# Politics and Bureaucracy

Political Science I · Public Administration · https://tryals.app/learn/political-science-i/politics-and-bureaucracy

## The Dichotomy

**Woodrow Wilson** proposed a core separation. Politics decides what to do, while administration decides how to do it. Politics handles values. Administration remains technical, neutral, and separate from party.

Wilson aimed to replace the **spoils system** with a merit-based, permanent civil service. The dichotomy helped build modern civil services across democracies.

### Limits of the Dichotomy

In practice, administrative work is rarely neutral:

- **Rules are always incomplete.** Statutes cannot anticipate every case. Applying them requires discretionary judgement.
- **Officials advise on the "what".** They control information and frame options. Ministers choose from alternatives written by officials.
- **Implementation changes policy.** How front-line staff apply rules defines the actual policy experienced by citizens.

**Michael Lipsky** studied front-line workers like police and teachers. Facing scarce resources, they develop routines and rationing devices. These coping mechanisms **become the policy** for the public.

### Four Images of Governance

**Aberbach, Putnam and Rockman** studied Western democracies, describing four relationships:

| Image | Politicians | Bureaucrats |
|---|---|---|
| **I** | Make policy | Administer it |
| **II** | Bring values | Bring knowledge |
| **III** | Bring energy and ideals | Bring caution and balance |
| **IV** | Pure hybrid: roles converge | Pure hybrid: roles converge |

Image I matches Wilson. Yet Putnam, Rockman, and Aberbach found images II and III were far more common, with Image IV emerging.

### The Public Choice View

**William Niskanen** modelled the bureaucrat as a **budget-maximiser**. Exploiting monopoly supply, bureaus secure oversized budgets.

**Patrick Dunleavy** offered the **bureau-shaping** alternative. Senior officials avoid large administrative staffs. They prefer elite advisory roles and **welcome** shifting delivery tasks to external agencies.

> **Common pitfall:** Dismissing the dichotomy entirely. It fails as a descriptive model, but remains a vital **normative** ideal. Officials must avoid partisanship, even if administration involves policy choices.

## Practice questions

9 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Lipsky argues that the decisions of street-level bureaucrats are the public policy. Why is that stronger than saying they influence it?

A. What the public actually experiences is the routine applied at the counter, whatever the statute says
B. Senior officials formally delegate primary constitutional lawmaking authority down to front-line staff
C. Ministers frame broad policy agendas while street-level bureaucrats choose between statutory alternatives
D. Front-line staff outnumber ministers and hold statutory authority to formally overturn parliamentary laws

**Answer:** A. What the public actually experiences is the routine applied at the counter, whatever the statute says

**Why:** Because the claim is about **what policy is**, not about who influences it. A citizen never meets the statute; they meet a member of staff applying a routine developed to ration scarce resources. If that routine differs from the statute, the routine is what the policy amounts to in practice.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-bureaucracy/lipsky-argues-that-the-decisions-of-street-level-bureaucrats-are-the

### 2. Sort each statement by whether it supports the politics–administration DICHOTOMY or undermines it.

**Answer:**

- Supports the dichotomy: Officials should be appointed on merit rather than by party, Ministers should decide policy and be accountable for it
- Undermines it: Rules are incomplete, so applying them requires judgement, Officials control the information and draft the options

**Why:** The split is not between right and wrong claims but between **normative** and **descriptive** ones. The dichotomy fails as a description of what officials do, and survives as a rule about how they should be appointed and how they should behave, and conflating the two is how the finding gets misused.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-bureaucracy/sort-each-statement-by-whether-it-supports-the

### 3. Which are true of Dunleavy's bureau-shaping critique of Niskanen?

A. It denies that officials pursue their own interests at all
B. It is consistent with what senior officials actually did in the reform era
C. It predicts officials would welcome hiving delivery off to agencies
D. It argues senior officials prefer small elite policy units to large budgets

**Answer:** B. It is consistent with what senior officials actually did in the reform era; C. It predicts officials would welcome hiving delivery off to agencies; D. It argues senior officials prefer small elite policy units to large budgets

**Why:** The fourth misses that bureau-shaping is **also** a self-interest model, it simply identifies a different interest. Officials want interesting work close to power rather than large staffs and industrial-relations problems, which predicts the opposite behaviour to Niskanen and matches what actually happened.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-bureaucracy/which-are-true-of-dunleavys-bureau-shaping-critique-of-niskanen

### 4. Wilson's dichotomy was proposed as a reform aimed at the spoils system.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True**, and remembering the target keeps the argument fair. Wilson was attacking an arrangement in which every change of government replaced the officials, and his separation was the intellectual case for a permanent, qualified service. It achieved that, whatever its analytical shortcomings.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-bureaucracy/wilsons-dichotomy-was-proposed-as-a-reform-aimed-at-the-spoils

### 5. Complete the account of the relationship.

**Answer:** Wilson proposed that politics decides what shall be done and administration decides **how**. Lipsky called front-line officials **street**-level bureaucrats and argued their coping routines become the policy. Niskanen modelled the official as a budget-**maximiser**, and Dunleavy replied that senior officials prefer small **elite** units close to ministers.

**Why:** The four blanks trace the argument from its founding statement to its two modern challenges, one from the front line, showing that implementation is policy, and one from the top, showing that officials pursue interests but not the ones the standard model assumed.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-bureaucracy/complete-the-account-of-the-relationship

### 6. Of Aberbach, Putnam and Rockman's four images, how many did their interviews find described almost nobody?

**Answer:** 1 (within ±0.4)

**Why:** **One**: Image I, the pure dichotomy in which politicians make policy and officials merely administer it. Images II and III described most of what they observed, and Image IV, the hybrid, was emerging as senior officials took on political work and politicians became more technical.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-bureaucracy/of-aberbach-putnam-and-rockmans-four-images-how-many-did-their

### 7. Arrange these steps by which a statute becomes what the public experiences.

**Answer:**

1. A statute is passed setting out general provisions
2. Officials draft regulations and guidance to apply it
3. Front-line staff meet cases the rules do not determine
4. Routines and rationing devices develop under resource pressure
5. The routine is what citizens encounter as the policy

**Why:** Each step is a translation, and each translation loses and adds something. By the last step the policy as experienced may differ substantially from the policy as legislated, without anyone having disobeyed anything, which is what makes Lipsky's account so hard to answer with better rules.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-bureaucracy/arrange-these-steps-by-which-a-statute-becomes-what-the-public

### 8. Wilson's politics-administration dichotomy fails as an accurate description of how modern governments operate, yet remains central to democratic governance. Why does it persist despite this empirical failure?

A. It ensures that statutory legislation completely removes front-line discretion
B. It prevents senior civil servants from shifting delivery tasks to external bodies
C. It serves as a normative ideal to preserve non-partisan civil service standards
D. It accurately captures the hybrid governance dynamic observed in Western states

**Answer:** C. It serves as a normative ideal to preserve non-partisan civil service standards

**Why:** Confusing normative ideals with empirical facts leads students to dismiss the model entirely. While administration inevitably involves policy judgement and discretion, the dichotomy remains essential as an ethical standard protecting civil service impartiality from politicisation.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-bureaucracy/wilsons-politics-administration-dichotomy-fails-as-an-accurate

### 9. Because administration is unavoidably political, the normative case for a non-partisan civil service collapses.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False**, and the confusion is the standard misuse of the finding. That officials exercise judgement and shape outcomes is a description; that appointments should not follow elections is a rule about how to organise the service. The first does not license abandoning the second, if anything it strengthens the case for insulating that judgement from party.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-bureaucracy/because-administration-is-unavoidably-political-the-normative-case