THE FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY

CHAPTER 15

APUSGOVPOL

INTRODUCTION

Bureaucracy: according to German sociologist Max Weber, bureaucracy is a hierarchical authority structure that uses task specialization, operates on the merit principle, and behaves with impersonality.

• Power flows from the top down

• Responsibility flows from the bottom up

• Experts perform technical jobs

• Develops extensive rules, allowing similar cases to be handled similarly

• Operates on the merit principle

• Behaves with impersonality (treats all clients impartially)

THE BUREAUCRATS• Generally, bureaucrats are much less visible than the president

or members of Congress. As a result, citizens usually know little about bureaucrats.

• Myths about bureaucrats:

• Americans dislike bureaucrats. Citizens are, in fact, generally satisfied with individual bureaucrats and the treatment that they receive from them. Two-thirds of those surveyed had had positive encounters with bureaucrats.

• Bureaucracies are growing bigger each year. • More growth since 1965 in state and local bureaucracies

than in the federal bureaucracy.• 20 million state and local bureaucrats• 2.7 million civilian and 1.4 million military federal bureaucrats

THE BUREAUCRATS• Myths about bureaucrats:

• Most federal bureaucrats work in Washington, DC. • Fewer than 1 in 7 are in DC; most work in state capitals or

in municipalities.

• Bureaucracies are ineffective, inefficient, and always mired in “red tape.”

• Bureaucracies are simply ways of organizing people to perform work. They may be inefficient at times, but no one has found a substitute for bureaucracies, and no one has demonstrated that government bureaucracies are less efficient than private bureaucracies.

• The vast majority of tasks that bureaucracies carry out are noncontroversial.

THE BUREAUCRATS

• Most federal civilian employees work for just a few of the federal agencies:

• Defense: 28% of all federal civilian employees• Postal Service: 22%• Veterans Affairs: 11%• Homeland Security: 7%• Justice: 4%

CIVIL SERVANTS

As a whole, the bureaucracy is more representative of U.S. citizens than are legislators, judges, or presidential appointees.

CIVIL SERVANTSPatronage: a system in which jobs and promotions are awarded for political reasons, rather than for merit or competence.

• 1881: President Garfield was assassinated by person to whom Garfield had refused to give a patronage position. The “Prince of Patronage,” Chester A. Arthur, then became president and (surprisingly) signed the Pendleton Civil Service Act in 1883. The Act created a federal civil service, so that hiring and promotion would be based on merit, rather than patronage.

Civil service: a system of hiring and promotion based on the merit principle and the desire to create a nonpartisan government service.

Merit principle: the idea that hiring should be based on entrance exams and promotion ratings to produce administration by people with talent and skill.

CIVIL SERVANTS

Hatch Act: federal law prohibiting government employees from active participation in partisan politics while on duty; prohibits employees in sensitive positions from active participation in partisan politics at any time; passed in 1939 and amended most recently in 1993.

CIVIL SERVANTS

Office of Personnel Management (OPM): the office in charge of hiring for most agencies of the federal government; uses elaborate rules in the process.

• President appoints OPM’s director; Senate confirms.

• First, candidates are typically tested. If they pass, their names are sent to agencies when jobs requiring their particular skills become available. For each open position, OPM sends three names to the agency, and except under unusual circumstances, the agency must hire one of the three. Each job is assigned a GS (General Schedule) rating – a schedule for federal employees ranging from GS 1 to GS 18, by which salaries can be keyed to rating and experience.

CIVIL SERVANTS

• Senior Executive Service: an elite cadre of about 9,000 federal government managers at the top of the civil service system (GS 16-18).

• After a probationary period, civil servants are protected by the civil service system.

• Makes firing incompetents difficult, time-consuming, and unusual (appeals may last years).

POLITICAL APPOINTEES• Congress publishes the Plum Book, which lists top federal jobs

(the “plums”) available for direct presidential appointment, often with Senate confirmation.

• About 500 top policymaking posts (cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, and bureau chiefs)

• About 2,500 lesser positions• Presidents seek qualified personnel who combine executive

talent, political skills, and policy positions similar to the POTUS’.

• POTUS often tries to ensure some diversity and balance in terms of gender, ethnicity, region, and different interests within the political party.

• Ambassadorships usually go to major contributors.

POLITICAL APPOINTEES• Most political appointees are transient; they are usually not civil

servants who are elevated to a “political status.”

• “Government of strangers”: few political appointees stay long enough to know their own subordinates well.

• Many political appointees find it challenging to exercise real control over much of what their subordinates do; have difficulty making their mark on policy.

• Political appointees are often dependent upon senior civil servants, who know more, have been there longer, and will outlast them.

• Evidence indicates that bureaucratic resistance to change does not pose a substantial obstacle to presidents’ achieving their goals and that career civil servants are more effective than political appointees at managing agencies.

