Abstract
Can bureaucrats replace politicians in city leadership? Do they bring benefi ts into politics or are they a potential threat? Th e relationship between politics and bureaucracies is key to answering these questions. Th is article analyses the relationship and creates, based on its own criteria, a systematization of this relationship in areas that most infl uence policy-making (i.e. delegation of tasks, delegation of competences, and impact of outputs).
Th e article then derives the basic parameters of bureaucratic autonomy and fi nds that among the main negative consequences of the absence of political leadership are the pluralization of bureaucrats, diff ering priorities and loss of accountability. Under optimal conditions, however, autonomous bureaucracies can become reliable partners in creating long-term public policy.
Bureaucratic autonomy is a natural phenomenon in Scandinavia or in the United States, where politicians and bureaucrats share their powers. Th e international academic community has been discussing the relationship between politics and bureaucracy for almost 100 years.
On the other hand, countries such as the Czech Republic still systematically underestimate this relationship in academic discussion and applied research. Th e systematization created in this article can be used to defi ne cases of bureaucratic autonomy and to identify its eff ects on the functioning of cities and municipalities.