch, the politics-administration dichotomy provided its
advocates with a means to enhance the executive’s authority (Rosenbloom 1993, 504; Rohr
4
1986, 137). Because public servants were viewed as neutral professionals, controlled by a
hierarchical line of superiors all the way up to the elected and thus democratically legitimized
Presidency, they faced very little skepticism. The politics-administration dichotomy was the
concept that would not only guarantee efficient, but also responsible government.
The advocates of the political approach understood that the politics-administration
dichotomy was intended to yield a more independent and influential executive. From both, a
normative and an empirical perspective, they refuted the concept. Long (1949), for instance,
argued that the dichotomy lacked empirical validity because it neglects the issue of power. He
stated that the authors of the pre-war years had neglected the institutional reality of U.S.
politics. For instance, he lamented that a “picture of the Presidency as a reservoir of authority
from which the lower echelons of administration draw life and vigor is an idealist distortion of
reality” (Long 1949, 258). According to Long (1949, 259), administration needed discretion
in policy making because “legislation passed and powers granted are frequently politically
premature.” He accused the managerial school of seeing a philosopher king in the American
President. He asserted that the political reality of the U.S. would never provide the executive
with a unified set of aims appropriate for the whole pluralistic society which could be handed
down the administrative chain of command to serve the common will. Instead, the
administration proved to be the pawn in the hands of either the executive or the legislature,
depending on the distribution of power within the American institutions at a given time.
Because public servants had to respond to the pluralistic interests of both their political bosses
and their societal clientele, they would naturally try to acquire as much power as possible.
Dahl also contested the empirical validity of the politics-administration dichotomy. He
doubted whether the scientific management’s ontological premise of the rational individual
was accurate. Dahl (1947, 6) was convinced that the image of the individual as dominated by
reason had “been discredited by all findings of modern psychology. The science of
organization had learned too much from industry and not enough from Freud.” Accordingly,
5
he concluded that “we cannot achieve a science by creating a mechanized ‘administrative
man’ […], whose only existence is in books on public administration and whose only activity
is strict obedience to ‘universal laws of the science of administration’” (Dahl 1947, 7).
According to Dahl, the managerial approach was furthermore based on inappropriate
normative assumptions because it stressed efficiency as the main value of administration.
Referring explicitly to Willoughby, Urwick, and Gulick, he stated that the “doctrine of
efficiency […] runs like a half-visible thread through the fabric of public administration
literature as a dominant goal of administration” (Dahl 1947, 2). He affirmed that “there are in
a democratic society other criteria than simple efficiency in operation” (Dahl 1947, 2). His
opinion is cynically revealed in the statement that “Belsen and Dachau were ‘efficient’ by one
scale of values” (Dahl 1947, 2). From a democratic theoretical perspective, he suggested that
the study of public administration ought to start from a far-reaching discussion of values
which would not only include the issue of efficiency, but also “the great question of
responsibility” (Dahl 1947, 3).
In the same vein, Gaus criticized Gulick and Urwick (1937) for their narrow focus on
efficiency. He maintained that administration ought to be seen “as a ‘going concern’, actual
and tangible, as the product of political forces and values and in turn creating new political
forces and values” (Gaus 1938, 133). Accordingly, the scientific management scholars must
have been wrong in sharply separating governmental “‘knowing, thinking, and planning’
functions from the ‘line’ or ‘doing’ functions” (Gaus 1938, 133). Instead, public
administration had to be both policy-making and execution. The political approach underlined
the “principal function of public administration to reconcile and to mesh the functions of
politicians and the functions of experts in the service of society” (Gaus 1949, 1036). Rather
than the maximization of efficiency, the normative fundament of the science of public
administration had to be responsiveness, responsibility, and accountability. Otherwise the
democratic legitimacy of the potentially overwhelming technocratic administration was not
6
guaranteed.
Finally, the writings of Sayre substantiate the picture of the post-war skepticism
towards the politics-administration dichotomy. Sayre was probably the first author who
applied the actual term, when he argued that in the pre-war literature, the “politicsadministration dichotomy was assumed both as a self-evident truth and as a desirable goal;
administration was perceived as a self-contained world of its own, with its own separate
values, rules and methods” (Sayre 1958, 102). He regretted that in the “pioneer texts […] the
responsiveness of administrators and bureaucrats was not seen as a problem because everyone
then understood that politics and policy were separate from administration, which was
concerned exclusively with the execution of assignments handed down from the realm of
politics” (Sayre 1958, 103). Sayre (1958, 104) called for a reformulation of administrative
theory that would picture public administration as “one of the major political processes. The
exercise of discretionary power, the making of value choices, is a characteristic and increasing
function of administrators and bureaucrats; they are thus importantly engaged in politics” He
argued that “administration is ultimately a problem in political theory: the fundamental
problem in a democracy is responsibility to popular control; the responsibility and
responsiveness of the administrative agencies and the bureaucracies to the elected officials
(the chief executives, the legislators) is of central importance in a government based
increasingly on the exercise of discretionary power by the agencies of administration” (Sayre
1958, 105). He was content that the contemporary political approach had moved away “from
value premises which exalt the power of elected chief executive over a tightly knit hierarchy
as the keystone in a system of administrative responsibility” (Sayre 1951, 6). Instead, the
study of administration had to sketch out how citizen representatives could express
themselves in administrative processes, which were of both an executive and a legislative
character (Sayre 1951, 7-8).
