Understanding shared roles in policy and administration: An empirical study of council-manager relations
- 2012
- p.526-536.
- Jul-Aug
Recent literature in public administration emphasizes enhanced collaboration between elected and administrative officials. The complementarity view is presented as an alternative to the traditional politicsﾖadministration dichotomy. At the center of this new perspective lies the concept of shared roles between elected officials and public administrators with respect to policy making and administration. This article expands the emerging literature on role sharing by proposing and testing new variables to understand what enhances the policy-making role of city managers and the administrative role of elected officials. Employing data collected from a nationwide survey of city managers and utilizing structural equation modeling methodology, this research finds that the councilﾒs expectations and the city managerﾒs role conception significantly influence the city managerﾒs involvement in policy making, while the context of policy making, the city managerﾒs support, and the councilﾒs access to resources affect elected officialsﾒ involvement in administration. This article aims to make a cumulative contribution to the literature on role sharing.