Is Political Public Administration a Threatto Legislative Supremacy?

Abstract

The power that public administrators possess has been one of the most important concerns in the field's discourse for many decades. The widely shared acknowledgement that public administration is a powerful instrument was followed by the question of how to control that power to ensure legislative supremacy in a democratic polity. The traditional response to this question advanced three specific propositions to ensure legislative supremacy: 1. administrative neutrality, 2. policy leadership by elected officials, 3. and legislative oversight. This study first articulates and then evaluates the traditional model using survey data collected from a national sample of city managers in council-manager local governments. The results of structural equation modeling show that the traditional model provides insufficient explanation to understand the relationship between elected leadership and administrative officials. The study then discusses implications of the findings and concludes with some suggestions for future research.