PS2240 Tutorial 3
POLITICAL NEUTRALITY
What is political neutrality?
Six general principles:
1. Politics and policy are separated from administration. Thus politicians make policy
decisions; public servants execute these decisions.
2. Public servants are appointed and promoted on the basis of merit rather than on the
basis of party affiliation or contributions.
3. Public servants do not engage in partisan political activities.
4. Public servants do not express publicly their personal views on government policies
or administration.
5. Public servants provide forthright and objective advice to their political masters in
private and in confidence. In return, political executives protect the anonymity of
public servants by publicly accepting responsibility for departmental decisions.
6. Public servants execute policy decisions loyally and zealously irrespective of the
philosophy and programs of the party in power and regardless of their personal
opinions As a result, public servants enjoy security of tenure duping good behavior
and satisfactory performance.
Kernaghan, K. 1986. “Political rights and political neutrality: finding the balance point.”
Canadian Public Administration, 29, 639-652.
Some points (mainly drawn from the work of Patrick Overeem)
(1) Political neutrality-as-impartiality is not the same as political indifference or
unconcern.
a. Civil servants have a strong executive or policy advisory role
b. As citizens, civil servants are allowed to have their own political preferences,
even intense ones
c. However, administrators should not express their personal political
sympathies and antipathies in their functional utterances and behavior
(2) Political neutrality is not the same as neutral competence
a. Administrators should not be guided by political considerations does not
imply that they would be guided by professional ones
b. Nonpartisan not equal to science and business, and efficiency
(3) Partisan politics is not the same as politics
a. Context: it was partisan politics the Orthodoxy authors wanted to keep
apart from public administration rather than politics per se
b. What is politics?—politics is both the art and science of government. But
only a small part of politics is electoral partisan, and this part is unrelated to
policy (or, all public policy is political but not all politics is policy)
c. The debate over the dichotomy comes with two distinct types of politics:
partisan politics vs. policy politics
(4) The value of political neutrality
a. Keeping administration out of partisan politics improves the functioning of
both
b. There are other values than efficiency that needs political neutrality to
preserve: freedom, fairness, equality, legality, etc