Politics is an end, not a means.
Politics today is mostly, if not entirely, treated as a means to other ends--as a management tool.
I'm not sure if tracing the genealogy of this is too important for my point, but I suspect this sort of thinking began to really be formalized into theory by Hobbes.
Hobbes (in)famously believed that 1) humans are naturally individual atomistic kinds of animals, and 2) given the first premise, humans are naturally anti-social. By "naturally" I mean that, in a stateless environment, the rational self-interested thing to do is to be in a state of war against everyone else. The state is introduced by Hobbes as a mediator between individuals and the ultimate guarantor of all interpersonal agreements, contracts, duties, debts, etc.
The state therefore primarily acts as the manager of all political and commercial affairs. Whereas humans are therefore naturally inclined toward anti-social behavior, the state guarantees comparatively pro-social behavior.
Today we largely see the same ideology at play, particularly in the ideology of neoliberalism and other contemporary ideological market liberals (right-libertarians and the like). Politics ought to play little to no role at all. This, however, does not translate to "small government." The state still has a role, that is, as manager.
Now I realize many right-libertarians might take issues with some things on this list, however, their main problem is not a fundamental disagreement that the state ought to merely occupy a manager role, but rather that they'd add or subtract from the following list; the state is assumed to be the ultimate guarantor of property rights, money convertibility, money value (inflation/deflation), contracts, debts, etc. Then, others of a more "left" variety also see the state's role to manage unemployment numbers and the welfare state, among other things.
Ultimately, most people today see the state's role as a manager. This is politics as administration.
I mean to contrast this with politics as action, borrowing from Hannah Arendt.
Politics as administration is only concerned with sustaining biological life (the reproduction of society through food, water, etc)--what Arendt calls "labor"--and also with the productions of durable goods or "stuff"--what Arendt refers to as "work".
However, a politics as action happens directly between people, especially through speech and deed. It is political because through action people disclose who they are, respond to one another, initiate something new, and participate in shaping a common world.
A politics of action has a few key features. It is public, because action appears before others. It is plural, because politics exists among different people with different perspectives. It is non-instrumental, because political participation is not valuable only as a means to some external end. And it is bound up with freedom, because freedom is not merely private choice; it is the capacity to begin, to initiate, to act in concert with others.
- Politics as action: What should we do together? What kind of world are we making? How do we judge, speak, persuade, disagree, and begin something new?
- Politics as administration: How do we efficiently manage population, resources, welfare, security, production, transport, and institutions?
The risk of politics as administration is twofold and interrelated. Firstly, it risks paternalism which easily drifts into authoritarianism. It takes the system's own values for granted, and instead assumes that the only role of the state is a technocratic one, one in which we simply need to manage things better, more efficiently, at scale, etc... Secondly, it risks becoming overwhelmingly bureaucratic. And bureaucracy tends to be impersonal, standardized, rigid, uncreative, "efficient," and career-focused.
In other words, it risks encasing society in what Max Weber refers to as the "iron cage" which describes how modern life "traps individuals in systems based purely on teleological efficiency, rational calculation and control." We get a loss of individuality (depersonalized), a loss autonomy, and a loss of freedom. We get stuck in a Kafkaesque nightmare.
Only a politics of action, taking politics as an end it itself necessary for human flourishing, can avoid this trap set by a politics of administration. We must assume that we are pro-social and political animals, and live as such.
The alternative to politics as administration is not the abolition of administration. It is putting administration back in its proper place, as a means subordinate to political life rather than a substitute for it. Politics must remain a space in which plural human beings appear before one another, disagree, persuade, judge, and act together about the world they share.