CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE in The Bureaucracy Understanding the Bureaucracy.

CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE

in The Bureaucracy

Understanding the Bureaucracy

Success within the Bureaucracy

Dependence on the Bureaucracy

Bureaucratic Waste

Bureaucratic Failures

What Is the Federal Bureaucracy?

• The federal bureaucracy is made up of:– Millions of permanent employees (civil

servants)– Thousands of short-term workers (political

appointees of the president)


• What do bureaucrats do?– Implement policies established by Congress or

the president– Develop programs and policies to achieve

goals of laws• When laws are very specific, bureaucrats have very

little discretion• More commonly, laws provide general guidelines


• What do bureaucrats do? (cont.)– Regulate individual and corporate behavior– Buy products ranging from erasers to airplanes– Engage in inherently political activities


• Regulations– Government rules that give government control

over individuals and corporations by restricting behaviors

• Developed via the notice and comment procedure• Rule making is very political• Bureaucrats listen to congressional pressure; Congress

can overturn statutes that give bureaucrats power and Congress controls their budgets


• Regulations (cont.)– Federal regulations affect every aspect of everyday life • Gas mileage of cars sold in the United States• Amount doctors can charge senior citizens for particular

procedures.

– Often, regulations cause trade-offs between incompatible goals.• FDA and experimental treatment

Influences on Bureaucratic Rule Making


• Procurement– Bureaucrats are in charge of government

purchases– Make decisions regarding the criteria of what

they will buy– Crises often involve inflated costs.

• FEMA and Hurricane Katrina


• Providing services– Street-level bureaucrats provide government services

to regular Americans• Job training• Disaster assistance• Park services

• Research and development– Government scientists do research covering a wide

variety of areas


• Managing and directing– Supervising: For example, the Department of Defense

uses civilian contractors to complete a wide variety of services in Iraq

• Bureaucratic expertise and its consequences– Bureaucrats are experts; in general, more so than

members of Congress or the president• Experts help create a state capacity

Bureaucrats Make Mistakes


• Bureaucratic expertise and its consequences (cont.)– Criticism of bureaucracies• Too much red tape• Standard operating procedure


• Bureaucratic expertise and its consequences (cont.)– How can experts create red tape and other

dysfunctional ways of doing business?• Expertise• Problem of control (principal-agent game)• Regulatory capture• Neutral competence as an antidote?

History of the American Bureaucracy

• The beginning of America’s bureaucracy– Even as late as the 1820s, there were only three

executive departments– Small size of the federal government was indicative

of American’s distrust of government after years of British rule

– President Jackson used the spoils system• People who had worked in Jackson’s campaign were given

government jobs as rewards.• Useful for the party organization

The Beginning of American Bureaucracy


• No inherent logic in the structure of the bureaucracy

• Developed in a piecemeal fashion during three major periods:– Late 1890s–early 1900s– 1930s– 1960s


• Building a New American State: The Progressive Era– Government’s regulatory power increased from

1890 to 1920• Sherman Antitrust Act• Pure Food and Drug Act• Meat Inspection Act


• Building a New American State: The Progressive Era (cont.)– 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Act

• Created a bureaucracy built on expertise through merit system

• Helped to end the spoils system


• The New Deal, the Great Society, and the Reagan Revolution– New Deal programs are those developed and

implemented during Franklin Roosevelt’s first presidential term in the 1930s

– Expanded government’s role in the economy• Debates over this expansion have animated partisan

politics ever since


• The New Deal, the Great Society, and the Reagan Revolution (cont.)– The Great Society: Another expansion of the

size, capacity, and behavior of the government bureaucracy that took place during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency

• Congress funded bilingual education.• Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act• Medicare and Medicaid

The Reagan Revolution

The Executive Branch of the Federal Government

The Structure of the Department of Agriculture

The Modern Federal Bureaucracy

• Hiring and firing rules regarding bureaucrats affect the amount of oversight to which the bureaucrats are subjected– Federal Reserve appointees get 14-year terms

• Bureaucratic structure is often politically driven– Iraq War: Office of Special Plans uses raw intelligence

data rather than expert interpretations of that data when making the case for war


• Executive Office of the President (see Chapter 11)– Office of Management and Budget (OMB)• Creates the annual budget proposal president presents to

Congress

– Below the EOP are the fifteen cabinet-level departments• Each department is made up of many smaller organizations

The Size of the Federal Budget


• Executive Office of the President (cont.)– Below the executive departments are

independent agencies like the Federal Reserve– See Chapter 15, “Economic Policy.”

