Bureaucracies and Clients

1
Bureaucracies and Clients

• Blue Team

• Clients in terms of the role of groups (Picard,
  Lecture note)
• how bureaucracies stop solving other peoples
  problems and start generating their own. (Branch,
  1976, p. 157)

2
Contents

• Golden oldies
• Literary map
• Synthesis

3
Part I Golden Oldies

• Morris
• Kotz
• Taylor Branch

4
Roger Morris Rooting for the Other Team

• How the bureaucratic culture can twist the
  foreign policy into unintended and often harmful
  positions
• The peculiarly insular culture of their
  bureaucracy a parochial view of the national
  interest cliency makes diplomats align their
  interests with those of their hosts.
• Cliency has become a major occupational disease
  in modern American diplomacy has taken a heavy
  toll on government in honesty and objectivity
• Cliency influences much of what the United States
  doesfrom it failure to speak out against
  genocide in Africa to the tragedies of Vietnam

5
Roger Morris Rooting for the Other Team

• Blurring boundary between US national interest
  and the bureaucratic or private interests of
  American officials abroad
• The answer to the many problems of cliency starts
  with the opening of the foreign policy process.
• A sophisticated cliencyas a sensitive
  appreciation of other societies
• The answer to the many problems of cliency starts
  with the opening of the foreign policy process

6
Kotz Let Them Eat Promises The Politics of
Hunger in America

• Investigative reporting in the 1960s resulted in
  the raising of consciousness of the problem of
  hunger in the United States
• Had been no comprehensive governmental accounting
  of the hungry in America
• Perception that hunger often caused by individual
  negligence by the poor no public intervention
  could change this
• The poor spend all of their money on coke and
  potato chips (qtd. In 119)
• Government officials saw existing Department of
  Agriculture programs as effective
• Role of expertise, information in moving an issue
  onto the public agenda

7
Branch Were All Working for the Penn Central

• Introductory taxonomy of the bureaucratic way of
  life, proposing such theories as DETMAHOG
  (Deliver the Mail/Holy Grail ) and LICTBOSS
  (Life-Cycle Theory of Bureaucratic
  Ossification).
• Discussing when and how bureaucracies stop
  solving other peoples problems and start
  generating their own. (p. 157)
• Idler Gears a term that describes the Executive
  branch of the federal machine.

8
Branch Were All Working for the Penn Central

• The theory
• Life-Cycle Theory of Bureaucratic Ossification
  (LICTBOSS) the proportion of idler-gears
  increases with the age of the organization
  Similar to the Parkinsons Law LICBOSS predicts
  80 percent of the governments multi-headed
  independent agencies are useless.
• Short Public Responsibility Theory (SPURT) the
  maturing process of a bureaucracy involves
  movement away from service to publicly stated
  goals and toward service to the organization
  itself (p. 165) SPURT has happened to the
  Department of Housing and Urban Development and
  the Office of Economic Opportunity.

9
Branch Were All Working for the Penn Central

• The theory (Continued)
• Soft-Hard theory of product identification
  (SOHA) Any hard bureaucracy can be expected to
  have fewer idler-gears spinning than a comparable
  soft one (p. 165) A hard bureaucracy is one
  which produces a tangible product, whereas a
  soft bureaucracy produces intangibles (p. 166)
• Deliver the Mail/Holy Grail dichotomous theory of
  problem protection (DETMAHOG) problem solving
  agencies have an inherent propensity toward
  wheel-spinning a Holy Grail bureaucracy cannot
  persist over time without acquiring large numbers
  of idler-gears-either by solving its problem and
  not going away or by not solving the problem (p.
  166)

10
Part II Literary Map
11
Culture of Bureaucracy
Bureaucratic Reform
Clients and Political Process
Heady
Peters
Morris
Greene
Barzelay
Orwell
Branch
Johnson
Hummel
Kotz
Smith
Development Management
Community Development
Corruption and Dysfunction
Agenda Setting
12
Part III Synthesis

