Having read the chapter, the students should be able to do each of the following:
Describe the major functions and characteristics of the executive bureaucracy.
Identify the major types of organizations within the federal bureaucracy and provide examples of each type.
Contrast the patronage, merit, and executive leadership systems and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each system.
Comment on how the bureaucracy functions as a creative political agent and policymaker.
List some of the ways in which bureaucratic agencies are held accountable for their activities. Evaluate the relative effectiveness of these measures.
Define and comment on the agency point of view. Describe the implications of this perspective on bureaucratic politics, policy making, and accountability.
Discuss the inherent conflict between bureaucratic power and democratic values.
Note some of the prevalent ideas for reinventing bureaucracy for the information age and describe the efforts that have been attempted so far.
Bureaucracy is a method of organizing people and work, based on the principles of hierarchical authority, job specialization, and formalized rules. As a form of organization, bureaucracy is the most efficient means of getting people to work together on tasks of great magnitude and complexity. It is also a form of organization that is prone to waste and rigidity, which is why efforts are always being made to "reinvent" it.
The United States could not be governed without a large federal bureaucracy. The day-to-day work of the federal government, from mail delivery to provision of social security to international diplomacy, is done by the bureaucracy. Federal employees work in roughly four hundred major agencies, including cabinet departments, independent agencies, regulatory agencies, government corporations, and presidential commissions. Yet the bureaucracy is more than simply an administrative giant. Administrators exercise considerable discretion in their policy decisions. In the process of implementing policy, they make important policy and political choices.
Each agency of the federal government was created in response to political demands on national officials. Because of its origins in political demands, the administration of government is necessarily political. An inherent conflict results from two simultaneous but incompatible demands on the bureaucracy: that it respond to the preferences of partisan officials and that it administer programs fairly and competently. This tension is evident in the three concurrent personnel management systems under which the bureaucracy operates: patronage, merit, and executive leadership.
Administrators are actively engaged in politics and policymaking. The fragmentation of power and the pluralism of the American political system result in a contentious policy process, which leads government agencies to compete for the power required to administer their programs effectively. Accordingly, civil servants tend to have an agency point of view: they seek to advance their agency's programs and to repel attempts by others to weaken their position. In promoting their agency, civil servants rely on their policy expertise, the backing of their clientele groups, and the support of the president and Congress.
Administrators are not elected by the people they serve, yet they wield substantial independent power. Because of this, the bureaucracy's accountability is a central issue. The major checks on the bureaucracy are provided by the president, Congress, and the courts. The president has some power to reorganize the bureaucracy and the authority to appoint the political head of each agency. The president also has management tools (such as the executive budget) that can be used to limit administrators' discretion. Congress has influence on bureaucratic agencies through its authorization and funding powers and through various devices (including sunset laws and oversight hearings) that hold administrators accountable for their actions. The judiciary's role in ensuring the bureaucracy's accountability is smaller than that of the elected branches, but the courts do have the authority to force agencies to act in accordance with legislative intent, established procedures, and constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Nevertheless, administrators are not fully accountable. They exercise substantial independent power, a situation not easily reconciled with democratic values. Because of this, and also because of the desire to make the bureaucracy more efficient, there have been numerous efforts over time to reform the bureaucracy. The most recent such effort includes contracting out the work of government to private firms. Like all such efforts, this latest reinvention has solved some problems while creating new ones—an indication of the immensity of the challenge.
