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GOVT 2306
The State and Local Executive
In this section we briefly look at the executive branch and get
comfortable with its structure and purpose.
At its simplest, the executive branch is responsible for the execution of the laws and the
administration of government.
The laws passed by the legislature are then implemented – with some
degree of discretion – by the executive branch.
How they implement the law is subject to adjudication by the judiciary, but that’s the next
section.
Since the goal of the executive is to implement the laws, the design of the executive branch is such that it
can most effectively do so. The goal is to provide efficiency in the
execution of the laws.
There’s a problem with this however.
On the national level, the executive branch is unitary,
meaning that there is one person on top of it.
This is to ensure efficiency in the execution of laws, but it can also
allow for the arbitrary use of power.
The US Constitution states that the national executive power is vested in a president, who is elected along
with a vice president.
Alexander Hamilton argued that this was to ensure “energy” in the
executive.
But the muscle the executive possesses in order to implement the law (they can get away with killing people after all) allows for abuse.
Many state governments – including Texas’ – have altered the design of the
executive branch in order to compensate for this.
Rather than being unitary – with one person on top – they are
plural.
Many different people have unique executive positions, and none has
any real power over the other.
Instead of one governor with the ability to appoint people to
different positions, a governor is elected to office along with a handful of other positions.
In Texas these include
Lieutenant Governor Attorney General
Comptroller GeneralLand Commissioner
Agriculture Commissioner
We will spend time in future classes on each of these positions.
For now its simply important to note that executive power in Texas
– and many other states – is divided in order to ensure that no one person has control over the
entire executive branch.
As with the legislative and judicial branches, the Texas executive is
designed to limit power, not enhance it.
As you should remember from past sections, doing so makes governing
more inefficient and can make it more difficult for problems to be
addressed.
There’s your dilemma.
A bit more on governors
You might want to click through the website of Rutgers University’s Center on the American Governor.
The website of the National Governors Association
might also be useful.
And of course the Wikipedia entry on Governor.
The governor can be viewed as being the chief administrator, with special duties to play regarding bill making and the budget as well as overseeing agencies that are not
under the jurisdiction of any of the other executive officials.
Governors also – like in Texas – have appointment power over agencies, which allows them influence over how laws are
implemented in the state.
Which some argue is how it should be, since it allows the electorate the ability to
influence the executive through the democratic process.
We’ll look more thoroughly at the at the Texas Governor’s office in a
later section.
Local Executives
In previous sections we discussed some of the executive officials on
the local level.
In cities, the top executive official is the mayor, a position that may
or may not have much power, depending on the form of city
government.
As we know from a previous section, most large cities have strong-mayor
forms of government.
In these systems, mayors have a great deal of strength. They can set the city council’s agenda, create budgets and
directly oversee the actions of executive agencies.
Click here for The United States Conference of Mayors
.
For a look at the mayors of world cities click on: City Mayors.
Sometimes the actual day to day workings of city government is given to a city manager who is
responsible to the mayor and city council for how they perform their
jobs.
A large number of additional executive positions are elected on
the city and county level.
We covered a large number of county positions in a previous
section.
Many more will be considered as we look at different public policy
areas in future sections.
The Bureaucracy
All of the positions referred to previously – upper level executive
positions – are elected, which means they are primarily political.
The activities they engage in are driven by the preferences of the
electorate.
This can lead to a problem however.
Political influence over how policies are implemented can
become corrupt. In addition, there is little guarantee that laws will be
implemented in a professional manner.
This was called patronage, also called the spoils system.
To the victor go the spoils.
This is especially problematic for bureaucracies at the local level.
Vested interests attempt to ensure that they have influence on how
laws are implemented.
Again, more on this in a later section. This helps explains a lot of
public policy decisions.
For that reason, over time, lower level executive officials have been removed from the direct control of
the elected members of the executive branch and given to civil service that is intended to be both
professional and removed from political pressure.
This is the bureaucracy.
They can also be referred to as the civil service and
public administration.
Members of the bureaucracy are the employees of government.
These are the people one is likely to think of as being “the
government.”
A bureaucracy can be defined as an professional, hierarchical
administrative organization with defined tasks that are
accomplished according to a specific routine.
Otherwise known as red tape.
But the purpose is to ensure that there is a non-arbitrary way to
implement the laws passed by the legislature.
There is an inevitable tension between the bureaucracy and
elected executive officials.
Think of it this way, the upper level executive officials tend to rotate in
office.
Members of the bureaucracy consider their positions t be their careers. This
is what they are committed to do. This can mean people who are teachers,
police officers, firemen, etc . . .
The tension is especially acute between top level executive
officials and street-level bureaucrats, which are the people who actually physically
implement the laws, and often seek to do so with some degree of
discretion.
People at the top of the pyramid, and those at the bottom tend to
have different ways to look at social problems.
This can result in tension over how laws are implemented.
Some history
The governments in the original colonies had governors who were initially elected (indirectly) by the eligible
electorate in the colonies, but were appointed directly by the
crown later in the colonial period.
This was one of the grievances lodged against the crown. By
appointing governors directly, the crown was usurping the colonists
ability to control executive powers.