Administrative Autonomy Quotes

For the Scottish government, the practice of having meetings in different parts of the country is well established, but for the U.K. government, it is a much rarer event.

More emphasis was thus thrown upon the local governments than in England.

I have not had the cabinet here for 6 weeks. I can run the government better without them.

I do not know which is the more preferable, a government composed of several members but sovereign in the country, or a government of a single man with several inferior administrations all having the attributes of constitutional power…. The present government succeeds in combining the worst of both systems by having a infinity of governments all endowed with constitutional laws and separate powers, so that departmental (provincial) councils dispute with the government and the towns and the communes.

More than purely economic measures are required [for the Russian peasant]. He must be granted the freedom of individual and personal initiative and the opportunity to intensify his productivity by hiring labor. He must have the right of free, unhampered cooperative association, with a voluntary--not as heretofore obligatory--membership, the right of free election to the administrative machinery --not appointment from above, as has been the practice all these years.

On top of this it is now considered acceptable - indeed, almost compulsory - for incoming governments to politicize the upper reaches of the public service to such an extent that they have almost become subsidiaries of the governing party.

If elected, I would not be the mere president of a party - I would endeavor to act independent of party domination and should feel bound to administer the government untrammeled by party schemes.

As far as we were concerned, we were operators, we were administrators. I don't ever recall going to Dean Acheson and asking for any counsel or advice on administration, but I had the greatest respect for him, as I have today.

Progressives since Woodrow Wilson have aspired to marginalize Congress to insulate the “science” of public administration from politics. The aim is to emancipate supposedly disinterested experts to apply, without political supervision, supposedly neutral science for social betterment.

Modern administrative government springs from the inadequacy of a simple tripartite form of government to deal with modern problems …. It vests the necessary powers with the administrative authority it creates, not too greatly concerned with the extent to which such action does violence to the traditional tripartite theory of government organization.

The power of the officials and their independence, in case they were opposed by strong social influences, was increased by the fact that the officials were strangers in the districts in which they were employed, for Frederick William continued the policy of appointing only strangers to the district to official positions...

The White House will run itself while the president is away. That's why he has to be sure not to be away too much.

No department or locality may, or will be allowed to, interfere in the affairs which should be administered by [the SAR] on its own.