The proponents of the political approach laid their focus on the balance of powers
7
instead of their separation and administration and executive were no longer regarded as
synonyms. Rather than as a subdivision of the executive, administration was interpreted as a
fourth governmental branch. For Gaus (1949, 1036), it had been Appleby who had “modified
the theory of the separation of powers into a flow of processes, on the one hand. But he does
not, therefore, swing over to a ‘managerial state,’ or a ‘pressure politics’ state, or a
‘leadership’ state on the other. He reminds us of what we have – a particularly American
complex marked by extraordinarily wide varied, democratic participation; that politics and
administration and participation should all be viewed as normal, desirable, as well as
necessary.” In conclusion, it may be stated that after World War II, public administration was
no longer linked exclusively to the executive, but also to the legislative branch, “as a
retrofitting of administration into the Constitution” (Rutger’s 2000, 299). This reinterpretation
made the politics-administration dichotomy obsolete.
France: Public Administration under the Umbrella of Administrative Law
The French study of administration has been dominated by administrative law. Whereas in the
U.S., it was the managerial approach that advocated an influential executive branch before
and during World War II, in France, it was the predominance of administrative law that
shaped the trias politica towards a predominance of the executive power. In the aftermath of
the war, when administrative law faced a crisis, the separation of powers doctrine was
reinterpreted and, as a consequence, the politics-administration dichotomy faced a crisis also.
In the following, we discuss the development of the Conseil d’Etat – the institution that gave
birth to administrative law – to show how both the separation of powers and the politicsadministration dichotomy experienced reinterpretation.
Initially, the Conseil d’Etat was created by the King to prevent the judiciary from
assuming executive functions. The Conseil advised the government on its regulations and
judged administrative litigations (Woehrling 1984, 19-20). It is this duality of jurisdictions
8
that characterizes the French case, in which the ordinary judicature was not legitimated to
judge administrative acts made in the pursuit of the Intérêt Général (Debbasch 1978). The
Conseil gradually became an independent body of administrative jurisdiction, incarnating a
new type of state organ apart from both the judiciary and the executive. The Conseil d’Etat
lost its authoritarian origins and presented itself as a guardian of the individual liberties
against state power (Puget 1951). In order to arbitrate the conflicts between citizens and
public authorities, the Conseil’s case law was systematized. This systematization gave rise to
administrative law as an autonomous field of study (Vanneuville 2003).
Two elements are important to explain the changes within the doctrine of
administrative law after 1945. The first regards the close connection between the Conseillers
d’Etat and the theoreticians of administrative law. As often the same people were responsible
for both scholarship and legal practice, special attention has to be paid to the institutional
context of the reconfiguration of administrative law. The second regards the legalistic
character of administrative research. In fact, administrative law was based on Carré de
Malberg’s notion known as the instrumentality of administration. Because administration was
considered exclusively as a tool to implement policies, administration was separated from
politics (Mescheriakoff 1990, 360). However, most administrative experts of the interwar and
immediate postwar period rejected the dichotomy. They thought instead that administration
often acts by means normally assigned to political powers (réglementation) and therefore
claimed that the analytical tools of administrative law needed refinement (Waline 1946). The
idea of insulating administration from other functions of the state was abandoned.
The reasons for the abandonment of the politics-administration dichotomy were
threefold. First, experience with Nazism had shown that relative respect for the legal order
can nevertheless lead to dictatorship (Langrod 1965). The constitutional and administrative
reform that occurred with the establishment of the Fourth Republic provoked vivacious
reconsiderations of the relations between the different governmental functions (Fabre 1946).
9
Second, administrative law was accused of having become irrelevant to meet the
requirements of the hectic postwar society. According to most of the authors, the explosion of
legislations and regulations, which had been triggered under the occupation, had provoked
great juridical insecurity. Indeed, the interventionist authorities of the occupation period had
installed a plethora of rather improvised new departmental services that lacked coordination.
This resulted in textual incoherence of the law as well as practical disorganization. The
confusion made administrative scholars and practitioners call for a reunification of the body
of public law (Bonnaud-Delamare 1953). In addition, the theoreticians agreed on the necessity
to adapt their analytical tools to the greater fluidity and to the extended scope of State
intervention.
The most conspicuous problem for scholars of administrative law was the emergence
of new public fields that blurred the dividing line between private and public law.
Administrative law was required to cohabit with other juridical regimes in order to run the
new hybrid institutions that had emerged in several domains of state intervention. This
requirement made the classical administrative theories fall into abeyance, and the keystone of
administrative law, the notion of public service, slipped into crisis. Administrative scholars
responded to this crisis with their call for a renewed criterion to disentangle private and public
law (Rivero 1953). The increased crossing of jurisdictions caused a complex triangulation of
the organs of the state, private law, and public law, which made the ancient vision of
administration as separated from and subordinate to the political spheres implausible. This led
scholars to advocate an analytical approach that was able to take all the links between all the
institutions into account (Langrod 1948b, 553). The Conseillers d’Etat were especially
interested in this controversy, for its result was going to have repercussions on the amplitude
of their activity. Indeed, the intrusion of private law into administrative concerns gave them a
new impetus for reflection on the links among administration and the other State bodies.
The third reason of the abandonment of the politics-administration dichotomy had to
10
do with the evolution of the academic disciplinary context. Until World War II, the influential
law faculties had managed to maintain political studies under their venue. By the end of the
forties, however, political scientists’ criticism against administrative law took great strength.
