AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF POLITICS - IN - ADMINISTRATION: STATE AGENCY AND STATE AGENCY HEAD PARTICIPATION IN THE POLICY PROCESS

This dissertation is an empirical analysis of the politics-administration relationship in state administration. The first formulation of the politics-administration relationship in Public Administration scholarship was the politics-administration dichotomy. This research traces the ascendancy and appropriateness of a contemporary politics-in-administration formulation over the politics and administration formulation represented by the dichotomy. The politics-in-administration phenomenon is defined as bureaucratic participation and valuative input in the policy process.;The dissertation explores two central hypotheses. First, bureaucratic participation occurs in more than just the implementation of public policy. This research reveals the descriptive invalidity of the old politics-administration dichotomy. The magnitude of politics-in-administration is high along the three indicators of agency policy participation and one measure of administrator policy participation gauged in this research. Second, the external environment is important in setting the stage for politics-in-administration. Provided is an empirical test of the claim that bureaucratic policy participation results in part from interaction with other actors seeking to influence public policy.;One important finding of this research is that, in some cases, meaningful empirical relationships are not manifested until the data are disaggregated along certain behavioral criteria (policy area, federal aid dependence). The finding that a behavioral context is often needed to uncover some of the correlates of politics-in-administration suggests that partial, ecologically diverse explanations of this phenomenon may have the most utility.;Politics-in-administration is conceptualized and operationalized at two levels of analysis and two different stages of the policy process. This research examines the participation of state agencies in policy initiation activities and the time allocated by state agency heads to "politics" type (policy development and public support) activities. The data source is the American State Administrators Project (ASAP) survey data.