Public Administration and Politics This paper wi

Politics play a unique role in the administration of public policy in democracies. Democratic governments are ruled by politics; they must adhere to the will of the electorate or else run the risk of being voted out of office. This means that all functions of a democratic government are somehow influenced by the political will of the electorate.

However, many functions of government are carried out by bureaucracies whose members are not directly elected by the voting public. Instead, the heads of the bureaucracies are appointed by the elected officials of the government; the head bureaucrats then hire workers for the lower tiers of the bureaucracy according to established guidelines. The lower-level bureaucrats are hired and promoted on the basis of merit. The bureaucracies are therefore populated by technocrats possessing particular skills absent in the elected officials. This structure has caused several theorists to place bureaucracies under the heading of new ruling "elites." (Etzioni-Halevy, 1983, pp. 9-84). The bureaucrats wield

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olitical support through governmental appointments in the 1830s. From that time forward, the political spoils system ruled American national and local governments. (Etzioni-Halevy, 1983, pp. 164-66). The civil service systems were implemented during the Twentieth Century as a means of eliminating the political spoils system, or at least reducing its effects. Under the civil service system, the American bureaucracies were brought under the model of the British system, to a certain extent. Hiring and promotion were to be based upon merit and dismissals had to meet certain criteria. However, the civil service system was not uniformly implemented throughout the United States and political spoils were still utilized. (Etzioni-Halevy, 1983, pp. 166-67). The abuses of the administrative structure which arose in the Nineteenth Century led many to advocate the separation of the administrative structure from politics. Ironically, many politicians came to advocate such a separation because it insulated them from the public accountability for hard decisions. They would not be to blame for decisions made by administrative agencies independent from the political realm. However, they also recognized that these decisions would still b
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1556
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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