Scholars of the emergent political science fired a salvo at administrative law when they
blamed its exponents for the excessive abstraction and the hidebound legalism of their
analysis (Pelloux 1947, 59-60; Rivero 1948). Administrative law was also accused of
prejudging the institutional compartmentalization of state organs.
In response to these accusations, administrative lawyers widened the scope of juridical
expertise to non-purely legal aspects of state construction. They admitted that the
dichotomous concept suffered from a lack of methodological reflexivity and that it was “rigid
and fictive” in character (Langrod 1953, 840-841). Seen from this angle, the opening of
administrative lawyers towards an administrative science that rejected the dichotomy was a
defensive reaction against the emancipator struggle of political science2.
The most essential repercussion within administrative studies was the recognition that
administration actually had sub-legislative and sub-regulatory power. Instead of a strictly
instrumental body of the executive, administration was regarded as an actor with a will of its
own. The parliament mandated the government with the codification of legislative texts that
had been issued in a rather non-systematic manner during the war and the reconstruction
period (Bonnaud-Delamare 1953, 572). Those texts were usually prepared by public servants,
for they were considered the competent specialists to deal with the tasks that had become
necessary in the course of the diversification of State intervention (Tsoutsos 1978, 326-328).
Hence, the assumption that administration had sub-political power was reinforced.
This led administrative authors to allege the necessary construction of a noncontentious administrative law. If until then the French administrative law almost reduced to
its contentious part, the idea of completing it by a so-called ‘processual’ administrative law
2
The administrative science was defined as the analysis of the effective application of the rules prescribed by the
administrative law.
11
aimed to codify the progression of rule application on every level of hierarchy, thus covering
each step of the process of administrative decision-making and application (Langrod 1948b;
Langrod 1959a). The advantages of this scientific renovation were twofold. On the one hand,
it ensured a greater juridical security for the citizens’ defense, and on the other hand it made
administrative law recover coherence. In fact, the codification of administrative procedure
allowed internal administrative acts previously devoid of juridical values to be progressively
transformed into regulations. Administrative acts accordingly became upper-degree juridical
acts, thus making them controllable by the Conseil d’Etat (Wiener 1971, 328; Bool 1949).
The delegation of power conceded to the administration was then recognized. In other words,
the aim was to accord de jure recognition to a de facto phenomenon. The codification also
guaranteed a stable and uniform procedural framework for administrative action. It helped to
unify the different subparts of administrative law in a systematized body of knowledge
covering the administrative processes from part to part (Langrod 1948a). This change in
administrative law doctrine resulted from the abandonment of the classical conception of
administration as a secondary state function (Mescheriakoff 1990, 363-364).
The changes in administrative law doctrine were related to the unsteady political
context of the Third and of the Fourth Republic. Both regimes were characterized by the
exaggerated partisan struggle for power within parliament (Le Pillouer 2004, 306-308). The
call for more independent administrative organs grew during the postwar period as a means to
protect them from the political vulnerability of deputies. The theoretical justification was
provided by the notion of Intérêt Général assigned to the administration which implied its
political unaccountability (Suleiman1973, 745). The political instability of the Third Republic
increased the importance of high civil servants for the state functioning by delegating more
power to them (Vernadakis 1988, 478). During the war, the executive had enjoyed full power
of policy determination which allowed the government to avoid parliamentary as well as
jurisdictional control of its acts. Afterwards, the government was overthrown by the
12
parliament almost every year between 1946 and 1958, thus impeding political continuity3.
After the Second World War, the aim of administrative theorists was to recognize the
delegation of powers made to administrative bodies and to codify it in order to assure better
control. Here lays the fundamental link between the rejection of the politics administration
dichotomy and the new equilibrium of powers prescribed by administrative law scholars. The
codification of administrative activity permitted the Conseil d’Etat to control governmental
regulations despite parliamentary failures (Langrod 1948b, 556). It is this systematization of
previously discretionary powers which paved the way for the legalization of the raising
administrative functions within the constitutional system (Debbasch 1973, 103).
The equilibrium of powers was progressively redefined in favor of the executive
organs. As we have seen, the first step toward this redefinition was the codification of the
administrative procedure which permitted both its juridical control and a higher level of
systematization. The idea that administration contributes to regulation-making was
strengthened after the French government was delegated legislative powers in 1958. The
difficulties to put an end to the war of Algeria made General de Gaulle work towards the birth
of the Fifth Republic. The high echelons of the public services, especially the Conseillers
d’Etat, prepared the new Constitution which contained institutional renovations (Langod
1959b, 332). The central intent was to empower the government to conjure previous political
instability and inaction (Le Pillouer 2004, 332). This was achieved by a massive ascription of
legislative power to executive bodies (Langrod 1959b; Puget 1963)4. As regards decisionmaking processes, the weakening of the parliament within the constitution of the Fifth
Republic made the executive even more dependent on administrative bodies (Vernadakis
1988, 493-494).
The empowerment of regulatory instances was justified by the search for efficiency.
3
The instability of these regimes was identified in the lack of separation of powers.
A huge amount of domains which previously belonged to the sphere of law are incorporated into executive
attributions, to the extent that some authors says that “l’exécutif est devenu législateur de droit commun”
(Tsoutsos 1978, 324).
