Set Up: Bureaucracies

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Set Up Bureaucracies
PS 202 -- American Political Institutions and
Processes
Fall 2001
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Inside the Box of BureaucracyFour Perspectives
on Organization

• Efficiency Maximizing Organizations with
  Conforming Individuals
• Max Weber (Sociology - legitimacy from legal
  authority)
• Ronald Coase (transaction cost and contractual
  economics)
• Inefficient Organizations with Utility Maximizing
  Individuals
• Anthony Downs (typology of bureaucrats
  motivations)
• William Niskanen, Gordon Tullock (social choice
  formal models)
• Organizations as Social Enterprises with
  Satisficing Individuals
• Herbert Simon (decision making and bounded
  rationality)
• Richard Cyert and James March (behavioral theory
  of the firm)
• Potential Integration New Economics of
  Organization
• Principal-Agent Theory (Information asymmetry,
  adverse selection, moral hazard)

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Conventional View of the Executive Branch in
Government
Chief Executive
Cabinet (Department Heads)
The Bureaucracy
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Context Federal Bureaucracy in the Web of
Politics
Congress
Executive Authority
Statutory Authority, Appropriations
President
Tools ? Nominations ? Presidents Budget ?
Regulatory Review ? Privatization ? Devolution
Tools ? Creation ?Confirmations ?
Appropriations ? Oversight
Executive Branch Agencies
Political (Appointment) Executive
Levels I-Secretary II-Deputy Secretary III-Under
Secretary IV-Assistant Secretary V-General
Counsel, etc.
Senior Executive Service (SES) (up to 10 of
SES) Schedule C (GS-15 below) (policy
determining)
Career (Competitive Service) Senior Executive
Service (SES) (At least 90 of SES) GS Supergrade
16-18 GS 1-15
Public/Constituents
Interest Groups
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Four Images of Bureaucrat and Politician Roles

• Image I Policy/Administration
• Politicians Make Policy (Decision Making)
• Civil Servants Administer Policy (Implementation)
• Image II Facts/Interests
• Both Participate in Policy Making, But
• Politicians Bring Interests and Values (Political
  Sensitivity)
• Civil Servants Bring Facts and Knowledge (Neutral
  Expertise)
• Image III Energy/Equilibrium
• Both Participate in Policy Making, and Both
  Concerned with Politics, But
• Politicians Articulate Broad Interests of
  Unorganized Individuals
• Civil Servants Mediate Narrow, Focused Interests
  of Organized Clienteles
• Image IV The Pure Hybrid
• Bureaucratization of Politics
• Politicization of Bureaucracy

Joel Aberbach, Robert Putnam, and Bert Rockman,
Bureaucrats and Politicans in Western
Democracies, 1981.
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Nine Possible Roles of Bureaucrats and Politicians
Under Image I, Who Performs Which Roles?
Bureaucrats
Politicians

• Technician -- Solving technical problems and
  applying specialized knowledge
• Advocate -- Fighting for or representing the
  interests of a class, group, or cause
• Legalist -- Focusing on legal processes or
  legalistic definitions of ones responsibilities
• Broker -- Mediating or resolving political
  conflicts and conflicts among interests
• Trustee -- Representing the state, the general
  interest
• Facilitator -- Protecting the interests of
  specific clientele groups or constituents
• Partisan -- Focusing on partisan politics
• Policy Maker -- Focusing on formulating public
  policy
• Ombudsman -- Undertaking casework for individual
  clients or constituents

X
X
X
X
X
X
X
?
X
formulating
X
Joel Aberbach, Robert Putnam, and Bert Rockman,
Bureaucrats and Politicans in Western
Democracies, 1981.
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Role Focus of Bureaucrats and Politicians in
Seven Western Democracies
Joel Aberbach, Robert Putnam, and Bert Rockman,
Bureaucrats and Politicans in Western
Democracies, 1981, Figure 4-1.
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Rank-Order Similarities in Bureaucratic and
Political Role Focus
Spearmans rho Coefficient
Country
.82
United States
.35
Sweden
Germany
.32
Britain
.31
.13
Netherlands
École Nationale DAdministration École
Polytecnique
.04
France
Italy
.03
Joel Aberbach, Robert Putnam, and Bert Rockman,
Bureaucrats and Politicans in Western
Democracies, 1981, Figure 4-2.
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Bureaucracy as a Political Structure
American public bureaucracy is not designed to
be effective. The bureaucracy arises out of
politics, and its design reflects the interests,
strategies, and compromises of those who exercise
political power.Choices about bureaucratic
structure are not matters that can be separated
off from political interests, to be guided by
technical criteria of efficiency and
effectiveness. Structural choices have important
consequences for the content and direction of
policy, and political actors know it. When they
make choices about structure, they are implicitly
making choices about policy. And precisely
because this is so, issues of structure get
caught up in the larger political struggle.
Terry Moe, The Politics of Bureaucratic
Structure, pp. 267-268.