The German and Bluntschli Influence on the Establishment of Public Administration

Abstract

The emergence of the discipline of public administration had long been attributed to Wilson. Martin (1987 and 1988) manifested that the discipline originated in France and consequently passed to USA. However, Wilson’s 1887 article “The Study of Administration” points to the fact that he based the administration-politics dichotomy on German Bluntschli. This showed that it was essential to analyze the German influence on and, in particular, Bluntschli’s contribution to the birth of the discipline of public administration. The present study focuses on Seckendorf, Wolff, Hegel and Stein’s theoretical contributions to the emergence of public administration in Europe and intends to investigate each of them with a particular emphasis on Bluntschli’s influence. It has appeared that the politics-administration dichotomy, which had a great effect on Wilson, was prevalent in the works of Bluntschli, in which the term primary is used for politics to refer to the former and secondary for administration to refer to the latter. Although politics administration difference was expressed in the French literature of public administration, it was concluded that the German effect was significant in the emergence of public administration and its spread to USA.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees: An Atlas of the Politics–Administration Dichotomy

“…A relatively new literature is also emerging that seeks to examine the nature and relevance of the dichotomy in developing regions (Ayee ; Gulrajani and Moloney ). And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the historical roots of the politics–administration dichotomy continue to attract debate (Gultekin ; Sakli ; Uwizeyimana ), no less because of the perennial question of the relationship between efficiency and democracy (Al‐Habil ). With such a variety of issues raised in the first few years of the 2010s, the decade promises to be as busy as ever with dichotomy research.…”