4
13
The new institutional arrangement was widely supported by administrative law scholars,
because it drastically increased the scope of the Conseil d’Etat’s control. While according to
the separation of powers doctrine, judges cannot control parliamentary laws, all the
governmental initiatives fall into the control of the Council. The stretched monitoring of the
administration’s delegated power since 1958 normalized executive action. The new
constitutional arrangement mixed the legitimization of state action by efficiency and its
legitimization by legality (Wiener 1971). With regard to efficiency, the rationale was to give
the administration increased means to pursue the common good. As regards legality, the idea
was to supply the administrative jurisdiction with an amplified prerogative to control the
observation of legal requirements. The very legitimization of this empowered administration
was the security of its procedures. The subtle equilibrium found in the new system highlighted
the confidence accorded to the government by the parliament, the extended area of regulatory
acts, and reinforced legal control of executive activity.
The rejection of the dichotomy firstly led to the recognition of the delegation of
powers to administration and secondly, to the call for more governmental and administrative
strength. Administrative scholars’ overall justification for this shift in the doctrine was the
necessity to unify executive actions (Langrod 1959b, 335; Puget 1963). At last instance, the
democratic legitimization of a weaker legislative power was found in the safeguard provided
by the Conseil d’Etat, which historically had always protected individuals against the State
(Woehrling 1984). The link between this high administrative instance and the government is
very tight: the constant interactions between their respective legal-legitimacy and efficiencylegitimacy reinforced their interdependent roles in the politico-institutional order.
Germany: From the Legal to the Political Approach to Public Administration
After the Reich’s collapse, the victorious allied forces criticized the German public
administration as “an obedient administrative tool of dictatorship” (Seibel 2006, 762).
14
Although the post-war situation offered a window of opportunity to discuss and redefine the
role of the state, the respective roles of its branches, and of public administration, this
happened only to a certain extent. Arguably this may have been due to the capability of
incremental self-reform of the German public administration and its role as an anchor of
stability in times of turmoil (Seibel 2006, 760). Yet another explanation might lie in the
dominant role jurisprudence played in German Public Administration and its alleged
conservatism (Werner 1967). Although social-science-based Public Administration was not a
newly established field of research after World War II, it enjoyed only limited importance
until the 1970s (cp. Seibel 2006; Dammann 1971a; Scharpf 1971). Arguably, two reasons led
to this development. First, political science was not yet an established field and, second,
“political science as a tool of democratic re-education after 1945 had not focused intensively
on what seemed to be the most controllable element of the new West German democracy”:
public administration (Seibel 2006, 764).
This section is structured as follows: First we present the debate in German
jurisprudence concerning several aspects of the politics-administration dichotomy and
administrations place in the concept of the trias politica. Then we illustrate the new concepts
introduced by social-science-based Public Administration.
In the classical German doctrine that can be traced back to von Stein, and Weber,
administration is a governmental instrument. Whereas the politically legitimized government
acts as a political body which decides and coins laws, administration is concerned with
fulfilling its tasks on the basis of those predetermined guidelines. In other words,
“administration as practice […] is not entitled to the highest leadership, but only to
implementation of the will of the state as it has been established by the legislation or the
government. Law is will, administration deed” (Giese 1956, 1, authors’ transl.). The
dichotomy between politics and administration concurs with the dichotomy traced back to
Wilson and Goodnow. This, however, cannot be surprising as Wilson was heavily influenced
15
by German scholars (Sager/Rosser 2009; Rosser forthcoming)
With regard to the trias politica, the view of public administration as being a
subdivision of the executive branch was dominant (e.g. Landmann et al. 1957, 22; Bender
1956, 27; Wolff 1956, 8; Peters 1949, 8). However, in German constitutional law,
administration had not played an important role and had thus not been elaborated in details.
Peters (1974, 284) states that whereas Jellinek, Helfritz or Heller had considered
administration as largely negligible, henceforth administration was to be regarded as perhaps
the centrepiece of the state in any modern reflections on the state. According to Landmann et
al. (1974, 22 - 23), the executive was formed by the government and the administration. The
government was politically appointed and therefore democratically legitimized; the
administration was reduced to an instrument of the government or, more general, to the
“working state”. It was the government’s responsibility to assure that the administration
abided to the guiding state principles (Staatsgrundsätze) as they were established in the
constitution.
A strict separation between government and administration within the executive
branch seemed impossible (Peters 1949, 8). The very same scholars who compiled
administration and government in the executive branch stressed that public administration was
not restricted to an implementation of executive orders. Although public administration’s
goals were determined by politics, administration was additionally recognized to have a
certain degree of freedom and creativity concerning questions of implementation (cp. Bender
1956, 27; Wolff 1956, 8; Peters 1949, 8). Consequently, public administration was not
conceived as being merely a part of the executive. The administration’s dependence on the
government was not synonymous to it being restrained to the government (Wolff 1956, 8).
Jurisprudence’s dominant role in Public Administration was not challenged by social
scientists until the late 1960’s. According to Dammann (1971a, 189), jurisprudence’s
dominance in Public Administration had resulted in a blind spot: While due to political
16
science’s research, the elites in several political institutions such as the parliament, parties and
labor unions had to answer to profound questions, basic knowledge about the influence of
administration was missing. “On the one hand, a social-science-based administrative science
was perceived […] as a more realistic approach to public administration than a public-laworiented approach of jurisprudence. On the other hand, the motivations were clearly
normative (Seibel 2006, 762).” Not only Public Administration, but also public administration
was largely dominated by bureaucrats with a legal background. By surmounting the
Juristenmonopol and thus broadening the academic background of public administration’s
work force, political scientists expected many problems to be seen more clearly, or at least
differently, and thereby new solutions might be yielded (Scharpf 1971, 19; Grosser 1968, 33).
