It is seldom contended that politics and technology are not separate endeavors and, indeed, that politics is not primary. But if the distinction is to be maintained and the primacy of politics is to be guaranteed, the distinction must be explicit. The absence of an understanding of politics has given rise to efforts to fuse the processes of politics and technology in the names of science and system. Political process assumes diverse and legitimate interests; consequently, effort is directed not at overcoming or transcending those interests but at evolving a continuing series of conciliations. Conciliation is the product of political prudence, not of rationalized techniques. That is to say that the politician makes choices or judgments within a given value frame or in terms of a prevailing consensus as to how conflicting interests are to be reconciled…
When efforts are made to resolve political process into technical process through the forging of new decision structures, the assumptions of politics are abandoned and the assumptions of technique are substituted. Political prudence and pluralistic bargaining are displaced by system – invariably a system capped by a single actor. The thrust of technical process is twofold. It may be stated as follows: that more beneficial results (outcomes) in terms of an established standard of efficiency (economic) may be expected from rationalized procedures than from political process, and that ultimately a single actor relying on such a “system” can make more effective policy choices than can emerge from political process. Under the guise of making policy, the rationalization of technique displaces politics.
The phenomenon of “functionaries” taking flight from the “unorganized and incalculable realm” of politics and turning all “problems of politics into problems of administration” is an old one. It is well known that the inclusive pluralistic bargaining mode of policy formulation is antithetical to the exclusive processes of administrative decisions. The increasing technical rationalization of public policy is not a new finding of this study. What a study of the Secretary of Defense over the past two decades provides is some measure of the distance that today lies between a basically political understanding of the secretarial role (Forrestal-Lovett-Gates) and an apolitical understanding (McNamara). Mr. McNamara’s role concept is apolitical not in the sense that it eschews policy in favor of an exclusive concern with “management” (Wilson-McElroy), but in the more significant sense that it subordinates policy to technical process. The ascendency of management and the decline of policy, the elaboration of structure and techniques, and the faltering of innovation and bargaining mark the McNamara years.”
That was from James Roherty’s excellent 1970 book, “Decisions of Robert S. McNamara: A Study of the Role of the Secretary of Defense.” The Pentagon still operates under a system designed by people like McNamara who believed the political/sociological process had to be wholly replaced by technical processes.
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