The Study of Administration

Answers

• Q36STATE

  Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?

  Yes. Administration should be a separate science carried out by trained officials under political direction, kept apart from politics.

  Most important to be observed is the truth already so much and so fortunately insisted upon by our civil- service reformers ; namely, that administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics. Administrative questions are not political questions. Although politics sets the tasks for ad- ministration, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices. This is distinction of high authority ; eminent German writ- ers insist upon it as of course. Bluntschli, 1 for instance, bids us separate administration alike from politics and from law. Poli- tics, he says, is state activity " in things great and universal," while "administration, on the other hand," is "the activity of the state in individual and small things. Politics is thus the special province of the statesman, administration of the techni- cal official."

  Internet Archive JSTOR early-journal item; Political Science Quarterly 2 (1887): 197-222; Wikipedia entry.