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How does representative government function when public administration can reshape democracy? The traditional narrative of public administration balances the accountability of managers, a problem of control, with the need for effective administration, a problem of capability. The discretion modern governments give to administrators allows them to make tradeoffs among democratic values. This book challenges the traditional view with its argument that the democratic values of administration should complement the democratic values of the representative government within which they operate. Control, capability and value reinforcement can render public administration into democracy administered. This book offers a novel framework for empirically and normatively understanding how democratic values have, and should be, reinforced by public administration. Bertelli's theoretical framework provides a guide for managers and reformers alike to chart a path toward democracy administered.

"This book addresses one of the enduring questions of democratic government: why do governments choose some public policies but not others? Political executives focus on a range of policy issues, such as the economy, social policy, and foreign policy, but they shift their priorities over time. Despite an extensive literature, it has proven surprisingly hard to explain policy prioritisation. To remedy this gap, this book offers a new approach called public policy investment: governments enhance their chances of getting re-elected by managing a portfolio of public policies and paying attention to the risks involved. In this way, government is like an investor making choices about risk to yield returns on its investments of political capital. The public provides signals about expected political capital returns for government policies, or policy assets, that can be captured through expressed opinion in public polls. Governments can anticipate these signals in the choices they make. Statecraft is the ability political leaders have to consider risk and return in their policy portfolios and do so amidst uncertainty in the public's policy valuation. Such actions represent the public's views conditionally because not every opinion change is a price signal. It then outlines a quantitative method for measuring risk and return, applying it to the case of Britain between 1971 and 2000 and offers case studies illustrating statecraft by prime ministers, such as Edward Heath or Margaret Thatcher. The book challenges comparative scholars to apply public policy investment to countries that have separation of powers, multiparty government, and decentralization."--Publisher's website

"Democracy means rule by the people. In a democracy, administration must be constructed in such a way that it serves the people through their elected representatives. The connection between the public and any given administrative action may be quite distant, but it must be in place. Accountability of public management to the popular will may be weak or attenuated, but the arrangements might be justified on other grounds. In any event, the problem of connecting the public with administration must be confronted. It is quite possible that some members of the polity, fully believing in the democratic process, disagree with an administered decision that is without democratic defect. In other words, even with democratic accountability, what government produces may not be the policy that you want"--

Federalist Nos. 41–43 provide a unified justification for the powers granted to the national government by posing a series of questions about the four classes of responsibilities, such as declaring war. This essay examines the role of polarization in limiting the coordination of powers needed for effective administration and uses ideology estimates for four states to illustrate the difficulties embedded in shared power between national and state governments.