Reconceptualizing the Politics-Administration Dichotomy to Better Understand Public Leadership in the Twenty-First Century: A Multilateral Actors Model

• Published date: 01 April 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740231213407
• Author: Richard Callahan,Tim A. Mau
• Date: 01 April 2024

Reconceptualizing the Politics-

Administration Dichotomy to Better

Understand Public Leadership in the

Twenty-First Century: A Multilateral

Actors Model

Richard Callahan

1

and Tim A. Mau

2

Abstract

The long-standing discussion of the politics-administration dichotomy is as relevant in contemporary public administration as

at any time in the past. The signif‌icant changing context and persistence of the discussion on the practice of the politics-admin-

istration dichotomy calls for addressing what Overeem observes as the need to better describe the highly complex relations

between politicians and administrators. Two implicit assumptions drive the continued relevance of the discussion of political-

administrative interactions. First, the discussion matters because the actors in question fulf‌ill various public leadership roles.

Second, the political-administrative dialogue matters to questions of constitutionalism, values of representative government,

and facilitating institutions of democracy. In this article, we offer a model of public managers’engagement in the “how”with a

framework that explicitly outlines the range of relationships. We draw on empirical research to outline the current reality of

at least f‌ive signif‌icant types of actors, often working collaboratively in multilateral relationships. The f‌irst section of the article

discusses the genesis and implications of the politics-administration dichotomy. It then proceeds to establish its persistence

over time, followed by an explanation of the logic of our approach. Next, the discussion shifts to the analytic advantage of

a continuum model across f‌ive categories of actors within the governance process, each possessing the potential for public

leadership, showing how this model illustrates paths for addressing the problem we have identif‌ied. Finally, we discuss the

implications of our proposed model for future research design and practice.

Keywords

politics-administration dichotomy, public leadership, administrative leadership, political leadership

Introduction

The long-standing challenges framed by the politics-

administration dichotomy remain relevant in contemporary

public administration as at any time in the past. Though

wrongly credited to Woodrow Wilson (Rosenbloom, 2008),

the signif‌icantchanging context a ndpersistence of thediscussion

on the practice of the politics-administration dichotomy calls for

addressing what Overeem (2012, p. 178) observes as the “…

poor job describing the highly complex relations and interactions

between politicians and administrators.”In the United States, the

persistence and relevance of the politics-administration dichot-

omy in practice are seen at each level of government—national,

state, and local. At the federal level, the contemporary dis-

cussion pertains to the emergence of calls for the political

appointment of current United States federal civil service

positions described as Schedule F (Moynihan, 2022).

In state and local government, the turnover of elected

off‌icials through increases in term limits at the state and

local levels raises questions regarding the policy-making

experience of newly elected off‌icials relative to other actors

in the policy-making process. Furthermore, the emergence

of collaborative forms of governance to address societal

“wicked problems”(Stout & Love, 2019) invites deepening

our understanding of the practices underpinning the politics-

administration dichotomy in the context of integrative

approaches across sectors and levels of government. The

shift in contemporary expectations that the public bureauc-

racy be demographically representative of the larger society

in the United States (Riccucci & Van Ryzin, 2016) and

1

University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

2

Department of Political Science, College of Social and Applied Human

Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Richard Callahan, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Email: rfcallahan@usfca.edu

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2024, Vol. 54(3) 229–241

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/02750740231213407

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