The Big Ideas Bureaucracy is inevitable. Bureaucrats do the work of the government, so in an important sense the government is whatever the bureaucrats do. Bureaucracy has conflicting responsibilities: The bureaucracy is expected simultaneously to respond to the direction of partisan officials and to administer programs fairly and competently. The president, Congress, and the courts have differing abilities to bend the bureaucracy to their wills, and bureaucrats are able to achieve power in their own right: autonomy within limits. Bureaucrats have their own views of how things should be: agency perspective [political culture of the agency]. Public administration is political administration: Agency politics is inevitable. Interested Groups (Iron Triangle) Interested Groups (Issue Network) President White House Office Secretary of Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Chief Forester Regional Forester Forest Supervisor District Ranger RecreationTimberMinerals Congressional CommitteesInterest Groups President White House Office Secretary of Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Chief Forester Regional Forester Forest Supervisor District Ranger RecreationTimberMinerals Congressional CommitteesInterest Groups Congress President White House Office Secretary of Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Chief Forester Regional Forester Forest Supervisor District Ranger RecreationTimberMinerals Congressional Committees: Committee Chair Interest Groups Source: Thomas C. Cronin & Michael A. Genovese: Paradoxes of the American Presidency (2004), p. 145 President White House Office Secretary of Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Chief Forester Regional Forester Forest Supervisor District Ranger RecreationTimberMinerals Congressional CommitteesInterest Groups The Courts President White House Office Secretary of Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Chief Forester Regional Forester Forest Supervisor District Ranger RecreationTimberMinerals Congressional CommitteesInterest Groups Fiscal v. Monetary Policy What? Who Governs? How Used? Relative Advantages of Each System Bias By 1960 our national debt stood at $284 billion.... Today the debt is $934 billion.... We can leave our children with an unrepayable massive debt and a shattered economy. -- President Reagan 2/5/81 Today National Debt Social Welfare Policy It reflects our political culture: individual self-reliance trumps equality. It reflects our political parties: the policies of each party reflect the interests of the core constituencies they represent. It reflects the strength of business interest groups: most welfare programs pay private businesses to service the poor rather than giving money to the poor or having government provide the services directly. It reflects the general distribution of power in society: vastly more welfare dollars actually flow to the non- poor than to the poor. Presidential Preference and Position on the Electoral College Politics 262 November 2004 Actual & (Expected) Values Pro-ECAnti-EC Pro Bush7 (2.67) 1 (5.33) 8 Pro Kerry0 (4.33) 13 (8.67) Chi-square = Probability that Presidential Preference and Position on Electoral College are unrelated is less than 0.001%. Hypotheses? Leaving the Electoral College alone is the conservative thing to do. The Electoral College is justified by its results, and it gave us President Bush. Electoral College Biases Small sates have a mathematical over- representation because they get at least three electoral votes regardless of how few people live there. States with low voter turnout get protected in terms of influence because the electoral college makes voter turnout irrelevant. States (especially large states) where either candidate might win become the key battlegrounds and gain disproportionate influence as both sides pour in massive resources. Electoral College Biases The system of representation in the contingency procedure is a huge departure from the currently accepted principle of one-person-one vote. For what it's worth, a different set of states are disproportionately powerful in the nomination phase of the presidential campaign. Source:Take Home Lesson Mr. Maps Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan