Objectives - Valenciafd.valenciacollege.edu/file/ftua/Chapter 10 The... · 2020-02-25 · executive branch other than indicating the need for the President to have a cabinet. (Article

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Objectives

• Identify the five organizational characteristics of a bureaucracy.

• Explain how the bureaucracy makes and implement policy.

• Relate the advantages and disadvantages of using traditional bureaucracy to deliver public services.

• Compare the spoils and merit systems.

• Summarize new public management and identify

attempts to incorporate private-sector management

practices into the public sector.

Smith, Governing States and Localities 7e.

SAGE Publishing, 2020.3

Introduction



State- and local-level public bureaucracies are critical in

the delivery of essential public goods and services. To

operate effectively, these public bureaucracies have a

specific set of organizational characteristics. Hierarchy,

division of labor, formal rules, professionalism, and the

maintenance of files and records exist within public

bureaucracies to ensure impartiality in the delivery of

public goods.

Introduction



The merit system was formalized at the federal level in

1883 in reaction to the problems of the spoils system.

Starting with New York, states quickly began to follow. It

is a way of encouraging “neutral competence” in

bureaucratic decision making. Although the merit system

has reduced bureaucratic flexibility and increased the

amount of red tape within public bureaucracies, it also

has prevented bureaucracies from operating at the whims

of partisan politics. Yet despite their attempts to be

neutrally competent, public bureaucracies are political

institutions.

Introduction



Beyond implementing public law, they do engage

in policymaking through the power of street-level

bureaucrats and the rule-making process.

Despite calls for reforming bureaucracies to

operate more like private businesses, they operate

quite efficiently and hold high standards of

professionalism and ethical behavior (contrary to

popular opinion). Furthermore, although the size

and scope of bureaucracies vary across states, no

state could operate effectively without one.

What Is Bureaucracy?

• Do you exist without bureaucracy?➢ Birth certificate

(Department of Public Health)

➢ Social Security Number (Social Security Administration)

➢ Driver’s license (Department of Transportation)

➢ Death certificate (Department of Public Health)




What is the Bureaucracy?

• The bureaucracy consist of the public agencies and public programs and services that these agencies implement and manage.

• Most government bureaucracies are located within the executive branch of state and local governments

• Bureaucracy represent a political contradiction- they enforce rules and regulations that in one sense we do not like, but in another we cannot live without.

• The bureaucrat is the public employee who works at these agencies and who is often seen as being the enforcer of inconvenient rules and red tape.




What is the Bureaucracy?

•Administer all government activity.

•Manages of public programs and institutions.

•Develops and implement public policy.

•Government agencies responding to citizen demands.

•Who gets what, when, and how.



Where does the Bureaucracy comes from?


• Not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

➢The Constitution says little about the organization of the executive branch other than indicating the need for the President to have a cabinet. (Article 2, Sec 2 mentions Executive Departments)

➢Recognized the need for administrators and clerical workers to carry out the laws and programs passed by congress.

➢First three cabinet departments result of duties assigned to president and Congress. (War, State and Treasury) and the offices of postmaster general and the attorney general.

➢Present day bureaucratic duties go beyond constitutional duties.




• Where does the Bureaucracy comes from?

• In Florida, the State Constitution of 1968 (Article 4, Section 6), list the 25 departments of the Executive branch. Departments of health, elder affairs, transportation, corrections, juvenile justice, education, environmental protection.



What Does Bureaucracy Do?

All bureaucracies, public and private, share some common features:

➢Hierarchical

➢Division of labor

➢Formal rules and procedures

➢Maintenance of files and records

➢Professional staff




• Hierarchical – Vertical chain of command . Authority is concentrated from top to bottom and from superior to subordinates.

• Division of labor – Labor is divided according to function. Most bureaucracies have separate technical personnel and financial specialists.

• Formal rules and procedures- Bureaucracies operate on impartial set of rules with formulated guidelines and standardize operating procedures.

• Maintenance of files and records- Bureaucracies record their actions.

• Professional staff – Employees of the bureaucratic agencies earn their jobs based on qualifications and merit.




What does the Bureaucracy do?

• The bureaucracy has two fundamental rolls:

1. They are the key administrator of the government charged with carrying out the decisions and instructions of elected public officials.

2. They must interpret the will of the elected officials by navigating the vagueness and complexity of state law and city ordinances. The job of the bureaucracy is to be specific and take action. They transition the law into action.




•The first job of the bureaucracy is to

implement the will of the state by doing

what the government wants or needs done

via Policy Implementation.

➢Agencies implement policy by issuing

grants and contracts, enforcing laws and

regulations and undertaking the managing

programs directly. Ex. Road building –issues

construction contracts, land surveying, etc.




➢State and local bureaucracies manage not

only state and local programs, but federal

programs as well. The federal government

relies on the states to and localities to

implement and manage such programs as

welfare, health care, highway programs.

➢Bureaucratic agencies also regulate and set

licensing requirements for professions

ranging from lawyer to bartender.




• The second job of the bureaucracy is to through

Rulemaking.

➢Rulemaking turns laws and mandates passed

by the legislature into detail written instructions

on what public agencies will or will not do.

➢The process of rule making involves holding

public hearings, input from agency experts, and

listening to the inputs of special interests.




➢Once a rule is approved, it becomes part of the

states administrative code which is the

equivalent of a state statute and has the full

force of law.

➢Rulemaking is the most important political

activity of the bureaucracy that most citizens

does not know that it even exists.



Bureaucracy as a Political Institution

• Bureaucracies contribute to policy making directly by pursuing political agendas.

➢ At the state and local levels many head of public agencies are elected (i.e. County sheriff, attorney general) and as such many of these officials make campaign promises, that once in office, they try to get their agencies to deliver on those promises.

➢ Many of these agency head are influential players in the process of policy formulation and as such some agencies become the tools used to deliver political agendas.



Measuring Bureaucratic Effectiveness

• How much bureaucracy is too much?

➢While there is a need for a bureaucracy to manage the

various programs that the state provides, there is an

undeniable fact that state and local have a lot of bureaucracy

the size and scope has increased exponentially. The larger the

bureaucracy the larger the financial expenditure.

➢The size and scope varies from state to state and localities for

two reasons:

➢First, there are different demands on the agencies from

state and local governments.

➢Secondly, there is no universally agreed on measurement

as to what constitute a reasonably size bureaucracy.








• How to measure the Bureaucracy effectiveness

• Efficiency (competence)

➢Optimal allocation of resources to maximize utility.

➢Produces services/goods with minimal expense.

➢Danger of under-responsiveness.




• How to measure the Bureaucracy effectiveness

• Responsiveness

➢Public policy reflects citizen demands.

➢Danger of over-responsiveness.

• Other factors for measuring the bureaucracy

➢ Employment.

➢ Expenditures.

➢Geographic patterns.



State Bureaucracy: From Patronage to Professionalism

• How does the bureaucracy staff the agencies of government.

➢ From the beginning of the nation to the end of the 19th

century the bureaucracy was staffed by the spoils system in which the winner of an election has the right to decide who works for public agencies.

➢ Patronage jobs, or the process of giving government jobs to partisan loyalists was intended to democratize the government and make it more accountable by having regular citizens who supported the electoral winner run the government agencies.

➢ The spoils system lead to corruption, inefficiencies, dishonesty and the creation of political machine which controlled who got elected and ultimately who got the government jobs.




• The old system was reformed, and the new merit-based system was created where jobs and promotions are awarded based on the qualifications and abilities of the individual.

• In 1883 the congress passed the Pendleton Act that awarded jobs based on a merit system. The system has three components:

1. Competitive exams for federal jobs.

2. Security from political dismissals.

3. Protection from being coerced into political activities.




• These protections have been expanded to include

equal pay for equal work, promotion without regard

for race, creed, religion, age, marital status, national

origins, etc.

• State and localities adopted the federal system in the

same year.



If Not Merit... Then What?

• Reforms pursed by state and local governments.

➢ A focus on productivity that emphasizes doing more by less by providing public services with fewer resources.

➢ Market oriented competition where government contracts with private companies to run public services programs.

➢ A drive to improve customer satisfaction with public services.

➢ Decentralization of decision-making power concerning public policy closer to the people who are going to be affected by them.

➢ A movement to improve government's capacity to make, implement and managed public policy and programs.

➢ An effort to maintain the governments accountability to deliver on the services it promised.



If Not Merit... Then What?

• Reinventing Government (REGO)- Introducing competition in delivering public services, making organizations less hierarchical, and using the private sector to deliver public services.

• New Public Management (NPM)- focus on productivity, drive to improve customer satisfaction, decentralize decision making, maintain accountability, improve government implementation of services.

• Total Quality Management (TQM)- programs designed and shaped by the clients of those programs.

• Management by Objectives (MBO) – focus on setting and achieving goals.

• Performance Based Management (PBM) - focus on setting and achieving goals.



Conclusion

• This chapter challenged the popular conception of

bureaucracy as inefficient and unresponsive. Rather, the text

contends that public bureaucracies are typically necessary,

well run, and highly efficient. Given the often ambiguous

and contrasting demands of citizens and government, public

bureaucracies provide the most effective means for ensuring

equity, fairness, and impartiality in the policy

implementation process.

• Bureaucracies actively engage in the policy process through

discretion, rule making, and the pursuit of political agendas.

Due to the ambiguous nature of legislation, agencies are able

to exercise enormous discretion in the interpretation and

implementation of public policy. Such discretion opens

public bureaucracies to public scrutiny and even scorn.



Conclusion

• Bureaucracies are purposefully organized with strict

hierarchies and high degrees of professionalization. The early

stages of bureaucracy under the spoils system were

characterized by patronage and political corruption. The

movement to the merit system, standard operating procedures,

and other professional reforms has generated significant rules

and regulations, known as red tape.

• While professionalism and merit selection tend to reduce

agency flexibility, they also encourage fairness, equity, and

neutral competence in public organizations. And while calls

for bureaucratic reform encourage a negative perception of the

bureaucracy public agencies remain just as (if not more)

effective as private agencies in the delivery of services.



Discussion

1. Should bureaucracies operate more like the private market? That is, should public bureaucracies, in an attempt to be more accountable for service delivery, be more performance based? For instance, all state employees in Georgia are exempt from the civil service in an attempt to make public service employees more accountable and to provide for more agency flexibility in the hiring and firing processes. Should more public agencies employ these types of reforms to improve the quality of services delivered?

2. The merit system places strong emphasis on maintaining neutral competence. The result of this is a tremendous amount of rules and regulations, that is, red tape. As an employer, what are some potential disadvantages of the merit system? As an employee? What can be done to reform the merit system to reduce the amount of red tape while maintaining a neutral and fair system?

3. Which is more important to a public agency in terms of public service delivery—efficiency or responsiveness? Should public agencies emphasize one more than the other? In order to be efficient, agencies are required to deliver services at the lowest possible cost. To be responsive, agencies are required to extend personnel and financial resources to meet a wide variety of demands. What are the benefits and repercussions of each of these?



Conclusion

• Bureaucracy-Public agencies and the programs and services they implement and manage.

• Bureaucrat- Employee of a public agencies

• Merit System- The system in which employment and promotions are based on qualifications and abilities.

• Patronage-The process of giving government jobs to partisan loyalists.

• Policy implementation-The process of translating the express wishes of government into action.

• Rulemaking-The process of translating law into written instructions on what public agencies will or will not do.

• Spoils system- The system under which an electoral winner has the right to decide who works for public agencies.





Documents

Objectives - Valenciafd.valenciacollege.edu/file/ftua/Chapter 10 The... · 2020-02-25 · executive branch other than indicating the need for the President to have a cabinet. (Article