Social-science-based Public Administration was not a newly established field of
research after World War II. However, it had enjoyed only limited importance thitherto (cp.
Seibel 2006; Dammann 1971a; Dammann 1971b; Scharpf 1971). This is somewhat surprising
as Weber and von Stein proved to have greatly influenced US-Public Administration.
Whereas German jurisprudence was not completely oblivious of von Stein, Weber’s
intellectual heritage was hardly continued. If at all, he was mentioned only for ornamental
references (Dammann 1971a, 188). Weber’s focus on power and his notion of the plebiszitäre
Führerdemokratie were criticized as being possibly proto-fascist. Furthermore, after World
War II, there was a need for normative legitimization of governmental actions that Weber’s
work was lacking according to German scholars of the time (Anter 2005, 131 - 132). Morstein
Marx, who had fled the Nazi-regime and went into American exile, reintroduced Weber’s
bureaucratic values within political science. Setting certain normative problems aside, he held
that bureaucrats must not take sides according to the personal political position, but be an
“indiscriminate means of action for any government that arrived to power legitimately”
(Morstein Marx 1959, 159; authors’ transl.).
Despite of Morstein Marx’s defense of the apolitical public servant, when German
17
political scientists turned their attention to public administration, they rigorously rejected the
notion of administration’s neutral nature. By discarding the politics-administration dichotomy,
empirical political science could enter a field of research that previously had been neglected
by political scientist as it had been considered uninteresting (Scharpf 1971, 11).
According to Ellwein (1966, 63), the observable practice of how public tasks were
obtained could not be explained sufficiently by the dominant models of political decisionmaking, governmental process and the trias politica. “The theoretical distinction of politics
and administration has risen to a dogma, although no one has been capable to draw clear
boundaries. However, another dogma has been established under the German doctrine of the
separation of powers according to which a strict separation between the executive and the
legislative is to been drawn, understood consistently, and thus no distinction between
government and administration can be found” (Ellwein 1966, 77; authors’ transl.). As
planning and implementation could be separated only schematically but not empirically, the
requirement to discuss the politics-administration dichotomy ceased to exist for political
scientists (Ellwein 1966, 81). The new approach taken in German Public Administration was
based on the concept of policy-making. Grauhahn is recognized as one of the first to analyze
decision making as a process wherein administration is heavily involved (Scharpf (1971, 13).
“As a first consequence, this [led] to a direct confrontation with the conventional normative
pre-comprehension which [wanted] to appoint merely an instrumental function to the
administration in the decision-making process” (Scharpf 1971, 11).
Analogue to jurisprudence, where the politics-administration dichotomy could not be
sustained entirely, in political science it was not rejected completely, but rather reconfigured.
To retain some validity of the politics-administration-dichotomy, Ellwein treated
administration according to its various functions rather than as a unified body (Ellwein 1966,
120-122). Luhmann maintained the politics-administration dichotomy in an entirely different
manner. Rather than following the traditional concept of attributing the institutions involved
18
in the decision process to the political, the parliament, the government, the courts, and
administration were all subsumed to the administrational sphere. In this abstract concept, the
political sphere, however, was restricted to all processes of communication which serve to
legitimize power (Dammann 1971a, 192; Scharpf 1971, 9; Luhmann 1966, 73; Luhmann
1965, 136; Luhmann 1964, 74).
Conclusion
It was the aim of this paper to contribute to the clarification of the politics-administration
dichotomy as one of the identity-establishing ideas of public administration research and
theory. With regard to the post World War II discourse on public administration in the U.S.,
France and Germany, we have discussed in what respect the dichotomy related to a more
basic discourse about the separation of powers doctrine within political theory.
We have illustrated that in the U.S., the politics-administration dichotomy served as a
bone of contention to political scientists of the 1940s and 50s. They criticized the scientific
management scholars’ concentration on the administrative value of efficiency. In order to
insulate the administration, which was considered a subordinate part of the executive, from
policy making and the meddlesome partisan struggle for political power, the scientific
management authors wrote in favor of a strict separation of political and administrative
aspects of government. The advocates of the political approach, on the other hand, regarded
representativeness, responsiveness, and accountability as the central values of the American
political system. Accordingly, those values had to be taken into account within all the
constitutional branches: the legislature, the judiciary, the executive, and also the
administration. As a consequence, the politics-administration dichotomy was rejected.
In France, the study of public administration had been dominated by administrative
law. Traditionally, administrative lawyers had considered public administration a mere
political instrument with no will of its own, thus upholding the dichotomy. After World War
19
II, the dichotomy was rejected and the notion of administration’s instrumentality was replaced
by the recognition of administrative sub-legislative and sub-regulatory authority.
Consequently, the legal status of administrative acts had to be changed. Administrative acts
were codified in order to put them under the control of the Conseil d’Etat. Thereby, the
citizens’ protection against the authority of the state should be strengthened and executive
action unified. An increased separation of the executive and the legislative power was set up
in order to counter the political immobility that characterized the postwar period. In the last
resort, the central idea was to legitimate the system with a predominant executive branch with
regard to concerns of both legality and efficiency.
In post-war Germany, the political order had been set by the victorious allied forces
and constitutional change was beyond attainable limits. Scholars in general, and especially
those in constitutional law and political sciences, concentrated on ‘re-education’ and
‘democratization’ of the German society and, thus, generally avoided questioning the very
fundaments of the political order. However, on a sub-constitutional level, such as the politicsadministration dichotomy, different positions can be observed. The fractions corresponded
largely with the scientific backgrounds. The traditional, legal approach to Public
Administration was largely sympathetic to the politics-administration dichotomy because an
apolitical, instrumental administration was consistent with their conception of the German
constitutional order. Scholars in political science, however, challenged this perception on
empirical grounds and advocated the approach of policy-making as a process which was
allegedly appropriate to grasp the influence of public administration.
Comparing the three cases, we may conclude that with regard to empirical reasons, the
politics-administration dichotomy was unanimously rejected. In France, the strict separation
of the instrumental administration from the political branches of the state was no longer
pertinent to explain the post-War situation. The juridical-institutional changes breached the
fundamental assumptions of administrative law which was drawn into a crisis. Furthermore,
20
the emergent political science added a strong criticism against the rationale of administrative
law. Administrative lawyers responded by codifying administrative processes of policyimplementation and thus integrated the non-dichotomy to their juridical edifice. In Germany
also, the debate evolved between the two distinct scholarly groups of jurisprudential and
social-science-based Public Administration. Whereas the former wanted to maintain public
administration as a sub-ordinate branch of the executive to secure the constitutional
democratic order, the latter rejected the dichotomy to grasp the observable influence of public
administration in the decision-making process. Thus, the politics-administration dichotomy
was a means to distinguish the scientific approaches and to legitimize the own research. In the
U.S., from an empirical perspective, the dichotomy was quite simply seen not to correspond
to the political reality. More interestingly, the post-war political scientists attacked the
dichotomy on its normative grounds, for it stressed the wrong values.
As we have illustrated above, the trias politica was not subject to in-depth debate in
Germany. Yet in the U.S., the rejection of the politics-administration dichotomy is quite
clearly linked to a reinterpretation of the trias politica after World War II. Whereas the
proponents of the dichotomy intended to strengthen the executive and underlined efficiency as
the most important political value, the political scientists aimed to reduce the executive’s
influence. They stressed representativeness, responsiveness, and accountability as the
fundamental values of pluralistic American politics which may be interpreted as legislative
concerns. Hence, the discourse on the constitutional principle of the trias politica after World
War II may be regarded as a rebalancing of powers. In this vein, administration was no longer
seen as a subordinate and instrumental part of the executive, but as a fourth branch of
government.
Contrary to the U.S., where the dichotomy was rejected to strengthen the legislature,
in France, the abandonment of the dichotomy led to a strengthening of the executive. First, the
codification of the administration’s political role made it controllable. Second, the new
21
Constitution of 1958 delegated large parts of legislative prerogatives to the executive body
and reinforced the separation of the legislature and the executive. However, the empowered
executive was counterbalanced by the concomitantly increased power given to administrative
judges. This group of higher civil servants was regarded as the democratic safeguard in face
of the executive, for the Conseil d’Etat supposedly incarnated the general interest. In this
aspect, the French notion of democracy differed from the American idea. While in France, the
enlightened administrative elite were thought to be the guardian of the general interest, for
Americans, neither the enlightened elite nor the general interest were realistic concepts.
Instead, democracy was regarded as a result of the formulation of the pluralistic interests of
American society.
In respect to the trias politica, in France, the legal control of executive activity
legitimized the increased separation of power and thus enhanced the executive‘s capability to
act. In the U.S., on the other hand, the separation of power was reduced. Public administration
became to be conceived as a fourth branch of government which would bridge the gap
between society and the other branches of the American political system. The typically
American notion of democracy as a bottom-up political process implied that control was
going to be secured only if both the legislature, the executive and the administration could be
kept accountable to pluralistic and thus volatile societal interests.
In conclusion, it should have become clear that on both sides of the Atlantic, the postwar debates on the politics-administration dichotomy were related to a more basic discourse
about the separation of powers doctrine within political theory.
References
Anter, Andreas (2005). “Max Weber (1864-1920)”. In: Bleek, Wilhelm and Hans J.
Lietzmann (Eds.). Klassiker der Politikwissenschaft. Von Aristoteles bis David Easton.
München: C. H. Beck: 123-135.
22
Appleby, Paul H. (1949). Policy and Administration. Alabama: University of Alabama Press.
Bender, Bernd (1956). Allgemeines Verwaltungsrecht mit einem Abriss der neueren deutschen
Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte. 2., neubearbeitete und erweiterte Ausgabe.
Freiburg i.Br.: Verlag Eberhard AlbertDammann.
Bonnaud-Delamare, R. (1953). “Progrès de la réforme administrative en France”, Revue
internationale des sciences administratives 19(3): 572-607.
Bool, Chand (1949). “Discretionary powers of Government”, Revue internationale des
sciences administratives 15(3-4): 441-465.
Dahl, Robert A. (1947). “The Science of Public Administration: Three Problems”, Public
Administration Review 7(1): 1-11.
Dammann, Klaus (1971a). “Vom ‚arbeitenden Staat‘ zur ‚Politischen Verwaltung‘ I“, Neue
Politische Literatur 1: 188-204
Dammann, Klaus (1971b). “Vom ‚arbeitenden Staat‘ zur ‚Politischen Verwaltung‘ II“, Neue
Politische Literatur 2: 457-481.
Debbasch, Charles (1973). "Le droit administratif face à l’évolution de l’administration
française”, Revue internationale des sciences administratives 39(2): 101-107.
Debbasch, Charles (1978). Institutions et droit administratifs. L’action et le contrôle de
l’administration. Paris: PUF.
Ellwein, Thomas (1966). Einführung in die Regierungs- und Verwaltungslehre. Stuttgart,
Berlin, Köln, Mainz: W. Kohlhammer Verlag.
Fabre, Michel-Henry (1946). “La fonction gouvernementale et l’ordonnance du 24 octobre
1945”, Revue du Droit Public et de la Science Politique 62(LII): 251-269.
Gaus, John M. (1938). “Review of the Papers on the Science of Administration by L. Gulick;
L. Urwick”, The American Political Science Review 32(1): 132-134.
Gaus, John M. (1949). “Review of Policy and Administration by Paul H. Appleby”, The
American Political Science Review 43(5): 1035-1036.
23
Giese,
Friedrich
(1952).
Allgemeines
Verwaltungsrecht.
Vorlesungsgrundriss.
3.,
neubearbeitete Auflage. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
Grosser, Dieter (1968). “Entwicklungstendenzen in der deutschen politischen Wissenschaft“,
Annuaire Suisse de Science Politique 8: 31–44.
Gulick, Luther H. (1937). “Notes on the Theory of Organization”. In: Gulick, Luther H. and
Lyndall F. Urwick (Eds.). Papers on the Science of Administration. New York:
Institute of Public Administration: 1-47.
Gulick, Luther H. and Lyndall F. Urwick (1937). Papers on the Science of Administration.
New York: Institute of Public Administration.
Henry, Nicholas (1987). “The Emergence of Public Administration as a Field of Study”. In:
Chandler, Ralph Clark (Ed.). A Centennial History of the American Administrative
State. New York, London: Collier Mcmillan Publishers: 37-85.
Holzer, Marc and Vatche Gabrielian (1998). “Five Great Ideas in American Public
Administration”. In: Rabin, Jack, W. Bartley Hildreth and Gerald J. Miller (Eds.).
Handbook of Public Administration 2nd Ed. New York: Marcel Dekker: 49-102.
Kettl, Donald F. (2000). “Public Administration at the Millennium: The State of the Field”,
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 10(1): 7-34.
Landmann, Heinz, Wolfang Giers and Ernst Proksch (1957). Allgemeines Verwaltungsrecht.
Düsseldorf: Müller-Albrechts-Verlag.
Langrod, Georges (1948a). “Remarques sur l’autorité des décisions administratives”, Revue
du Droit Public et de la Science Politique 64(LIV): 19-25.
Langrod, Georges (1948b). “Procédure administrative et droit administratif”, Revue du Droit
Public et de la Science Politique 64(LIV): 549-556.
Langrod, Georges (1953). “La méthode des cas et la science administrative américaine”,
Revue française de science politique 3(4): 832-848.
Langrod, Georges (1959a). “Quelques problèmes de la procédure administrative non
24
contentieuse en droit administrative comparé”, Revue internationale des sciences
administratives 25(1): 5-20.
Langrod, Georges (1959b). “Initial Administrative Tendencies of the Fifth French Republic”,
Revue internationale des sciences administratives 25(3): 332-345.
Langrod, Georges (1965). Compte-rendu de “L’Etat de siège comme trait caractéristique de
l’Etat hitlérien”, Revue Internationale de Droit Comparé 17(3): 805-807.
Le Pillouer, Arnaud (2004). “ La notion de “régime d’assemblée” et les origines de la
classification des régimes politiques”, Revue française de droit constitutionnel 58(2):
305-333.
Long, Norton E. (1949). “Power and Administration”, Public Administration Review 9(4):
257-264.
Luhmann, Niklas (1964). Funktion und Folgen formaler Organisation. Berlin: Duncker und
Humblot.
Luhmann, Niklas (1965). Grundrechte als Institution: Ein Beitrag zur politischen Soziologie.
Berlin: Duncker und Humblot.
Luhmann, Niklas (1966). Theorie der Verwaltungswissenschaft: Bestandsaufnahme und
Entwurf. Köln, Berlin: Grote.
Luton, Larry S. (2003). “Administrative State and Society: A Case Study of the United States
of America”. In: Peters, B. Guy and Jon Pierre (Eds.). Handbook of Public Administration. London: Sage Publications: 169-176.
Mescheriakoff, Serge Alain (1990). “Légalité, efficacité, équité, les avatars de la légitimité
administrative: le cas français”, Revue internationale des sciences administratives
56(2): 359-381.
Morstein Marx, Fritz (1959). Einführung in die Bürokratie. Eine Vergleichende Untersuchung
über das Beamtentum. Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag.
O’Toole, Laurence J. (1987). “Doctrines and Developments: Separation of Powers, the
25
Politics-Administration Dichotomy, and the Rise of the Administrative State”, Public
Administration Review 47(1): 17-24.
Overeem, Patrick (2005). “The Value of the Dichotomy, Politics, Administration and the Political Neutrality of Administrators”, Administrative Theory & Praxis 27(2): 311-329.
Overeem, Patrick and Mark R. Rutgers (2003). “Three Roads to Politics and Administration:
Ideational Foundations of the Politics/Administration Dichotomy”. In: Rutgers, Mark
R. (Ed.). Retracing Public Administration, Vol. 7. Boston: Elsevier: 161-184.
Pelloux, Robert (1947). “L’enseignement du droit public et des sciences politiques et les
projets de réforme des facultés”, Revue du Droit Public et de la Science
Politique 63(LIII): 54-67.