CABINET DEPARTMENTS• Each cabinet department headed by a secretary (except for he

Department of Justice, headed by the Attorney General)

• Undersecretaries• Deputy undersecretaries

• Assistant secretaries

• Each department manages specify policy areas, has its own budget, controls its own staff

• The bureaus within each department divide work into more specialized areas.

INDEPENDENT REGULATORY COMMISSIONS

Independent regulatory commission: a government agency with responsibility for making and enforcing rules to protect the public interest in some sector of the economy and for judging disputes over these rules.

• The “alphabet soup” of U.S. government. Some examples:

• Federal Reserve Board (FRB): regulates money supply, regulates interest rates, oversees member banks

• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)• Federal Communications Commission (FCC)• Federal Trade Commission (FTC)• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

INDEPENDENT REGULATORY COMMISSIONS• Each IRC governed by a small number (~ 5-10) of members

appointed by POTUS and confirmed by Senate for fixed terms.

• POTUS can’t fire regulatory commission members as easily as cabinet officers or White House staff – must have “just cause,” pursuant to Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935).

INDEPENDENT REGULATORY COMMISSIONS

• Are regulators “captured” by their regulatees (industry’s businesses and interest group members)?

• It’s common for members of the commissions to be recruited from the ranks of the regulated.

• Revolving door:• former agency lawyers representing clients before

their former employers• members of commissions recruited from ranks of the

regulated

GOVERNMENT CORPORATIONS

• Government corporation: a government organization that provides a service that could be delivered by the private sector and that typically charges for its services.

• Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA): has controlled floods, improved navigation, protected the soil against erosion, and provided inexpensive electricity to millions of residents of Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and neighboring states.

• U.S. Postal Service• Amtrak (originally private; taken over by government)

THE INDEPENDENT EXECUTIVE AGENCIES• Independent executive agencies: the government agencies

are accounted for by cabinet departments, independent regulatory commissions, and government corporations. Administrators are typically appointed by the president and serve at the president’s pleasure.

• General Services Administration (GSA): handles buildings, supplies, and purchasing

• National Science Foundation (NSF): supports scientific research

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

BUREAUCRACIES AS IMPLEMENTORS

• Bureaucracies take congressional, presidential, and sometimes even judicial pronouncements and develop procedures and rules for implementing policy goals.

• Bureaucracies also manage the routines of government (delivering mail, collecting taxes, training troops, etc.)

WHAT IMPLEMENTATION MEANS• Policy implementation: the stage of policymaking between

the establishment of a policy and the consequences of the policy for the people affected thereby. Implementation involves translating the goals and objectives of a policy into an operating, ongoing program.

• At a minimum, implementation includes:

• Creation of a new agency or assignment of a new responsibility to an existing agency

• Translation of policy goals into operational rules and development of guidelines for the program

• Coordination of resources and personnel to achieve the intended goals

WHY EVEN THE BEST PLANS SOMETIMES FLUNK THE IMPLEMENTATION TEST

• Faulty program design: Example: Congress guarantees health insurance for citizens who change jobs or lose their jobs or coverage; in response, private insurance companies raises such individuals’ premiums, so that those individuals cannot afford the insurance (COBRA).

• Lack of Clarity: Example: Title IX gender discrimination – agency interpreted that football was “unique,” thereby allowing college athletic departments to continue to spend more on male athletics.

• Lack of Resources: Examples: lack of staff, ineffective resources for training, lack of funding, lack of supplies, outdated equipment

• USCIS, SSA, and other agencies have major backlogs.• Agencies almost always have more programs than they

resources to meet their programs’ objectives.

WHY EVEN THE BEST PLANS SOMETIMES FLUNK THE IMPLEMENTATION TEST

• Lack of authority: Examples:

• FDA relies upon drug manufacturers’ testing results; lacks subpoena power to ensure manufacturers are providing all and accurate documents.

• In 2008, SEC advised that it supervised Wall Street investment banks on only a “voluntary” basis.

• Department of Agriculture lacks authority to close meat processing plants.

• Federal government may have only indirect supervision over state and local government service-providers (e.g., public education services)

WHY EVEN THE BEST PLANS SOMETIMES FLUNK THE IMPLEMENTATION TEST

• Administrative routine: agencies and bureaucrats follow standard operating procedures (a/k/a SOPs) – procedures for everyday decision making enable bureaucrats to bring efficiency and uniformity to the running of complex organizations, thereby promoting fairness and making personnel interchangeable.

• When not appropriate to a situation, routines can become frustrating “red tape.”

• Sometimes an agency’s protocols are ineffective or outdated

• Sometimes agencies fail to establish protocols necessary to allow them to complete tasks.

WHY EVEN THE BEST PLANS SOMETIMES FLUNK THE IMPLEMENTATION TEST

• Administrators’ dispositions:

• Administrative discretion: the authority of administrative actors to select among various responses to a given problem; discretion is greatest when routines, or standard operating procedures, do not fit a case.

