BureaucracyBureaucracyWhat is a bureaucracy?What is a bureaucracy?

• A bureaucracy is a model of organization.

• We are going to be talking about the bureaucracy

Section 1: What is a bureaucracy?• A large complex organization composed of

appointed officials that handle the everyday business of an organization. They are based on:

• Hierarchal Authority

• Job Specialization

• Formalized Rules

•Bureaucracies are a feature of all modern societies, democratic and non-democratic. The American bureaucracy is distinctive for three reasons:

•1. Political authority is not in one set of hands but shared among many institutions

•2. Most of the agencies of the federal government share their functions with related agencies in state and local governments

•3. Growth of “adversary culture”: --> definition and expansion of personal rights and the defense of these through lawsuits and political action

• NAMES

• Departments - largest is the Department of Defense

• Agency, administration, commission, corporation and authority are common titles used

• Often referred to by their initials...EXAMPLES:

• EPA, FBI, FCC, IRS, CIA, TVA

•Staff Agencies

•Serve in a support capacity. They aid the president and other administrators by offering advice and assistance

Types of Agencies

•Line Agencies:

•Actually perform the tasks for which the organization exists. Congress gives these goals to meet.

Section 2: The Role of the

Bureaucracy• Original Role -

• To serve the people or some group of people but not to regulate

• Many felt that Congress had the power to authorize a regulating office and set the standards that they would run based on

•During War Time:

•During war time the power of the bureaucracy grows

•Most agencies/departments have the argument that they have something to do with the war

• Current Role:

• Product of Depression and WWII

• Government is needed to play an active role in dealing with crises

• Think 9/11 and Homeland Security

• No president wants to admit they’ve made it grow, but they have

• 2 million direct workers, 13 million indirect

•Discretionary Authority

•Ability to choose courses of action and make policies that are not spelled out in advance by laws

•Their power depends on this

• Congress has delegated substantial authority to administer agencies in three areas

• 1. Paying subsidies to particular groups and organizations

• 2. Transferring money from federal government to state and local government (grants-in-aid)

•3. Devising and enforcing regulations for various sectors of society and the economy

• The Bureaucracy in the Constitution:

• Not in it but considered part of the executive branch

• It helps execute laws, provide defense, administer social programs, things that presidents do

• Helps president (think santa and his elves)

Section 3: Evolution of the

Bureaucracy

• Removal Debate 1789

• A bill was created that established the Department of State to help the new Secretary of State fulfill his duties (TJ).

• This bill said that the President alone could remove his authority because he appoints them, but there was 6 days of debate over this issue

•Many argued that Senate should consent to the removal because they consent to the appointment

•Madison argued that he needed the right to remove so he could control subordinates, and he WON

• Spoils System - “To the victor goes the spoils”

• Jackson

• Practice of giving offices and other favors of government to political supporters and friends

• AKA patronage

•Why use the spoils system??

•Any normal person can do it

•Rotation in Office

•Long service can lead to tyranny and inefficiency

• Pendleton Act - Garfield was shot due to a disappointed office seeker, so they enacted the Pendleton Act,

• AKA the Civil Service Act of 1883

• a. Laid the foundation for the current system

• b. Classified and unclassified, if you were to hire a classified official it was to be based on merit (examinations given by the Civil Service Commission)

•Hatch Act

•1939

•To prevent harmful political activities.

•Allows federal workers to vote in elections but forbids them to take part in partisan political activities

• Federal Employees Political Activities Act of 1993 - relaxed much of the Hatch Act

• CAN help register new voters

• CAN help contribute money to candidates and parties

• CAN participate in campaigns

• CAN hold office in a party

•continued

•CANNOT:

•Run in partisan elections

•engage in party work while working

•use position to influence

•The selected officials will affect how laws are interpreted,

•what tone the administration will display,

•how effectively the business is done

•how strong the party in power will be

Section 4: Appointment

• Behavior of Officials

• 1. The manner in which they are recruited and rewarded

• 2. personal attributes. ex. socioeconomic background, political attitudes

• 3. Nature of their job

• 4. Constraints that outside forces impose (political superiors, interest groups, journalists)

•Competitive Service:

•They are hired based on merit

•Written exam or by applying certain criteria

•Office of Personnel Management

•OPM administers tests, devised by the hiring agency and approved by the OPM

•Usually appoints one of the top 3

•Recruitment Now

•Often, but not always, agencies hire their own workers without the OPM

• Why?

