N THIS ARTICLE, my purpose is twofold. I seek to disclose the characteristics of the problem of administrative responsibility, and to evaluate the proposals which have been offered for its solution. Accordingly, first, I have contrived a series of "approaches" in which I show how this issue has been depicted and dealth with. In effect, I have constructed from the outstanding discussion a group of basic interpretations, in which the problem is (a) described, (b) defined, and (c) resolved.1 In the second part of the article, I have appraised these approaches. By these means I hope not only to expose the problem of administrative responsibility in its contingent and baffling complexity but to reveal, as well, the present lack of a satisfactory solution. I It has become quixotic, perhaps, to suggest that government should perform fewer functions or render less service. Nonetheless, this hope is revived from time to time; and it has, in the past, provided the main reliance of some students of politics for achieving administrative responsibility. Moreover, whatever may be the adequacy of their prescription, these conservatives perceive correctly the breakdown of the traditional devices for maintaining the accountability of contemporary government, and sense full well some of the symptoms, if not the causes, of the problem of administrative responsibility.