The Political Approach to Public Administration
Origins and Values The political approach to public administration was perhaps most forcefully and succinctly stated by Wallace Sayre:
Public administration is ultimately a prob lem in political theory: the fundamental problem in a democracy is responsibility to popular control; the responsibility and responsiveness of the administrative agencies and the bureaucracies to the elected officials (the chief executives, the legislators) is of central importance in a government basedincreasingly on the exercise of discretionary power by the agencies of administration