• Cumbersome and not relevant to the needs of the department

• Need for more professionally trained employees who could not be ranked based on a standard exam

• Pressure to make it more representative of the racial and ethnic composition of the nation

• Buddy System

• Recruitment of civil servants in middle and upper level jobs are more complicated and political than the laws suggest

• Name Request:

• a job is filled by a person whom an agency has already identified as a potential candidate

• Firing a Bureaucrat

• Must go through elaborate steps to fire, demote, or suspend a civil servant for those who are not presidential appointments

• No one is fired or demoted unless his or her superior is prepared to invest a great deal of time and effort in the attempt

• Firing, Continued

• They have figured out ways to force civil servants out, such as denying promotions, transferring them to undesirable locations, or assigning them to meaningless work

• Civil Service Reform Act of 1978

• Created the SES - Senior Executive Service

• a group of executives selected for their leadership qualifications below top presidential appointments

• Can be hired, fired and transfered more easily then the ordinary civil service

• A pay-grade in the bureaucracy, higher up than average worker

•Who is in the bureaucracy

•Dominated by people who have been in government service most of their lives

•Top-Tier bureaucrats are experts

• Minorities are heavily represented in lowest grade levels and underrepresented at the executive level

• typical high level workers --> middle aged white man with a college degree whose dad was advantaged

• Usually more pro-government than average Americans

• The kind of agency they work for tends to make a difference

•Examples:

•Activist agencies -- like Federal Trade Commission, EPA or FDA. They have more liberal views than those who work for “traditional agencies” --> Commerce, Defense, etc.

• The White House Office

• “Nerve Center” of the executive office

• President and key personnel and political staff

• Chief of Staff directs all operations

• 400 men and women, press secretary, counsel, physician to name a few

Section 5: Executive Office of

the President

• Cabinet/Executive Departments

• Not mentioned in Constitution

• Created through custom and use

• Instituted by Acts of Congress to help administer executive responsibilities

• Secretaries appointed - requires approval by Senate

• 15 Secretaries

• OMB (Office of Management and Budget)

• Prepares budget of US and can be used to control and manage executive agencies for President

• Allocates $ to Cabinet departments through the budget process (usually less than they request)

• State

• Treasury

• Defense

• Justice

• Interior

• Agriculture

• Commerce

• Labor

• Health and Human Services

• Housing and Urban Development

• Transportation

• Energy

• Education

• Veteran’s Affairs

• Homeland Security

DepartmentsDepartments

Section 6: Independent

Agencies• Independent Agencies --

• Created by Congress, located outside the departments, nearly 150 of these

• Laws are written in broad terms, they need to be interpreted

• ex. Civil Rights Commission, NASA, EPA, FEC, Independent of Cabinet

• Independent Agencies, Continued

• Broad presidential oversight

• Run of the mill

• Do not fit well within a department

• Protect them from partisan and political influence

• OR peculiar and sensitive matter

•Quasi Legislative -- Filling in gaps and writing rules

•Quasi Judicial -- Rule enforcement and punishing violators

• Independent Regulatory Commission - they have extraordinary degree of independence to act as a watchdog over the federal government

• Congress and president should not be involved with these, they should not be regulated by politics (politicians have views and little expertise)

• Bills are written in broad terms, and gaps need to be filled by bureaucracy

• Examples of Regulatory Commissions

• a. Federal Trade Commission --> prevent fraud in the marketplace

• b. The Securities and Exchange Commission --> Regulated stock markets and polices corporations

• c. Nuclear Regulatory Commission --> Controls how nuclear reactors are used/built

• d. Federal Communications Commission --> Assigns frequencies, licenses programs, regulates wireless

• e. Food and Drug Administration --> Ensure the health of the American people

• f. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission --> Preventing price fixing and manipulation in utilities, oil and gas

• g. Occupational Safety Administration --> Ensures workers are in a safe and healthy environment

• h. Environmental Protection Agency

• Enforce all environmental laws passed by Congress

• For Example: 1970 Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act

• i. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission

• Created by 1964 Civil Rights Act

• Enforcing the anti-discrimination laws of the United States

• Implement affirmative action programs, bring suits in cases of racial or sexual discrimination, and to enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act

• Federal Reserve Board

• Directly affects the buying power of the public

• Regulates banks, value and supply of $ and interest rates

• Members serve 14 year terms, chairmans 4 year terms

• Why does it make sense to keep them independent from the executive and legislative branches of government?