Federal Employment

The Size of the Federal Government

• Number of people serving in each executive department and independent agency varies widely

• Department of Defense has over 600,000 employees; Department of Education has 4,000.

• Mission and scope of the departments• Budget maximizers: Bureaucrats who work to improve the

funding for their agency regardless of whether that spending is useful

Employment in Selected Federal Organizations

Employment in Selected Federal Organizations (cont’d)

The Size of Our Government Compared to Those of Other Nations

Public Preferences For Spending Cuts

The Human Face of the Bureaucracy

• Motivations– Majority of bureaucrats serve for the job

security, salary, and benefits– Over one-third say that their main incentive in

seeking a bureaucratic position was an interest in public service

Motivations for Employment


• Civil Service Regulations– Education improves pay– Civil service system has a set of tests to

determine who is hired for lower-level positions


• Civil Service Regulations (cont.)– Higher-level jobs are awarded to those who

have good qualifications, experience, and education

– Seniority helps determine promotions– After three years of satisfactory job

performance, a civil servant cannot be fired without cause


• Civil Service Regulations (cont.)– Many cumbersome regulations– Reason for their existence is to take politics out

of the hiring process


• Limits on Political Activity– The Hatch Act prohibits federal workers from

engaging in organized political activities– Senior White House staffers are exempt from

these restrictions– However, prevented from using government resources

for political purposes

Rules of the Bureaucracy


• Political Appointees and the Senior Executive Service– President appoints about 7,000 political appointees

who are not traditional civil servants to the federal bureaucracy

– Some potentially less competent campaign staffers are awarded positions on “turkey farms”

– Ability to make political appointments helps the president exercise some control over the bureaucracy.

How Americans View the Federal Bureaucracy

Controlling the Bureaucracy

• Principal–agent game: Lawmakers must determine how to get the benefits of bureaucratic expertise without giving bureaucrats complete control over their own behavior– Give direct orders– Limits their bureaucratic expertise– Agency organization and monitoring

Agency Organization

The Bureaucracy


• Monitoring– Oversight from Congress– Advance Warning

• Requires bureaucrats to disclose their proposed actions before they take effect

– Investigations• Police patrol oversight: Constant monitoring• Fire alarm oversight: Congress responds to

complaints about a bureaucratic agency


• Correcting Violations– Legislation and executive orders can correct

problems– Correcting problems is most challenging when

the Congress and the president disagree• This is when agencies often have the most discretion

Is Political Control of the Bureaucracy Beneficial?

Explaining the Anomalies

• How can the government succeed in some areas and fail in others?– Complex tasks• Example: Great Society’s goal of eliminating American poverty

– Standard operating procedure is red tape and confusion

– Political control problems

Explaining the Anomalies

Public Opinion Poll

Do you generally approve or disapprove of the way the federal bureaucracy is handling its job?

a) Approve

b) Disapprove

Public Opinion Poll

Which of the following do you believe is most appropriate to address Americans’ dissatisfaction with the federal bureaucracy?

a) Devolution of responsibilities to lower levels of government

b) Increased use of private companies to provide government goods and services

Public Opinion Poll

If television content increases viewers’ fear and subsequent support for security agencies, is that good or bad for the functioning of American democracy?

a) Good

b) Bad

Chapter 12: The Bureaucracy

• Practice quizzes

• Flashcards

• Outlines

wwnorton.com/studyspace

http://www.wwnorton.com/college/polisci/american-politics-today2/full/ch/12/studyplan.aspx

Following this slide, you will find additional slides with photos, figures, and captions from the textbook.

The bureaucracy's responsiveness to comments from business interests

Hank Paulson

Bureaucratic Effi ciency and theGeneral Services Administration

CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE in The Bureaucracy Understanding the Bureaucracy.

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Transcript of CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE in The Bureaucracy Understanding the Bureaucracy.