Politicians and Administrators: Two characters in search of a... role

The roles of politicians and administrators have long been a well debated issue in public administration. This paper builds on previous literature and extends the methodology of Joel Aberbach, Robert Putnam and Bert Rockman (1981) with the aim of investigating the emerging roles of administrators and politicians at Local Government level, which are relatively under-investigated. The study draws on a survey of politicians and administrators of Italian Local Governments with more than 80,000 inhabitants. The findings suggest that three latent factors exist: managerial, professional and political. The managerial factor is the most highly valued by both politicians and administrators, followed by the professional and the political factors. Politicians tend to score significantly more than administrators in both the political and the managerial factors, whereas they appear to be aligned with regards to the professional factor. Politicians and administrators appear to be “two characters in search of a role”.