By authoring this essay, Wilson is also credited with positing the existence of a major distinction
between politics and administration. This was a common and necessary political tactic of the reform
movement because arguments that public appointments should be based on fitness and merit, rather
than partisanship, necessarily had to assert that “politics” were out of place in public service. In establishing
what became known as the politics-administration dichotomy, Wilson was really referring to
“partisan” politics. While his subtlety was lost on many, Wilson’s main themes—that public administration
should be premised on a science of management and separate from traditional politics—fell on
fertile intellectual ground. The ideas of this then-obscure professor eventually became the dogma of
the discipline and remained so until after World War II. While the politics-administration dichotomy
would be later discredited, his ideas are still highly influential and essential to an understanding of the
evolution of public administration