Politics and administration is the study of theoretical relationship between political and administrative realms of government. It attempts to understand both normatively and empirically if, and to what extent, these two sets of activities differ from each other. Specific areas of inquiry cover links, similarities, and differences between the two domains of government.
The relationship between politics and administration has been, perhaps, the most fundamental question in the field of public administration since its emergence as a self-acknowledged discipline in the late 1880s. From the dawn of human civilization, states have had clearly distinguishable administrative apparatus in place to implement policies of their rulers; systematic study of this apparatus, however, is a fairly recent phenomenon. It is common in the field to mark 1887 as the.
