As the broader intellectual history of political theory makes clear, this is a difficult objective, and for more than half a century students of public administration have had mixed success in meeting Gaus’s challenge. The issues raised here are more complex than those at the heart of the theories of bureaucratic control. The goal is not to locate the dividing line between politics and administration because no such line exists, nor is it to ascertain how bureaucracies can be made accountable to their democratic masters, although this is a question of some importance to theories of bureaucratic politics. Questions of political power are the central focus:
• To what extent do administrative processes, as opposed to democratic processes, determine public policy?
• Who controls or influences the exercise of bureaucratic power?
• What is the role of bureaucracy in representing and advancing the goals of particular clientele groups or organized interests?
• To what extent do elective institutions and elected officials seek to shape and control administration as a means to advance their own political inter ests?
• What is the source of bureaucratic power?
• How does the important political role of nonelected institutions based in hierarchy and authority square with the fundamental values of democracy? If anything has been learned by the efforts expended on developing theories of bureaucratic politics, it is that such questions have no easy answers.