Bureaucrats and politicians: a report on the administrative elites project
This article is a review of research conducted by Joel D. Aberbach, Bert A. Rockman and their colleagues on the backgrounds, roles, responsibilities and relationships between high-level bureaucrats and politicians in several Western democracies. Bureaucrats and politicians each consider themselves policy-makers but tend to approach policy-making in characteristically different ways. Bureaucrats are the more stable and conserving elite, they tent to maintain equilibrium in the policy environment. Politicians are more risk-taking, they tend to inject energy and initiative into the policy process. Distinctions between bureaucrats and politicians are less clear in the United States, where data collected in the