1. Relate the Holden article to the Riggs article. What are the respective main points?
Both articles focus on the relationship of bureaucracy in modern systems of government. Matthew Holden revisits the subject of “politics and administration” to make the case that administration is the necessary form of action without which political power does not exist. Many have come to acknowledge that “administration is the lifeblood of power”- no administration, no power. Holden points out the need for new language such that administration is neither separate from policies nor subordinate nor sequential to politics. It is a decision-making process. Therefore, administration is power in practice. Thus he feels that his proposed concepts of political power, administrative centrality, and field control is important because it applies to all forms of private organizations.
Similarly, however, with a different approach Riggs examines the concept of modernity in the context of industrialization, democratization, and nationalism. He specifically stated the causes of bureaucracy in the modern systems. He believes that these three mechanisms helped shape administration. First, industrialization has vastly expanded both the tasks assigned to all contemporary governments and the resources placed at their disposal thereby magnifying the necessity for bureaucratic power in order to ensure competent and impartial management of public affairs. Second, democratization has been replaced by representative institutions capable of controlling and directing increasingly complex bureaucracies. Last, nationalism has validated the right of the secularized state to appoint officials vested with the authority to administer public policies, to enforce, the law, to collect taxes, to maintain security, and to perform other necessary public functions
The Essay on Public Administration and Bureaucracy
There are many differences in public administration and bureaucracy. Some differences are theoretical: the word bureaucracy has a structural connotation, referring to public agencies (not considering their function in the larger political system), while public administration has, following Frank Goodnow’s formulation, a functional connotation, referring to the execution of public policies ([ ...
