Importance Of Dichotomy In Public Administration

MIGHTY LEFA 201103930

PAD 404
QUESTION 1 Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 3

ORIGINS OF THE DICHOTOMY 3
WILSON, GOODNOW AND WEBER; THEIR VIEW ABOUT POLITICS AND ADMINISTRATION RELATIONSHIP 3

COMPLEMENTARITY OF POLITICS AND ADMINISTRATION TODAY; A NEW TREND BY SVARA 6

CONCLUSION 8

REFFERENCES 10

INTRODUCTION

For many years now the issue of politics-administration dichotomy has been one of the great issues in the field of public administration and it has had a long history. It has been one of the most well-known notions in the field of public administration for quite some time now. One of the most important things in the study of public administration is the association between administrators, on one hand, and

On the same notion as Weber is Overeem who argued that in its classical conceptualizations the dichotomy between politics and administration implied a deep concern about the political neutrality of administrators (Overeem, 2005: 317). This brings us to the conclusion that whether efforts were made to take politics out of administration, as Wilson and Goodnow contended, or whether administration was to be taken out of politics, as in the case of Weber, the aim was always to leave administration unbiased; an outsider to political debate.

COMPLEMENTARITY OF POLITICS AND ADMINISTRATION TODAY; A NEW TREND BY SVARA

We will finish our discussion with focus on the implication of the dichotomy in modern day public service practices. According to Svara (2001: 179-80) there is a new model that is used in today’s public service named the Complementarity Model. When defining this model, Svara says that it is a model of politics and administration based on the idea that designated officials and administrators join together in the common pursuit of sound

Looking at the current situation where Unions are made up of people who are active in politics; for example the Workers Union that protested to the government for salary increment, this situation on its own lead them to support the opposition parties because the ruling party had therefore failed them. In the same workplaces there are of course those that support the ruling party, what now for them? Obviously there will be misunderstandings because now the Workers Union has taken sides in politics. This would make one to question whether democracy can be achieved if politics and administration keep clashing? Furthermore, during elections here in Botswana we see the ruling party using Kgotlas as their way of campaigning as they know that not everyone supports their party. This will discourage other people especially those in opposition to attend these Kgotla meetings, which will affect them because Kgotla meetings are supposed to be of importance to everyone and people are to benefit from these meetings. In Botswana, Kgotlas are classified as administrative bodies and these bodies do not push away politicians as they allow them to address the public on various updates concerning the government but now this has been taken advantage of since now politicians use the Kgotlas to