• Clients the role of groups, iron triangle,
  the iron triangle and revolving door (Picard,
  Lecture note)
• Culture language, communication, ritual, routine
• Political control of bureaucracy
• Main point understanding bureaucracies and
  client behavior and demands is complicated
• Myriad spheres of influence, power play and
  networks
• Special consideration regarding developing
  states, bureaucracies.
• Cooptation
• Interests articulation revolving door, lobby of
  interests groups
• Clients and democracy

13
Hummel The Language of Bureaucracy

• In and around bureaucracies language
  separates people from one another (156)
• Upon closer examination
• Language of bureaucracy has a certain logic, but
  this is different than how an individual versus a
  bureaucracy perceives the world
• E.g., speech is contextless and one-directional
  (versus contextual and reciprocal)
• E.g., thought is analogizing, general,
  referential to abstract model (versus concrete,
  particular, immersed in experience)
• Top-down language
• Ambivalent and ambiguous used as a management
  tool
• Jargon
• Acronyms (e.g., Challenger disaster)

14
Hummel The Language of Bureaucracy

• All bureaucratic organizations tend, because of
  their inner logic, to become detached from the
  boundary with outer reality (162)
• Constraints policies and programs predefine
  what can become real for bureaucracy
• It is the program that must always be obeyed. It
  becomes the referent point for what is authorized
  to happen (158).
• Take away bureaucratic speech is different to
  understand because it is different than ordinary
  speech technical acts and language translated
  into meaning by practical people if we want to
  control bureaucratic behavior, should keep this
  in mind and allow it to stay in place (184-185)

15
Barzelay Managing Customer-Focused Staff
Agencies

• Officials should see themselves as Possibilists
  and ask themselves, What is to be done
• Follow six principles for managing staff agencies
• Spread responsibility for economizing and
  compliance
• Conceptualize work as providing services
• Identify customers with care
• Be accountable to customers
• Reorganize to separate service from control
• Let the customer fund the providers

16
Peters The Behavior of Public Officials

• Building off of Peters critique of the way
  comparative administrationists approached
  research questions, IVs suggested to explain the
  DV of public official behavior in administrative
  positions
• Relationship with clients
• Management i.e., relationships between
  subordinates and superiors in the formal
  structure
• Implementation
• Corruption
• Policy-making

17
Peters The Behavior of Public Officials

• Also examines utility maximization
• Often based on economic assumptions such as
  Niskanens maximizing bureaucrat
• Logical Critique
• Calls into question preceding model
• Points to examples such as Cohen, March and
  Olsens garbage can
• Economic Model
• Through examples of budget and personnel
  decisions
• Empirical looking at, for example, changes in
  civil service pay in the United States from
  1971-1984 and changes in salary levels,
  1970-1984 also examines federal civilian
  employment, 1950-1984
• Main point calls into question various above
  models need to work as scholars to develop
  better, more realistic and feasible ones

18
Heady Party-Prominent Political Regimes

• Role of the political party as an institution
• Often common in developing countries
• Polyarchal competitive systems
• Political competition
• Well-organized political groupings competing for
  power
• Shift in power relations without disruption the
  system
• Do not need to have Western-style parties
• Bureaucracy may become a focus for competition
• Here, external controls sometimes lead to
  unintended consequencesthat is, bureaucracies
  cannot meet demands

19
Johnson MITI and the Japanese Miracle

• From 1949 to 1954, Japanese forged the
  institutions of their high-growth system
• MITIs high-growth system derived from the
  government selection of industries for
  nurturing (199)
• Tools of bureaucrats
• Control over foreign exchange imports of
  technology
• Ability to dispense preferential financing tax
  breaks protection from foreign competition
• Authority to order the creation of cartels and
  bank-based industrial conglomerates

20
Johnson MITI and the Japanese Miracle

• New apparatus for export promotion Supreme
  Export Council EPA (Economic Planning Agency)
  Japan External Trade Organization (231)
• Japans miracle was based on improved
  institutional arrangements (Chandler 1980)
• Institutional arrangement formal and informal,
  explicit and implicit social structures
  developed to coordinate activities within large
  formal organizations such as corporations,
  government bodies, and universities and to link
  those organizations to another

