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The Civil Service and Policy Formation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

J. E. Hodgetts
J. E. Hodgetts*
Affiliation:
Queen's University
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Extract

If we are to live we must act; action necessitates making choices; our choices, in turn, reflect philosophical outlooks and a multitude of competing pressures from the material world. In the politics of democracy choices are continually being made at many levels, under varying conditions, with the expectation that there is sufficient consensus within the community to produce or support decisions regarded by the members as comprehensible and tolerable.

In recent years political scientists have been directing their investigations to elections, probably the most conspicuous example of a formal choosing process in which most members of the community are entitled to participate. Resourceful manipulation of the cold figures in which these choices are recorded is now beginning to yield conclusions that can be expressed in qualitative as well as in the more customary quantitative terms. We are learning more and more about why voters make the political choices they do and we can confidently look to the “psephologists,” hovering over their wired boards, to give us more illuminating insights into this area of making decisions.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , February 1959 , pp. 467 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1957

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Ottawa, June 13, 1957.

References

1 Two papers delivered at the 1956 annual meeting of the C.P.S.A. by John Meisel and Dennis Wrong may be taken as harbingers of a valuable flood of such studies in coming years. See Meisel, John, “Religious Affiliation and Electoral Behaviour: A Canadian Case Study,” this Journal, XXII, no. 4, 11, 1956, 481–96Google Scholar; and Wrong, Dennis H., “Ontario Provincial Elections, 1934-55,” this Journal, XXIII, no. 3, 08, 1957, 395–403.Google Scholar Scholars in Britain and the United States already have produced a bulky literature on elections.

2 R. K. Merton's work is perhaps the most outstanding contribution from the sociologists; see his “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality,” chap, v in his Social Theory and Social Structure (Illinois, 1949).Google Scholar There is, of course, the classic analysis of bureaucracy provided by the great German sociologist Max Weber. The contribution of the psychologists can be readily discovered in any one of the many books on personnel administration. Simon's, Herbert Administrative Behavior (New York, 1947)Google Scholar reflects to a high degree his debt to the psychologists, as well as to the sociologists.

3 For example, Stein, Harold, ed., Public Administration and Policy Development: A Case Book (New York, 1952).Google Scholar This volume is the product of the Inter-University Case Program.

4 The illogical nature of the classical division is nicely brought out in Jennings, W. I., The Lato and the Constitution (3rd ed., London, 1943)Google Scholar, Appendix I, “The Separation of Powers.”

5 Sir Francis Floud once observed after the First World War that second division clerks had been forced by the crisis to make daily decisions that before the war would have been matters for cabinet consideration. See his “The Sphere of the Specialist in Public Administration,” Public Administration, I, 1923, 121.Google Scholar

6 The brief Report of the Select Committee on the Nationalized Industries, H.C. 120, 1955, is a sad commentary on the inability to achieve a logical division of responsibility based on the dichotomy between general policy and day-to-day administration. Everything the committee touched turned out to fall under one or more of four areas from which they were specifically excluded. On this point see Chester's, D. N. comments on the report in Public Administration, XXXIV, spring, 1956, 93–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 An excellent historical résumé of this development is to be found in the memoranda of the Clerk of the House of Commons and the Attorney General appended to the Report from the Select Committee on Offices or Places of Profit under the Crown, H.C. 120, 1940–1941.Google Scholar

8 It is significant that Canadian statutes which first sought to define the boundary line between politician and administrator all bore the caption “An Act to Secure the Independence of Parliament.” The first of these dates back to Statutes of Province of Canada, 7 Vic. c. 65 (1844).Google Scholar

9 The highways scandal in Ontario provides one recent illustration, and Professor Samuel Finer has developed this point in great detail in “The Individual Responsibility of Ministers,” Public Administration, XXXIV, winter, 1956, 377–96.Google Scholar See also Morrison's, Herbert comments on the Crichel Downs episode in United Kingdom, House of Commons Debates, 1954, cols. 1274-94.Google Scholar

10 See his “The Reforms of 1854 in Retrospect” in Robson, W. A., ed., The Civil Service in Britain and France (London, 1956), 32–3.Google Scholar

11 The discussion in the House of Commons raised all these issues in an illuminating fashion. See Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1955, pp. 4928 f.Google Scholar

12 Gibbon, I. G., “The Official and His Authority,” Public Administration, IV, no. 1, 1926, 87.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., 93, where Gibbon remarks, “so long as the representative is not provided with instruments of ready control, he is likely to trust the official less and be the more tempted to interfere even in technical matters. … The freedom of the official depends on the assured mastery of the representative.”

14 See Attlee's remarks in Robson, ed., Civil Service in Britain and France, chap, II, 17. A more detailed, original analysis of this relationship may be found in Dunhill, Frank, The Civil Service: Some Human Aspects (London, 1956), chap. VI.Google Scholar

15 Mill, J. S., Representative Government (Everyman's, ed.), 333.Google Scholar

16 Quoted by Chester, D. N. in SirCampion, Gilbert et al., eds., British Government since 1918 (London, 1950), 54 n.Google Scholar

17 Wheare, K. C., Government by Committee (Oxford, 1955).Google Scholar

18 Maud, John P. R., “Planning in the Public Services in Relation to Changing Economic and Political Conditions,” Public Administration, XI, 1933, 280.Google Scholar

19 Truman, D. B., The Governmental Process (New York, 1951)Google Scholar, applies the concept of “access” referred to here. His study is rich in illuminating hypotheses that deserve to be tested in the context of Canadian administration and politics.

20 Excellent material on this point may be found in Select Committee on Veterans Affairs, Minutes of Proceedings (Ottawa, 1945).Google Scholar Mr. Gillis remarked at a later session of this committee in 1951: “The attitude of the government and this Committee over the years toward the Legion has been very good. They look upon us as their representatives not as members of a party. …” Minutes of Proceedings, 1951, 186.Google Scholar

21 Interesting research possibilities appear in Standing Committee on Agriculture and Colonization, Proceedings (Ottawa, 1939).Google Scholar

22 Mr. King, commenting on the Conservative Government's bill to establish an Economic Council in 1935, remarked: “I think there is need, in connection with the Prime Minister's office, of provision for more effective advisory assistance to whoever may be holding the office. … What I think is not generally realized with respect to the Prime Minister's office is that it is the only office in which a minister of the Crown finds himself isolated without assistance such as is to be found in other departments of government. … There is a deputy head who in most cases has been familiar with the work of the office for years, there are important heads of departments; and there is the complete staff which is necessary to carry on the work. But a Prime Minister goes into an office in which there is no one and he is expected to be able to deal with questions of government relating to practically all departments. …” Canada, H. of C. Debates, 1935, pp. 1797–8.Google Scholar

23 See Friedrich, C. J., “Public Policy and the Nature of Administrative Responsibility” in Friedrich, C. J. and Mason, E. S., eds., Public Policy (Cambridge, Mass., 1940).Google Scholar

24 See his comments in Queens Quarterly, LXIV, no. 2, summer, 1957, 170–7.Google Scholar

25 Finer, Herman, “Administrative Responsibility in Democratic Government,” Public Administration Review, I, 1940–1941, 335–50.Google Scholar See also W. A. Robson, “Bureaucracy and Democracy” in Civil Service in Britain and France, chap. I.