Bureaucracy

1
Bureaucracy

• Size and Scope

2
Cabinet Departments
Ind. Executive Agencies
President
White House Staff
Executive Office of the President
Independent Regulatory Commissions
Independent Govt. Corporations
3
The Politics of Agency Structure

• Creating agency issues importance
• Structure (degree of independence from executive,
  cabinet departments) can
• Affect policy-making latitude
• Allow non-political considerations (like
  efficiency) to take center stage

4
The Politics of Agency StructureThe Unitary
Executive

• Remember Hamilton unified, or unitary,
  executive necessary for energy
• Structure of agencies affects unitary executive
• Unitary executive goal of first Bush pres
• Others prefer plausible deniability

5
The Politics of Agency StructureThe Regulated
Interests

• Agency devoted to your issue means it is
  important, gives you visibility
• Iron triangles dont want to disturb these
  relationships!

6
What Bureaucratic Agencies Do

• Short answer implement laws and policies
• Inspection and Enforcement
• Rule-making
• Adjudication
• Legislation
• Litigation

7
Forces Affecting Bureaucratic Action

• Congress
• Oversight
• Funding
• Legislative mandates
• President
• Unitary executive
• Appointment and removal
• Clientele
• Iron triangles

8
Problem 1 Slow and Inefficient

• Congress and President try to maintain CONTROL
• Prevent policy slippage
• Fairness and equal treatment
• One persons red tape may be anothers treasured
  procedural safeguard.

9
Problem 2 Ineffective

• Impossible tasks
• Complex social problems
• Goals vague and changing
• Results difficult to measure
• What would conditions be like in the absence of
  agency action?
• What could the agency reasonably accomplish with
  its resources?

10
Problem 3 Slow to Change, Prone to Expansion
and Waste

• Parochialism (narrow perspective)
• Self-Interest
• Desire for a big budget
• Desire for more personnel
• Desire for control over visible policy areas
• Example War on Drugs
• Leads to redundancy and waste
• Point of View
• Internal culture
• Who is drawn to work with the agency?
• Interaction with clientele

11
Ways to Fix the Bureaucracy(and Why They Dont
Work)

• Termination (simply cut whole agencies)
• Political backlash from clientele
• Deregulation
• Works but we sometimes miss the regulation
• Devolution
• Creates flexibility, but also inequality
• Privatization
• Private firms not always more efficient
• Additional oversight required increases costs
• Political backlash from lost fed jobs
• Many of the functions of government dont
  translate into private action