The legitimacy of public administration within the constitutional separation of powers has been repeatedly questioned. Attempts to address this challenge have emphasized the public interest as a fundamental concept in defining the administrator's role in governance. In its landmark decisions on political patronage, the Supreme Court explicitly considered this issue. This analysis examines the court's reasoning using three alternative models of the public interest. Judicial perspectives in the patronage cases are found to contrast sharply with contemporary administrative theory. This divergence underscores some of the theoretical dilemmas that confront the field in developing new models of public administration in governance.
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