21
Johnson MITI and the Japanese Miracle

• Improved institutional arrangements two-tiered
  banking system, FILP (Fiscal Investment and Loan
  Plan), MITI
• Total control of foreign exchange, total
  screening of foreign capital, and a tax system
  that made Japan a businessmans paradise (240).
• MITI
• Most important improved institutional
  arrangement
• Roleas pilot agency or economic general staff
• Ironically, effectiveness was improved by the
  loss of its absolute power of state control
  (240)
• After the expiration of the Temporary Materials
  Supply and Demand Control Law, MITI had to learn
  to employ indirect, market-conforming methods of
  intervention (240)

22
Greene Human Factor

• A story of Maurice Castle
• Bureaucrat in the British secret service
• Married to an African woman
• Help the Communists who had helped his wifes
  escape
• Individuals in the context of the Cold War
  impact of international affairs on the lives of
  individuals
• Communist/imperialist/Apartheid/romantic
  love/death/ loyalty
• For a while I half believed in God, like I half
  believed in Carsons. Perhaps I was born to be a
  half believer (140).
• When you talk about Prague and Budapest and how
  you cant find a human face in Communism. Ive
  seen-once-the human faceI dont have any trust
  in Marx or Lenin any more than I have in Saint
  Paul, but havent I the right to be grateful?
  (141).
• He might find a permanent home, in a city
  where he could be accepted as a citizen, as a
  citizen without any pledge of faith, not the City
  of God or Marx, but the city called Peace of
  Mind (141).

23
Orwell Down and Out in Paris and London

• Description of lives in poverty in Paris and
  London tour of the underworld
• Describes the tramps life in London looking for
  a paid job
• My story ends hereI have definitely learned by
  being hard up. I shall never again think that all
  tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a
  beggar to be grateful when I gave him a penny,
  nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy,
  nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is
  the beginning (213).

24
Smith Corruption, Tradition, and Change in
Indonesia

• Background in January 1970, Indonesian students
  organizations protests against governments
  corruption Commission on corruption
  investigation in Indonesia
• Causes of corruption historical factors,
  cultural factors, and economic factors
• Key variables identified by Indonesian
  bureaucrats
• Structural variables a highly centralized
  governmental structure make corruption possible
• Political party factors new political parties
  have financing needs beyond election needs,
  there are day-to-day routine expenses
• On the whole, corruption in Indonesia seems to
  present more of a recurring political problem
  than an economic one
• Undermines legitimacy of the government in the
  eyes of the young, educated elite and most civil
  servants

25
References

• Barzelay, Michael , Breaking Through Bureaucracy
  (Berkeley University of California Press, 1992) 
• Greene, Graham, The Human Factor (Harmondsworth
  Penguin, 1979 or New York Pocket Books, 1988).
• Guy, Peters, B., Comparing Public Bureaucracies
  Problems of Theory and Method (Tuscaloosa
  University of Alabama Press, 1988)
• Heady, Ferrel, Public Administration A
  Comparative Perspective 6th Edition (New York
  Marcel Dekker, 1994)
• Hummel, Ralph P., The Bureaucratic Experience
  (New York St. Martin's Press, 1987) 

26

•  
• Johnson, Chalmers, MITI and the Japanese Miracle
  (Stanford Stanford University Press, 1982) 
• Kotz, Nick, "Jamie Whitten, Permanent Secretary
  of Agriculture" in Nick Katz, Let Them Eat
  Promises The Politics of Hunger in America
  (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice-Hall, 1969) 
• Morris, Roger, "Rooting for the Other Team" in
  Charles Peters and James Fallows, eds., Inside
  the System (New York Praeger, 1976), pp.
  171-181.
• Orwell, George, Down and Out in Paris and London
  (New York Harvest, 1961).
• Smith, Theodore M., Corruption, Tradition and
  Change in Indonesia, in Arnold Heidenheimer,
  Michael Johnston and Victor T. LeVine, eds.
  Political Corruption A Handbook (New Brunswick,
  NJ.Transaction Publishers, 1990).