•Who runs regulatory agencies?

•Panels of administrators called Board of Commissioners. The President with the consent of Senate appoints them.

•They have staggered terms to minimize political pressure by the legislative or executive branches

• Government Corporations

• largely beyond the reach of presidential direction and control

• Created by Congress to carry out certain businesslike activities

• Set up much like a corporation in the private sector

• Examples:

• Bank of the US

• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation FDIC (insures bank)

• US Postal Service

• AMTRAK

• TVA (to generate, sell, and distribute electric power)

•Financed by public funds, but unlike a private business, money is plowed back into the business, not into shareholders pockets

•American federal government owns the stock

• Iron Triangle

• A close relationship between an agency, congressional committee, and an interest group

• Ex. Dept of Veterans’ Affairs, House and Senate committees on Veterans Affairs, and Veteran organizations (ex. American legion)

Section 7: Allies

• Iron Triangle Continued

• Dept. does what committees want and in return they get political support and budget appropriations.

• Committee members would get votes and campaign contributions aka client politics

• Iron Triangles are much less common today than once was the case

• Why?

• The number of interest groups has increased so agencies are subject to pressures from a number of competing interests and interest groups rather than just one

• Issue Network

•A network of people in Washington D.C. Consisting of interest groups, members of Congress and bureaucrats, no matter if they are pro or con

•President will recruit who are sympathetic to his views

• Appropriate: A legislative grant of $ to finance a government program or agency

• Appropriations Committee: in the HOUSE

• Sets the specific expenditures of $ by governments to departments

• Gives them control of $

• 1947-1962 - 90% of recommendations approved by the full House

Section 8: The Appropriations Committee

and Legislative Committees

• Appropriations Committee in Recent Years -

• Lost some of their power over government agencies, especially because of deficits

• try to keep spending down

Section 9: Constraints

•1. Congressional Oversight

•2. Number of Masters

• 3. Congressional Investigations

• 4. Cannot hire, fire, build or sell without going through procedures set down by laws

• 5. To adopt a policy they usually must give notice and hold hearings (Admin. Procedure Act)

• 6. Freedom of Information Act - Right to inspect all government records except military, intelligence, or trade secrets

• 7. National Environment Policy Act - agency must issue an environmental impact statement

• 8. Privacy Act - Files about individuals must be kept secret

• 9. Open Meeting Laws -

• Agency meetings must be open to the public unless certain issues such as military, and intelligence is being discussed

• Americans complain about the bureaucracy in general because of what they go through

• The contradiction is that they usually have positive feelings about a specific agency that they have dealt with and negative feelings about the whole bureaucratic system

Section 10: Bureaucratic Pathologies

• 1. Red Tape

• Complex bureaucratic rules and procedures that must be followed to get something done

• Need to satisfy legal requirements and work in accordance with each other

• 2. Conflict

• Some agencies seem to work at cross purposes than other agencies

• 3. Duplications

• 2 agencies seem to do the same thing

• 4. Imperialism

• tendency of agencies to grow without regard to the benefits that their projects have or the costs they entail

• 5. Waste

• Seem to spend more than necessary to buy some product or service

• Why?

• Because there are only weak incentives to keep costs down, $ goes back to treasury not their pockets, also red tapes says what they can and cannot buy

• There have been countless efforts to reform the bureaucracy to make it work better and cost less

• Latest reform is the National Performance Review - led by Al Gore while he was VP to reinvent government

Section 11: Reform

• Gore felt that the bureaucracy was staffed by well meaning officials who find themselves strung up by illogical procedures and unproductive directions

• Emphasized customer satisfaction

• Created incentives to promote entrepreneurial activity by government workers

• Calls for less centralized management and more employee initiatives

• hard to change...burs don’t want to irritate Congress or W.H.