Understanding Shared Roles in Policy and Administration: An Empirical Study of Council‐Manager Relations

Abstract

Recent literature in public administration emphasizes enhanced collaboration between elected and administrative officials. The complementarity view is presented as an alternative to the traditional politics–administration dichotomy. At the center of this new perspective lies the concept of shared roles between elected officials and public administrators with respect to policy making and administration. This article expands the emerging literature on role sharing by proposing and testing new variables to understand what enhances the policy‐making role of city managers and the administrative role of elected officials. Employing data collected from a nationwide survey of city managers and utilizing structural equation modeling methodology, this research finds that the council’s expectations and the city manager’s role conception significantly influence the city manager’s involvement in policy making, while the context of policy making, the city manager’s support, and the council’s access to resources affect elected officials’ involvement in administration. This article aims to make a cumulative contribution to the literature on role sharing.