• Street-level bureaucrats: refers to those bureaucrats who are in constant contact with the public and have considerable administrative discretion.

• Examples: law enforcement officers, welfare workers, judges in trial courts

• Government relies heavily on rules to limit the discretion of implementors – especially given the difficulty of firing civil service bureaucrats and of removing appointed officials.

WHY EVEN THE BEST PLANS SOMETIMES FLUNK THE IMPLEMENTATION TEST

• Fragmentation: responsibility for a policy is often dispersed among several units within the bureaucracy.

• Example: border security. Prior to establishment of Department of Homeland Security in 2002, at least 33 departments and agencies had partial responsibility for border protection.

• Why not reorganize the government?• Hyperpluralism and decentralization of power

• Congressional committees want to keep jurisdiction over “their” agencies.

• Interest groups want “their” agencies to remain intact.• Agencies do not want to be merged.

• Fragmentation results in agencies’ oftentimes working at cross-purposes.

PRIVATIZATION• 1980s: movement to “reinvent government” began

• Attempts to decentralize authority within agencies to provide more room for innovation and to provide performance incentives for government bureaucracies through market competition with private contractors, who may bid to provide government services.

• Private contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of the federal government since that time – paid nearly a ½ trillion dollars per year.

• Contractors may provide specialized skills that government lacks.• Contractors can provide surge capacity to handle crises, without

expanding the permanent bureaucracy.

• Theory is contractors provide better service at lower cost, but evidence hasn’t borne this out.

• Contracting almost always leads to less public scrutiny. (Freedom of Information Act is inapplicable to contractors.)

BUREAUCRACIES AS REGULATORS• Regulation: the use of governmental authority to control or

change some practice in the private sector.

• Example: automobile industry:

REGULATION IN THE ECONOMY AND IN EVERYDAY LIFE

• Munn v. Illinois (1877): upheld the right of government to regulate the business operations of a farm.

• 1887: Congress created the first regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), to regulate railroads.

• Most agencies charged with regulation must first develop a set of rules or guidelines in consultation with – and sometimes with the agreement of – the people or industries being regulated.

• Agencies then apply and enforce their rules and guidelines, either in court or through their own administrative procedures.

• All regulation contains a grant of power and set of directions from Congress, a set of rules and guidelines by the agency, and some means of enforcing compliance with congressional goals and agency regulations.

DEREGULATION• Deregulation: the lifting of government restrictions on business,

industry, and professional activities.

• To critics, regulation distorts market forces by:

• Raising prices• Hurting the U.S.’s competitive position abroad• Failing to work well

• Others oppose deregulation, at least for certain industries. (e.g., environment, financial institutions, occupational safety)

• Command-and-control policy: the typical system of regulation, whereby government tells business how to reach certain goals, checks that these commands are followed, and punishes offenders.

• Incentive system: an alternative to command-and-control, with market-like strategies such as rewards used to manage public policy.

CONTROLLING THE BUREAUCRACY

• Presidents try to control the bureaucracy.

• Appoint the right people to head the agency• Issue orders

• Executive orders: regulations originating with the executive branch; carry the force of law and are used to implement statutes, treaties, and provisions of the Constitution.

• Alter an agency’s budget (OMB)• Reorganize an agency

CONGRESS TRIES TO CONTROL THE BUREAUCRACY

• Congress may find bureaucracy helpful when bureaucracy provides services to constituents and/or provides information to Congress.

• Congress has also found it challenging to control the government. Congress can oversee the bureaucracy by:

• Influencing the appointment of agency heads• Altering an agency’s budget• Holding hearings• Rewriting legislation or making legislation more detailed

IRON TRIANGLES AND ISSUE NETWORKS• Iron triangles: also known as subgovernments, a mutually

dependent, mutually advantageous relationship between bureaucratic agencies, interest groups, and congressional committees or subcommittees; iron triangles dominate some areas of domestic policymaking.

• In recent years, the system of subgovernments has become overlaid with an amorphous system of issue networks, which have lead to more widespread participation in bureaucratic policymaking, including by many who have technical policy expertise and are drawn to issues because of intellectual or emotional commitments, rather than material interests. This may decrease the predictability of those involved in the stable and relatively narrow relationship of subgovernments.

UNDERSTANDING BUREAUCRACIES• As both implementors and regulators, bureaucracies are

making public policy, not just administering someone else’s decisions.

• Bureaucracies are one of the two unelected policymaking institutions in the U.S. (the other: the courts)

• Critics point to bureaucracy as the prime example of the federal government’s having grown out of control. However, a good case can be made that the bureaucracy is actually too small for many of the tasks that it has been assigned.

• The question of what and how much the federal government should do – and thus how big the bureaucracy should be – is answered primarily at the polls and in Congress, the White House, and the courts – not by bureaucrats.