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The long-standing discussion of the politics-administration dichotomy is as relevant in contemporary public administration as at any time in the past. The significant changing context and persistence of the discussion on the practice of the politics-administration dichotomy calls for addressing what Overeem observes as the need to better describe the highly complex relations between politicians and administrators. Two implicit assumptions drive the continued relevance of the discussion of political-administrative interactions. First, the discussion matters because the actors in question fulfill various public leadership roles. Second, the political-administrative dialogue matters to questions of constitutionalism, values of representative government, and facilitating institutions of democracy. In this article, we offer a model of public managers' engagement in the "how" with a framework that explicitly outlines the range of relationships. We draw on empirical research to outline the current reality of at least five significant types of actors, often working collaboratively in multilateral relationships. The first section of the article discusses the genesis and implications of the politics-administration dichotomy. It then proceeds to establish its persistence over time, followed by an explanation of the logic of our approach. Next, the discussion shifts to the analytic advantage of a continuum model across five categories of actors within the governance process, each possessing the potential for public leadership, showing how this model illustrates paths for addressing the problem we have identified. Finally, we discuss the implications of our proposed model for future research design and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little has been written about the Canadian municipal chief administrative officer (CAO). Given the growing importance of municipalities, it is an important gap in the literature. This article depicts CAOs as a group of older white men, highly educated and very experienced. Given the impending retirement of a significant number of CAOs, municipalities have an opportunity to achieve a greater degree of representativeness. The authors identify a number of research trajectories to enhance our knowledge and understanding of this critical administrative position. Il existe peu de documents sur les chefs des services municipaux au Canada. Etant donne Timportance croissante des municipalites, cela represente une grave lacune dans la documentation. Cet article decrit les chefs des services municipaux comme un groupe d'hommes blancs d'un certain age, ayant un haut niveau d'etudes et une grande experience. Comme un grand nombre d'entre eux vont prendre leur retraite d'ici peu, les municipalites ont une occasion de parvenir a un plus grand degre de representativite. Les auteurs identifient un certain nombre de pistes de recherche pour ameliorer nos connaissances et notre comprehension de cette fonction administrative cruciale., Despite the growing importance of municipalities in our federal system of government and the critical role that chief administrative officers (CAOs) play therein, it is perhaps the least studied and [...]

Although we have fairly good knowledge of the impact of official bilingualism at the federal level and of official unilingualism in Quebec on language practice in government, we know less about whether these changes in language policies have led to shifts in language practice in civil-society organizations. The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism carried out an extensive investigation of language practices in the private sector and in voluntary associations. Using the royal commission's work on associations representing the general interests of business, this article examines language practices of these associations three decades after the royal commission's studies were published. The authors argue that the cordiality found between French and English in general business associations in the late 1960s continues to be the rule in these types of associations today. This cordiality, however, is rooted in a change in linguistic relations. Federal-level associations tend to have accommodated institutional bilingualism but retain English as their language of work. Quebec-based associations have moved to conform to official unilingualism. Moreover, the number of non-francophones in positions of authority in the Quebec groups has diminished, with executive structures now being dominated by francophones.

By JOHN M. BRYSON. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004. Pp. xxvi, 430, resources, bibliographical references, index. All successful organizations, be they private, public or non-profit, require strong leadership. In part, those [...]