Administration (government)

Part of a series on
Politics
Primary topics Index of politics articles Politics by country Politics by subdivision Political economy Political history Political history of the world Political philosophy
Political systems Anarchy City-state Democracy Federacy Feudalism Dictatorship Directory Meritocracy Monarchy Parliamentary Presidential Republic Semi-parliamentary Semi-presidential Theocracy
Academic disciplines Political science (political scientists) International relations (theory) Comparative politics
Public administration Bureaucracy (street-level) Adhocracy
Policy Public policy (doctrine) Public interest Foreign policy
Organs of government Separation of powers Legislature Executive Judiciary Election commission
Related topics Sovereignty Theories of political behavior Political psychology Biology and political orientation Political organisations
Subseries Electoral systems Elections (voting) Federalism Form of government Ideology Political campaigning Political parties

The term administration, as used in the context of government, differs according to jurisdiction.

United States

In American usage, the term refers to the executive branch under a specific president (or governor, mayor, or other local executive), for example: the "Obama administration.” ^[1] It can also mean an executive branch agency headed by an administrator: these agencies tend to have a regulatory function as well as an administrative function. On occasion, people in the United States will use the term to refer to the time a given person was president, e.g. "they have been married since the Carter administration."

The term "administration" has been used to denote the executive branch in presidential systems of government.

Europe

Usage in Europe varies by country, but most typically the term 'administration' refers to managerial functions in general, which may include local governments, or the hierarchy of national and local government, that applies to a town or district. More specifically, it may refer to public administration, the business of administering public policy as determined by government. However, outside France and Romania, this usage of the word is uncommon.

For the American sense of the word, most countries (be they English-speaking or not) use the term government instead, referring to the “administration” of Tony Blair as the “Blair government”. ^[2] This is also true of the non-European members of the Commonwealth of Nations. An older, chiefly Commonwealth usage, is the term “ministry”, as in Blair Ministry, which is still in official and academic use in Britain, Australia and Canada to refer the terms of prime ministers. ^[3]

Depending on the type of government, the word coalition may be used for a specific government. In the Netherlands, cabinet is the most used term (as in the fourth Balkenende cabinet), although 'coalition' or 'government' are also used when one does not refer to a specific coalition (note that the two terms have slightly different meanings).

References