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A response to judith e.GruberRalph Clark Chandler aa School of Public Affairs and Administration ,Western Michigan University , Kalamazoo, MI,49008-3899Published online: 26 Jun 2007.

To cite this article: Ralph Clark Chandler (1997) A response to judith e.Gruber, International Journal of Public Administration, 20:4-5, 1087-1090, DOI:10.1080/01900699708525238

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INT'L. J . OF PUB. ADMIN., 20(4&5), 1087-1090 (1997)

A RESPONSE TO JUDITH E. GRUBER

CONTROLLING THE BUREAUCRACY

Ralph Clark Chandler School of Public Affairs and Administration

Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI 49008-3899

Judith E. Gruber has added her considerable talent to the battalion of those who feel that bureaucracy undermines democratic government. She worries that the hierarchical structures of bureau- cratic organizations, plus the neutral rules of appointment and near permanent tenure of bureaucrats, render popular control of govern- ment agencies problematic. Given the dashed hopes of the theorists who relied on the compartmentalization of the policy-making and policy-execution functions to assure the subservience of career public servants to elected officials, the time has come to admit the discretionary power of careerists and to check it if we can. This is where Professor Gruber begins, and I note the word subservience rather than the word accountability in her statement of the prob- lem.

Professor Gruber moves us away from a concept of control based on authority to one based on mutual accommodation. Con- trol results not from political actors telling bureaucrats what to do-and suffering periodic defeats in the process-but from the construction of conditions in which bureaucratic behavior is con-

Copyright O 1997 by Marcel Dekker, Inc.

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1088 CHANDLER

strained in exchange for resources that bureaucrats seek. Expe- rienced civil servants are familiar with the model in other con- texts: in negotiations with funding sources, courts, and interest groups, for example, as well as with each other for departmental advantage. Now a movement is asking them to apply the exchange process in the other direction: below to the person who often finds himself or herself only a number on the aggregate data-analysis sheet, but who is still sovereign in the land.

Before we all sign up in the Gruber Brigade-and I hope the author has noticed that she has moved from a battalion to a brigade-we might note a few troublesome historical facts and a problem or two in administrative theory. In the case of American administrative history, for all its modem confusion about the means and ends of government, the public service has more often defended the public interest than it has subverted it. When the antifederalists were railing against the Constitution in the Virginia Ratifying Convention two hundred years ago, one of their greatest fears was what an unchecked federal bureaucracy would do to the rights of individuals. It would trample on them said Henry, Mason, Monroe, and Grayson. Not so, replied Madison, Ran- dolph, Marshall, and Pendleton. The government is us, they said. The people who will run the government are us and people like us. They are not a breed apart who think differently and speak German.

This proved to be so in the first administrative state, in the Progressive Era, and especially in the New and Fair Deals, when the highest ideals of democratic government were represented in the American public service. That a wheel of vision has come off our machine since about 1954 does not mean the older bureaucratic model is inherently or permanently flawed. Such disabilities as now characterize it will come nearer being fixed with reference to professional and personal ethics than in dedicating oneself to conferring and negotiating with fragmented interests that do not know the way either, partly because they are misinformed, unin-

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RESPONSE TO GRUBER 1089

formed, or just selfish. Other-directedness is part of the problem, not the solution.

A second historical fact of relevance is that the bureaucracy is often more representative of the people than their elected representatives are. The literature on representative bureaucracy is replete with examples of the bureaucrat as Constitutional officer fulfilling his or her trusteeship function. Congressmen, state legis- lators, and city councilmen-whom some would describe as repre- sentatives of democratic norms-are often captives of interest groups. They make little effort to understand, define, or pursue the public interest, leaving that task to administrative agencies. There are so many American citizens, and they have so few impartial elected representatives, that civil servants-particularly street-level bureaucrats-frequently take up the slack and become the true advocates of the needs of citizens. From their knowledge and com- mitment often come the initiatives of new legislation and the staunch defense of those who live in the shadows of American society.

At a theoretical level, American government is always trying to balance the requirements of liberty and justice. part of our tradition says that each of us is free to gather as much property as his or her talent allows. But how far does my liberty extend? Only to the tip of your nose. We have learned from experience that there must be a limit to freedom: when you have so much money that I do not have enough, the requirements of justice must supersede those of liberty. The devices available to us for achiev- ing the balance we seek are regulation and taxation. These are administrative devices that understandably have gained the dis- approval of the regulated and the taxed. If put up for discussion, these social equalizers would go the way of the velocipede. Thus many bureaucratic organizations that might appear to need greater control from below may also lose a prime virtue of American democracy by yielding to it.

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1090 CHANDLER

Finally, the Gruber case rests on the desirability of imposing certain democratic norms on the bureaucracy. Whose democratic norms are to be imposed? In a society as pluralized as ours, it seems almost presumptuous and perhaps naive to speak of demo- cratic norms so confidently. Almost always, they are my norms. The American solution to such a problem is to let your norms compete with my norms in the marketplace of ideas and suffer adjustment in the inefficient policy-making processes that both elected and career officials participate in. If the bureaucracy comes out of the process with a little more power than democrats think appropriate, it is a reasonable price to pay for the stability of American government.

I am more interested in better educating bureaucrats in demo- cratic theory and professional ethics than I am in suggesting that they spend more time with the people who get government checks each month. As elitist as it may sound, I think Ronald Reagan was wrong in saying he was only his brother's brother. A public servant is also his brother's keeper.

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