The Federal Bureaucracy:

1
The Federal Bureaucracy

• What is it and how is it organized?

2
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?

3
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

4
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

5
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)

6
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

7
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

8
(No Transcript)
9
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

10
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

11
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

12
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

13
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)

14
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