The Search for Meaning in Political-Administrative Relations in Local Government

Abstract

Local government provides a useful setting for examining political-administrative relations. In an examination of roles and relationships beginning in the 1980s, my interpretation of the nature of interaction between elected officials and administrators shifted from a partial endorsement of the dichotomy model to a demonstration that both sets of officials have extensive interactions, are interdependent, and have reciprocal influence. There is evidence that public administration scholars in the United States from the beginning recognized and advocated this kind of interaction. It is useful to analyze political-administrative relations in terms of a model of complementarity in which two distinct and partially separated sets of officials come together to shape the governmental process.

Keywords:

• administration
• city council
• dichotomy
• manager
• politics

Notes

1. The argument, fully developed in J. H. Svara, Complementarity of Politics and Administration as a Legitimate Alternative to the Dichotomy Model. Administration & Society 1999, 30, 676–705, is that the claim that strict separation was the founding model of public administration in the United States was an ex post facto explanation from the late fifties, not supported by a close examination of the original writings of Wilson, Goodnow, and White

4. In the weak mayor city, there is a desire by council members to be quite a bit more involved in mission formulation, despite their high actual rating. Department heads, on the other hand, wish that the council would decrease its activities in administration and management. They do not, however, want the mayor to assume a larger role in these areas above his actual moderate level of involvement. In the strong mayor-council cities, the department heads are generally satisfied with involvement levels as they are. These findings seem to indicate that the department heads are more closely aligned with the strong mayor and to not want the council to play a larger role

6. Svara, J. H. A Survey of America's City Councils: Continuity and Change; National League of Cities: Washington, DC, 1991 This measure can not identify the leadership offered by mayor as part of the collective effort of the council

8. Compared to 1985, the council's decline is from 3.7 to 3.4, and the manager's increase is from 3.4 to 3.9. Thus, the manager shift is from one-third step below to one-half step above the council in involvement

9. In practice, council members are most engaged in specific, operational, current matters with highest actual involvement in resolving citizen complaints (3.7 is their rating of actual involvement) and identifying problems that require attention (3.7). They are more involved in solving current problems and budget review (3.5) than in setting long-term (3.4) or annual direction (3.4). In the administrative arena, they are more active in resolving specific complaints (3.7 as noted above) than in evaluation (2.8)

10. To increase comparability of the analysis between the 1985 and 1996 studies, these new items were not included in the calculation of the indices of involvement. As indicated in Table 1 presented earlier, however, they can be included in the activities that measure the policy dimension

11. Administrators prefer a fairly high level of involvement by council members in identifying current issues (3.8) but moderate involvement in developing solutions (3.3). Council members prefer very high involvement in both identifying issues (4.4) and developing solutions (4.2)

15. Mouritzen and Svara, 2002; 114

16. Mouritzen and Svara, 2002: 222

17. Mouritzen and Svara, 2002

18. Moe (1985, 239–240) and Aberbach and Rockman (1993)

19. Approximately one out of three dependent CEOs has the characteristics of the political agent. In contrast to this compliant and directly accountable group, the remainder have some basis in their values for distinguishing themselves from politicians: either they favor holding divergent policy views from the majority (29%), feel broadly accountable to the public rather than directly accountable to politicians (15%), or both (24%)

20. Although fourteen countries were included in the study, the respondents from Ireland were excluded from this analysis. There was an exceptionally high percentage of independent CEOs in Ireland—64%—and the method of weighting respondents gave the relatively small number of Irish respondents a disproportionate impact on the overall breakdown of types. For a discussion of the factors that account for the predominance of independent types, see Mouritzen and Svara, 2002; 231–232

21. In the committee-leader and the collective cities where one finds both a formally strong body of elected officials as well as a mayor or equivalent with formal executive authority, the most common are the interdependent type with 68% and 51% respectively. Dependent types, particularly the professional agents, are much more common in committee-leader and collective cities than the independent type CEOs. Mouritzen and Svara, 2002; Ch. 9

23. When the city administrator is appointed entirely by the mayor, appointed by the mayor with the approval of the council, and appointed by the council, the mayor's influence rating on a 100-point scale in the budgetary process is 95, 75, and 70, respectively. The city administrator's influence self-rating in the three structural arrangements is 82, 87, and 93, respectively

24. In mayor-council cities with a CAO, the city administrator is a very important policy initiator in 30% of the cities (and an important contributor in another 49%) and the most important in 23% of the cities. This level of impact, however, is largely confined to smaller cities

25. Another 52% view the manager as an important source of policy ideas. Thus, a total of 84% consider the manager to be very important or important

26. Svara, J. H. The Politics-Administration Dichotomy Model as Aberration. Public Administration Review 1998, 58, 51–58; Svara, J. H. Complementarity of Politics and Administration as a Legitimate Alternative to the Dichotomy Model. Administration & Society 1999, 30, 676–705; Svara, J. H. The Myth of the Dichotomy: Complementarity of Politics and Administration in the Past and Future of Public Administration. Public Administration Review 2001, 61, 164–171

27. Frederickson, H. G. The Spirit of Public Administration; Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 1996, 58; Svara, James H.; Brunet, James R. Finding and Refining ­Complementarity in Recent Conceptual Models of Politics and Administration. In Retracing Public Administration, Research in Public Administration, Vol. 7; Rutgers, Mark R., Ed., Elsevier Science: Amsterdam, 2003; 185–208

29. Adapted from Svara and Brunet, 2003; 203

30. Mouritzen and Svara, 2002

31. For a discussion of those differences, see Nalbandian, 1994

32. Mouritzen and Svara, 2002; Ch. 6

34. Golembiewski, R. T.; Gabris, G. Today's City Managers: A Legacy of Success-Becoming-Failure. Public Administration Review 1994, 54, 525. In a survey of practices conducted by ICMA in 1996, city managers demonstrated ambivalence about roles. Virtually all managers report that they identify community needs and initiate policy proposals (96%) although one-third question the desirability of doing so. Nine in ten promote policy discussion among council members, but 55% do not consider this action to be desirable. Finally, most managers are uncomfortable promoting team building on the council—only 29% think it is a desirable practice—but 81% undertake such efforts

37. The Model City Charter, Eighth Edition; National Civic League: Denver, 2003; Appendix, for the first time recommended selection of the CAO by the mayor with approval by the city council

39. Mouritzen and Svara, 2002; Table 4.1