Peters, Hans (1949). Lehrbuch der Verwaltung. Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg: Springer
Verlag.
Peters, Hans (1976) [1956]. “Die Bedeutung der Verwaltungswissenschaften für die Staatsund Gesellschaftsordnung”. In: Siedentopf, Heinrich (Ed.). Verwaltungswissenschaft.
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft: 267–287.
Puget, Henry (1951). “Tradition et progrès au sein du Conseil d’Etat”, Revue internationale
des sciences administratives 17(1): 13-41.
Puget, Henry (1963). “L’extension du règlement aux dépens de la loi dans la nouvelle
constitution française”, Revue internationale des sciences administratives 29(3): 221226.
Rivero, Jean (1948). “Formation juridique et fonction administrative”, Revue du Droit Public
et de la Science Politique 64(LIV): 557-564.
Rivero, Jean (1953). “Existe-t-il un critère du droit administratif?”, Revue du Droit Public et
de la Science Politique 59(LXIX): 279-296.
Rohr, John A. (1986). To Run a Constitution: the Legitimacy of the Administrative State.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
26
Rosenbloom, David (1993). “Editorial: Have an Administrative Rx? Don’t Forget Politics!”,
Public Administration Review 53(6): 503-507.
Rosenbloom, David (2008). “The Politics-Administration Dichotomy in U. S. Historical Context”, Public Administration Review 68(1): 57-60.
Rosenbloom, David H. (1983). “Public Administrative Theory and the Separation of Powers”,
Public Administration Review 43(3): 219-227.
Rosser, Christian (forthcoming). “Woodrow Wilson’s Administrative Thought and German
Political Theory”, Public Administration Review.
Rutgers, Mark R. (2000). “Public Administration and the Separation of Powers in a CrossAtlantic Perspective”, Administrative Theory and Praxis 22(2): 287-308.
Rutgers, Mark R. (2001). “Splitting the Universe: On the Relevance of Dichotomies for the
Study of Public Administration”, Administration & Society 33(1): 3-20.
Sager, Fritz and Christian Rosser (2009). “Weber, Wilson, and Hegel: Theories of Modern
Bureaucracy”, Public Administration Review 69(6): 1136–1147.
Sayre, Wallace S. (1951). “Trends of a Decade in Administrative Values”, Public
Administration Review 11(1): 1-9.
Sayre, Wallace S. (1958). “Premises of Public Administration: Past and Emerging”, Public
Administration Review 18(2): 102-105.
Scharpf, Fritz W. (1971). “Verwaltungswissenschaft als Teil der Politikwissenschaft”,
Annuaire Suisse de Science Politique 11: 7–24.
Seibel,
Wolfgang
(2006).
“Administrative
Science
as
Reform.
German
Public
Administration”. In: Otenyo, Eric E. and Nancy S. Lind (Eds.). Comparative Public
Administration: The Essential Readings. Amsterdam, Boston et al: Elsevier Jai: 759776.
Snellen, Ignace (2006). Grundlagen der Verwaltungswissenschaft. Ein Essay über ihre
Paradigmen. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft.
27
Suleiman, Ezra N. (1973). “L’administrateur et le député en France”, Revue française de
science politique 23(4): 729-757.
Svara, James H. (2001). “The Myth of the Dichotomy: Complementarity of Politics and
Administration in the Past and Future of Public Administration”, Public
Administration Review 61(2): 176-183.
Tsoutsos, Athos (1978). “Administration publique et politique”, Revue internationale des
sciences administratives 44(3): 323-332.
Vanneuville, Rachel (2003). “Le droit administratif comme savoir de gouvernement? René
Worms et le Conseil d’Etat devant l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques au
début du 20ème siècle”, Revue française de science politique 53(2): 219-235.
Vernardakis, George (1988). “L’école nationale d’administration et la prise de décision
publique en France”, Revue internationale des sciences administratives 54(3): 477503.
Waline, Marcel (1946) [1936]. Manuel élémentaire de droit administratif. Paris: Sirey.
Weber, Max (1980). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie.
Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
Weber, Werner (1967). Staats- und Selbstverwaltung in der Gegenwart. 2. erweiterte
Ausgabe. Göttingen: Verlag Otto Schwarz & Co.
White, Leonard D. (1926). lntroduction to the Study of Public Administration. New York:
Macmillan.
Wiener, Céline (1971). “Du pouvoir réglementaire des ministres en droit français”, Revue
française de science politique 37(3): 315-329.
Willoughby, William F. (1927). Principles of Public Administration: With Special Reference
to the National and State Governments of the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Press.
Woehrling, Jean-Marie (1984). “Le contrôle juridictionnel de l’administration en droit
28
français”, Revue française d’administration publique 36(1): 19-43.
Wolff, Hans J. (1956). Verwaltungsrecht. Ein Studienbuch. München, Berlin: C.H. Beck’sche
Verlagsbuchhandlung.
Yang, Kaifeng, Yahong Zhang and Marc Holzer (2008). “Dealing with Multiple Paradigms in
Public Administration Research”. In: Yang, Kaifeng and Gerald J. Miller (Eds.).
Handbook of Research Methods in Public Administration, 2nd Ed. Boca Raton: CRC
Press: 25-44.
29