This chapter examines the relationship between the administrative state and constitutional values and structures with reference to German and American legal and political theory. It recovers from these intertwined traditions three analytical approaches to the administrative state. The first analytical approach understands the administrative state to implement the constitution. The second understands the administrative state to generate new constitutional structures and values. The third understands the administrative state to displace the constitution with patterns and practices of rule that lie outside of the existing governance framework. These frameworks foreground normative analysis of how the administrative state ought to relate to general democratic principles and the specific constitutional rules that institutionalize them. I argue for a differentiated and developmental understanding of the relationship between democracy, constitution, and administration. The concrete administration of democratic values should allow constitutional rules to shift in light of social and historical context. The administrative state should not be strictly limited by, but rather should facilitate critical interrogation of, the constitution’s current instantiation of democratic values. The administrative state can and should hold the constitution open for the introduction and proliferation of new institutional configurations and forms of public life.