The Relationship Between Administrative and Political Action: Dichotomy or Beyond Dichotomy

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• fahime asadi ¹
• mohamad emami ²
• Mojtaba Vaezi ³

¹ Faculty of Law and Political Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

² Professor, Department of Public Law, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran, ( Supervisor)

³ Faculty of Law and Political Science Shiraz Univerrsity

Abstract

Highlights

The Relationship

Between Administrative and Political Action: Dichotomy or Beyond Dichotomy

English abstract:

The social and political life experience, especially in the last century, and the abuse of acquired or attributed power by the governors, caused thinkers to pay attention to the relationship between administrative action and acts of state (political action or politics). Briefly, administrative action means the direct implementation of the law by institutions that are not necessarily subordinate to the executive, and political action means the actions that politicians perform with power and authority. Therefore, the interference of the competences and functions of the legislative and executive, make the distinction between administrative and political practice as an issue for law and public administration scholars. So, a concept called politics-administrative dichotomy emerged and over time, it underwent ups and downs in the spectrum of refusal or possibility of existence, and was subjected to many criticisms. Experts in the field of public administration have compiled articles about the subject, but in this article we want to discuss the nature of the dichotomy from a legal point of view. For this purpose, we first take a look at the history of dichotomy and examine the semantic changes and opinions that have been raised in this regard. Finally, the concern of the present research is to provide a solution that can be used to separate administrative and political actions; A solution that does not allow political-administrative authorities to justify their illegal actions. However, an attempt is made to achieve this aim with a descriptive-analytical method and to answer the basic question, what is the relationship between administrative and political actions? Is the administrative-politics dichotomy the right term to show this relationship?

Wilson, Goodnow and Weber were among the first authors who paid attention to this issue. Examining their opinions shows that they took two different ways to conceptualize the content and purpose of the politics-administrative dichotomy: Wilson and Goodnow supported the administrative against the politics, but Weber defended the politics against the administrative. The deciding-executing distinction, meaning that political action is equivalent to decision-making and administrative action is equivalent to executing politics, is often the starting point of their thinking about politics-administrative dichotomy, but it certainly does not represent their full understanding of this distinction.

In 2012, with a new look toward a constitutional perspective, in order to explain the concept of administrative-politics dichotomy, Overeem examines three aspects of action, which are: "Content", "purpose" and "relevance". In terms of expressing the content, he separated "administration-policy-politics" and thus, he considered public administration separate from party politics and subordinate to the policy politics. Regarding the purpose, first, the politics-administrative dichotomy helps to maintain or at least promote the independence and proper functioning of the public administration and administrators and thus provides typical administrative values such as stability, reliability, effectiveness and efficiency, and it does so by supporting separation of administration from politics, especially party politics, and promoting the professional independence of civil servants. The second purpose considers dichotomy as a tool to protect the interests and quality of politics and politicians against administrative interventions. Therefore, it serves political values such as open deliberative space, democratic accountability, fair play of power, strong leadership, etc. Whenever this is the main purpose of dichotomy, the emphasis is usually not on the separation of the two, but rather on the subordination of administration to politics. The third aspect is relevance. The meaning of relevance is why and with what reasoning dichotomy has been confirmed and accepted? To answer this question, it is clear that the three aspects of its meaning - content, purpose and relevance - are interdependent and must be seen together. We can adapt our conceptualization of dichotomy to a particular purpose, or choose a purpose that best relevant to our preconceived notion of dichotomy. Most of all, the relevance of the dichotomy depends on the composition of the content and its purpose. If we want to judge the relevance of an idea, we need to know what it means and what it is for; For example, if the dichotomy is conceptualized as a strict separation between deciding-executing (content), it is not very useful(relevant) for describing the reality of governance (purpose), and cannot accurately describe the relationship between politics and administrative actions.

So far, we have seen that there is no consensus among the authors about the definition of administrative and politics. It seems that, in conclusion, administrative action can be considered as a practice that is carried out by public authorities to implement the law and policies with the aim of providing public services, public interests and establishing public order daily, occasionally and creatively, and defining politics as a practice which is done by public authorities to create the law and policy, respect public interests and utilize political and sovereign power permanently and generally. By providing such definitions, it is expected that the relationship between these two actions will be clarified, but the fact is that despite these definitions, the border between these two "in action" is still blurred and we see actions with administrative-political features by the authorities and in fact dichotomy arose to describe such a situation. Against this concept, experts and writers have had different reactions and opinions, which can be divided into two categories: those who seek to redefine this concept, those who seek alternatives.

