Abstract

Marcia Lynn Whicker, Ruth Ann Strickland and Dorothy Olshfski in their article, Troublesome Cleft: Public Administration and Political Science, argue for a rapprochement between political science and administration. In their thoughtful piece, they call for mutual and amicable work at the that focuses on that target concepts and variables of common interest. For them, the advantages of working at the common interface is an increase in knowledge about how the political system converts inputs into outputs. Furthermore, they would expect the field of to become more from the interaction. For them, lacks the scientific rigor necessary to answer questions with which managers must cope. The lack of rigor is best rectified by political scientists and administrationists working at the interface. We applaud their contribution to the ongoing debate about political science and but find their call for work at the interface troublesome. In making their arguments, the authors appear unaware of on-going and important controversies within the field of administration. Whicker, Strickland and Olshfski have a largely instrumental view of both political science and administration. For them, government is just a conversion process, turning inputs into outputs. We hear the echoes of a by-gone whose systemic role is to turn the demands of political leaders into efficient services. It is no accident that they use public and public administration interchangeably as if the management of financial, human and physical resources was the sum total of the administrator's task. Neither should we be surprised that they use the analogy of an internal combustion engine to describe the role of bureaucracy in governing. Harkening back to the early days of as a field, they apparently see administrators as neutral and passive servants of their political masters. They would find an unseemly succor in a politics/administration dichotomy. They seem unaware of, and apparently would assign small importance to, the ongoing debate in over the role of the service in governance. While their view of has had its advocates from Herman Finer to Theodore Lowi, it is also true that others from Carl Friedrich to George Frederickson and John Rohr have seen as appropriate a more active and political role for administrators in the governance process. They seek a simplistic political system shorn of troubling normative attributes not amenable to their brand of scientific analysis. Needless to say, such a view hardly comports with the governance of a complex society in a global economy. Given the authors' instrumental view of administration, it is hardly surprising that they advocate more rigorous quantitative training. In essence, their approach to is a continuation of, and even a legitimation of, what Orion White and Cynthia McSwain (1990) have criticized as technicism. …

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