The Federal Bureaucracy:

What is it and how is it organized?

Bureaucracy: Definition

• The government organizations, usually staffed with officials selected on the basis of experience and expertise, that implement public policy

• Hierarchical organization into specialized staffs

• Free of political accountability (non-partisan)– Still affected by Congressional budget and oversight

• Ideal scenario?

Bureaucracy

• What does it do?– From protecting the environment to collecting

revenue to regulating the economy– American bureaucracies implement a $2

trillion budget– Vague lines of authority allow some areas of

the bureaucracy to operate with a significant amount of autonomy

Growth of the Federal Bureaucracy

• 1789 – 50 federal government employees• 2000 – 2.8 million (excluding military,

subcontractors, and consultants who also work for federal government)

• Growth mainly at state and local level since 1970– Federal government began devolving powers and

services to state and local government

• Total federal, state, local employees – roughly 21 million people

Organization of Bureaucracy

• A complex society requires a variety of bureaucratic organizations

• Four components of Federal Bureaucracy:– Cabinet departments (State, Defense)– Independent executive agencies (EPA)– Independent regulatory agencies (Federal

Reserve Board)– Government organizations (USPS, FDIC,

TVA)

Staffing the Bureaucracy

• Natural Aristocracy– Thomas Jefferson fired Federalist employees

and placed his own men in government positions

• Spoils System– Andrew Jackson used government positions

to reward supporters– Bureaucracy became corrupt, bloated, and

inefficient

Civil Service Reform

• Pendleton Act of 1883– Employment on the basis of merit and open,

competitive exams– Civil Service Commission to administer the personnel

service• Hatch Act of 1939

– Civil service employees cannot take an active party in the political management of campaigns

• Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinios (1990)– Court ruled that partisan political considerations as

the basis for hiring, promoting, or transferring public employees was illegal

Political Control of Bureaucracy

• Who should control the bureaucracy?– Bureaucracy should be responsive to elected

officials (Congress, the President)• Members of the bureaucracy are not elected, and

must be held accountable for their actions• Making them responsive to elected officials give

the public a voice in bureaucratic operations

– The bureaucracy should be free from political pressures

• They should be autonomous

Theories of Bureaucratic Politics

• Politics-Administration Dichotomy– Bureaucracy should be free of politics

• Iron Triangles– Interest groups– Congressional subcommittees– Bureaucratic agencies

• Issue Networks

• Principal-Agent Model

Politics-Administration Dichotomy

• Wilson: Bureaucracy is neutral and not political– Bureaucrats are experts in their specialties

and must be left alone to do their job without political interference

• However, people began to realize that politics and administration were NOT separate– Norton Long: “Power is the lifeblood of

administration”

Iron Triangles

• Reinforcing relationship between:– Interest Groups– Congressional Subcommittees– Bureaucratic agencies

• Policy decisions are made jointly by these three groups who feed off each other to develop and maintain long-term, regularized relationships

Issue Networks

• The relationship between bureaucracy is not as rigid as iron triangle theory would have us believe– Also, more than three actors involved in

process• For every issue, there are also a number of

political elites who are involved (and who know each other via the issue)

– Members of Congress, congressional committees, the president, advocacy groups, and “issue watchers” (like academics or highly interested citizens)

Principal-Agent Model

• Who are principals, who are agents?• Principals and agents both seek to

maximize their interests– Principals want to control bureaucracy– Agents want to have the least amount of

control exerted over it

• To keep agents in check, two possibilities:– Monitoring/oversight– Minimizing goal conflict