There is again raised a debate over Politico-Administrative dichotomy with a recent case of suspension of a 2009 batch UP cadre IAS officer Durga Shakti on charge of disturbing communal harmony. The incidence followed by a group of Indian administrative officials coming on the side of the suspended officer and against her suspension by the UP government sparked this debate. The debate as is deep rooted in the very establishment of Public Administartion as a separate discipline was started by the father of this discipline Woodrow Wilson a then professor of Princeton University and later the President of United States of America. Wilson talks of keeping administration separate from politics as every political question is not an administrative question and vice-verse. But in the course of time of not more than a hundred years the very first theory of Public Administration "Politico-Administrative dichotomy" was followed and evolved through many other theories like Principle of Administration, Behavioral theories and so on so forth. After second world war the Behavioral Approach and Management Theory dominated the spectrum and lastly again raised a debate over Politico-Administrative relationship in which administration is subordinated to the political authority with a moral clause of ultimate accountability going to the political leadership. We see many cases in which taking ultimate accountability the minister (the head) of a particular department has to resign even if fault lies with the administrative set up. Keeping political authority at the top of the entire administrative set up holds two main reasons behind.The first is that in a democracy political officials are public representatives and elected members so it counts as a disrespect to public decision/choice to keep their representatives under the thumb of ones who are appointed and not elected.Secondly,unlike the administrative officials political members are not permanent. This may lead to a full fledged authority going into the hands of administrative officials which may be taken as granted. Keeping a deep insight into every aspect of the normative part of it and taking an empirical effect of the later one, there arises only one question as to how to keep political authority checked if taken for granted and how a balance be maintained between politics and administration nonetheless.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 11:04:42 +0000
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