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: members apply specific rules of action to each case in a rational, nondiscretionary, predictable, and impersonal way

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

Max Weber

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

– Independent executive agencies

– Independent regulatory agencies

– Government organizations (USPS, FDIC, TVA)

Cabinet Departments

• 15 departments which serve as the major service organizations of federal government

– State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, HHS, HUD, Transportation, Energy, Education, Vet. Affairs, Homeland Security

• Political appointments (Secretaries) at the top who are directly accountable to the president

– However, staff under secretaries are permanent employees who may resist change

Independent Executive Agencies

• Not located within any cabinet department, but report directly to the President

– This gives it some independence from a department that may be hostile to the creation of the agency

• Secretary of the Interior vs. Environmental Protection Agency

– Examples: EPA, Office of Homeland Security (before it was made a department last year)

Independent Regulatory Agencies

• Make and implement rules and regulations in a particular sector of the economy to protect the public interest

– Congress unable to handle complexities and technicalities required to carry out specific laws

• Are they truly independent?

– Suppose to work for public interest, but industries can “capture” them (ICC)

• Leads to pro-business, rather than pro-consumer, behavior

• Examples: Federal Reserve Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission

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