Politics and administration at the top : lessons from down under

Abstract

A key problem in all democratic governments is eliciting appropriate responsiveness to democratically based policy preferences from the inevitably powerful bureaucracy. What is the most effective relationship between elected officials and the bureaucracy? How can the strengths that each brings to policy making and implementation be combined to reach the best results for the citizenry? Delmer Dunn takes a comparative and institutional approach to examine these questions. He focuses on the two levers of power within modern democracies, the elected party politician and the professional state bureaucrat, using Australia as his example. Dunn uses interviews with Cabinet ministers, members of their staffs, and department heads of two recent governments in Australia to see how ministers seek to provide political direction to the bureaucracy. He examines the extent to which they succeed and how their direction is both influenced by and acted on by the departments. Dunn's analysis provides a look at high-level relationships between politicians and executive departments in one democratic government and offers insights into issues of accountability and responsibility in democratic governments. His findings, based on his in-depth look at a government that blends many features of both US and British governments, reveal the fundamentals that are necessary to make this key relationship work well and are thus pertinent to public administration in all democracies.

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