Redefinition means changing the government's attention from power and hierarchical system to cooperation and partnership with the people and acquiring their satisfaction. The most important redefinition is the transformation of the politics-administrative dichotomy into the policy-administrative dichotomy. so, if any of the government employees or managers considers something expedient, he not only has the power, but also has to make a policy based on the circumstances. Therefore, both politicians and managers are involved in policy making; The first in an official capacity and the second in terms of discretionary powers. The political and administrative nature of an act depends on its context, not its nature.

Since the middle of 20^th century, dichotomy has become subject of intense criticisms, calling it “A Seriously Erroneous Description of Reality” or “A Deficient, Even Pernicious, Prescription for Action”. Considering that the dichotomy can no longer be seriously supported, some theorists have tried to provide alternative conceptual structures to understand the relationship between administrative and politics. But none of them had paid attention to the position of public administration in the constitutional government system, so their alternatives were not useful. Until Svara proposed the complementarity model in 2006. In this model, there is dependence and mutual influence between politicians and managers. The interaction between the two categories of officials is secured by integrating supervision and representation by elected officials and independence and dependence by managers; Elected officials provide political oversight of the administration and managers participate in political decision-making; Managers uphold the law and respect political priorities and recognize the need for accountability; Managers, who are responsible for public service and support for democracy, seek to promote the broadest sense of the public interest and act ethically. On the other hand, elected officials respect the participation of professional managers and the dignity of administrative practice. Svara believes that possible tensions in this situation can be resolved by moral commitment and mutual respect of the parties involved. With a brief look at the evolution of the concept of dichotomy, we found that this concept has gone through periods of up and down, and a single and fixed meaning of it cannot be seen in the scholars’ writings. The administrative-politics dichotomy was first proposed to express the conflict, but then this rigid demarcation faded. It is no longer possible to limit administrative to executing and politics to deciding. What has happened in the forward movement of the writers' thoughts is the existence of an interactive relationship similar to separation of powers between managers and politicians; Managers are involved in decision-making and politicians supervise and control managers. The high officials of the executive are involved in policy-making, which is a quasi-legislative act, and the managers of other parts of the executive are engaged in direct administration of public services in order to secure the public interest. The politics-administrative dichotomy is a single concept that its vocabs should be seen together. Therefore, creating an absolute distinction between two types of government action is no longer the goal of dichotomy. therefore, politics and administrative have their definitions as stated, but when they are placed next to the word dichotomy, they fade in this context. Today's dichotomy intends to express the complementarity and deep relationship between these two actions and points beyond its classical concept; In the administrative organizations actions, in addition to the public interest and the use of public power, there are traces of determining the policy for the implementation of officials’ policies, and it is impossible to imagine an administration that has been carried out without making a decision about the implementation method. Also, in the officials’ political practices, there is interference in the administration affairs in order to monitor implementation of policies, and a political decision cannot be left without following up its implementation. If we accept complementarity approach regarding the relationship between administrative actions and politics, we will still face officials who intend to make their administrative decisions look political, and the extent of the officials' responsibility remains unclear. Therefore, we are forced to provide practical solutions for the relative separation of these two actions in the context of dichotomy. In this article, 3 solutions are presented:

1- Pay attention to the predominance of the administrative or political function of an action; This means that the act of a political-administrative official is political if it is at the highest levels of government and its political aspect is dominant, and it is administrative if it is executive at lower levels and its administrative aspect is dominant.

2- Pay attention to political motivation; Regardless of their nature, political actions are done with political motivation, while administrative actions seek to secure the public interest.

3- Identifying the politics-administrative dichotomy as a constitutional principle. In this way, the nature and relationship of this concept with the separation of powers and the principle of the rule of law and the responsibility of officials will be determined. Of course, the position of this principle in the constitution of each country can be different; But it seems that identifying public administration as an independent power makes it easier to distinguish between administrative and political actions.

Keywords

• Administration
• Politics-Administration Dichotomy
• Politics
• Policy

Main Subjects

• Fundamental Studies in Administrative Law