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Likewise, how should we understand the obligation of the public administrator to learn from elected officials? The professional perspectives of the administrator rooted in specialized knowledge, technical expertise, and clientele relationships, may need to be leavened with political knowledge of particular constituencies and the ways of legislative bodies. Test Series for IAS is administrative specialists can become narrowly focused and isolated from the texture of the political community. They may be overly influenced by client groups and too firmly convinced of the "one best way" of getting the job done. They may forget the importance of political support, not only in adopting policy but also in carrying it out. Legislative proposals, administrative rules and regulations, and agency implementation plans may need to be informed regularly by political realities. In addition to a mutual obligation for mutually educative interaction between administrators and elected officials, we must also think through a similar relationship between citizens and public administrators. Perhaps administrators who cultivate the kind of relationship with politicians just outlined should be prepared to offer two kinds of knowledge to the citizenry. The first is their own substantive knowledge of particular policy arenas and issues, and the second is procedural knowledge about IAS Prelims how government works. If public administrators are indeed "the especially responsible citizens who are officials," should not teaching their fellow citizens these things be among their central responsibilities? If the rest of us are to be able to carry out our citizenship obligations, is it not essential that citizenadministrators provide us with their best technical information and judgments, in an understandable form, as well as a more effective understanding of how both the bureaucracy and the legislative process work? Communicating substantive information to the public is essential if self-government is to be even approximated. Should not public administrators understand this as an ongoing, primary role obligation that cannot be set aside or curtailed in order to get on with the job? Is that not the most fundamental job, apart from which administrative efficiency is shortsightedand doomed to failure? Should we not also agree that career public administrators are likely to be the best civics teachers available to the citizenry? Experience with students, especially undergraduates, suggests that one of the weakest links in our democratic process is the teaching of young people about how their government really works. Somehow they arrive at the university with, at best; a wooden, oversimplified conception of the way public policy is formed and implemented. This caricature, acquired from textbooks, is carried over into adult life. Quite understandably then, most of our citizens have little or no interest in government because it appears boring in the extreme, or they become quickly disillusioned over the gap between the world as it is and the world as they would like it to be. In either case they remain aloof and disengaged from activities that appear to be either dull or beyond their powers. Administrators engaged with the governmental process on a daily basis may be the best sources of a richer and more interesting knowledge of its practical workings. How can we best conceptualize a public educational obligation for administrators? Now let us turn to the reciprocal aspect of the educative obligation between administrators and citizens. Because administrators control focused public resources, are they not obliged to reach out beyond their clientele groups and political allies to help cultivate a public conversation? David Mathews (1985) argues persuasively that a democratic public cannot form and act on its own behalf without such ongoing conversation. It cannot move beyond public opinion to public knowledge, and finally to public judgment, without this communication. Unfortunately Mathews assumption seems to be that only elected officials and the media bear the responsibility for this communicative process.