Integrating Politics and Administration: for an Agonistic Policy Model

This book addresses a perennial question – are politics and administration related ? In spite of an entrenched tradition in policy and administrative studies that depicts politics and administration as independent phenomena, Martin Fortis argues in favour of an integrative approach that brings politics and administration together. In his innovative and original study, he challenges dominant accounts that have persistently attempted to de-politicize (public) administration. Borrowing from recent developments in contemporary political theory, particularly the agonistic framework developed by Chantal Mouffe, he argues that power and expertise are two ineradicable dimensions of public policies that can hardly be dissociated. Thus, he proposes the adoption of an Agonistic Policy Model in which policy-making is conceived not as a set of technical or managerial questions to be solved by experts but as a political arena in which multiple actors struggle for the implementation of their power projects.