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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 Is the Federal Bureaucracy?
• 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 Is the Federal Bureaucracy?
• What do bureaucrats do? (cont.)– Regulate individual and corporate behavior– Buy products ranging from erasers to airplanes– Engage in inherently political activities
What Is the Federal Bureaucracy?
• 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
What Is the Federal Bureaucracy?
• 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
What Is the Federal Bureaucracy?
• 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
What Is the Federal Bureaucracy?
• 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
What Is the Federal Bureaucracy?
• 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
What Is the Federal Bureaucracy?
• Bureaucratic expertise and its consequences (cont.)– Criticism of bureaucracies• Too much red tape• Standard operating procedure
What Is the Federal Bureaucracy?
• 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
History of the 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
History of the American Bureaucracy
• 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
History of the American Bureaucracy
• 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
History of the American Bureaucracy
• 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
History of the American Bureaucracy
• 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
The Modern Federal Bureaucracy
• 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
The Modern Federal Bureaucracy
• 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
The Human Face of the Bureaucracy
• Civil Service Regulations– Education improves pay– Civil service system has a set of tests to
determine who is hired for lower-level positions
The Human Face of the Bureaucracy
• 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
The Human Face of the Bureaucracy
• Civil Service Regulations (cont.)– Many cumbersome regulations– Reason for their existence is to take politics out
of the hiring process
The Human Face of the Bureaucracy
• 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
The Human Face 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
Controlling 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
Controlling the Bureaucracy
• 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
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