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The Bureaucracy
July 2nd, 2003
Controls Budget, Approves
Nominations and Treaties,
Override Veto, Impeach
VETO
Legislation,
Appropriation,
Oversight
Presidential
Directives,
Executive
Appointments
Political Control of the
Bureaucracy
• the President and the Bureaucracy
– power of appointments
– directives
Political Control of the
Bureaucracy
• Congress and the bureaucracy
– legislation
• creates agencies
• sets their jurisdiction
• delegates regulatory power to them
– appropriation
– Congressional oversight
Main Point!
• checks and balances (between Congress and
President) are replicated in the mechanisms of
political control over the bureaucracy
• in a sense, political control over the bureaucracy is
multiplied but, simultaneously weakened
– bureaucrats can play Congress off the President and vice
versa
• “bureaucratic politics” is an important and visible
element of the American political system
CIVIL RIGHTS:
An “American Dilemma”
July 7th, 2003
Race as the ‘American Dilemma’
• the dilemma
– political practice does not meet constitutional
principles (e.g. equality)
– remedies require sacrificing constitutional
principles
• on issues of race, both historical and
contemporary, both sides have claimed
constitutional legitimacy
– has greatly complicated the process of solving
issues relating to race
The Context of the Civil Rights
Struggle
• the American civil war
• civil rights (1863-1875)
• the development of legal segregation
(1883-1896)
• Jim Crow (1900-1950)
The American Civil War
• Missouri compromise (1819-21)
– admit free states and slave states to Union in
order to maintain balance in the Senate
– made slavery illegal in new territories north
of the Mason-Dixon line
– slave states could not prohibit the entry of
free blacks
The American Civil War –
Pushing the South Towards War
• admission of California in 1850
– guaranteed anti-slavery majority in
Congress in both houses
– pushed the South to become more
aggressive
• it would never be more powerful than it was
at the time
• politically or economically
The American Civil War –
Pushing the South Towards War
• Southern regional grievances and
perception of Northern hypocrisy
• Southern economic dependence
– Southern agricultural economy vs. Northern industrial
economy
– Southern support for low tariffs; Northern support for high
tariffs
– Southern plantation owners (dependent upon world prices for
cotton) vs. Northern bankers
– divergent interests in railroad policy
The American Civil War –
Pushing the South Towards War
• Southern economic dependence on
slavery
– slavery was not an old-fashioned
institution
• profitability of slavery was dropping until the advent
of the cotton economy
• the resurgence of slavery was a product of the
industrial revolution, new technology, and worldwide
mass markets
• the South became economically dependent upon the
production of cotton which was dependent on slavery
The American Civil War –
Pushing the South Towards War
• Southern regional grievances and
perception of Northern hypocrisy
• Southern economic dependence
• Southern beliefs that moral indignation of
the North masked economic motives and
plans to aggrandize Northern political
power to further those interests
The American Civil War –
Pushing the North towards War
• Northern predisposition towards blacks
– discrimination against blacks (often universal and enshrined
in statutes)
– initial opposition to anti-slavery movement in North
• Northern reaction to Southern
aggressiveness
– Supreme Court rules that the Missouri compromise is
unconstitutional (1857)
• contravened 5th amendment
– Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
• federal law enforcing capture and return of escaped slaves
The American Civil War –
Pushing the North towards War
• Northern reaction
– Southern aggression made slavery an issue
of the rights and freedoms of northern
whites
– slavery must be contained
• abolition required a constitutional amendment
which slave states could block
• Lincoln Republicans proposed to contain
slavery
The American Civil War –
Going to War
• both sides claimed constitutional
legitimacy
– emancipationists
• all people would be equal before the law
– pro-slavery
• states rights
• both sides believed they were morally right
The American Civil War – Civil
War and Slavery
• slavery and the Union
– 4 slave-owning border states join the Union
• Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware
– Lincoln forced to disavow local
emancipation decrees
• “My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union and
it is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the
Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it; and I could save
it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by
freeing some slaves and leaving others alone I would do that.”
Abraham Lincoln, 1860
The American Civil War – Civil
War and Slavery
• slavery and the Confederacy
– Jefferson Davis (Confederate President)
argued for the manumission of slaves willing
to fight for the South
– policy was resisted
– policy adopted in 1865
The American Civil War – Civil
War and Slavery
• the Emancipation Proclamation, 1863
– freed slaves only in Confederate states
• Civil War ends in 1865
• 13th Amendment (1865)
– abolishing slavery
• 14th Amendment (1868)
– prohibitions against state discrimination against any person
• 15th Amendment (1870)
– right to vote regardless of color or because the person was a
slave
The Beginning of the “American
Dilemma”
• the Gettysburg address (1863)
– the ‘great task before us’
• a country dedicated to the proposition that “all men are
created equal”
• “government of the people, by the people, for the people”
– including the South
– reconstitution of state governments
– immediate withdrawal of occupying armies
– new state governments signaled immediately
that blacks would not be treated as equals
Civil Rights (1863-1875)
• Voting Rights Act (1870)
– act to enforce the 15th Amendment
• Civil Rights Act (1875)
– entitlement to full and equal enjoyment of public
accommodations and entertainment
• precursors to 1960s civil rights legislation
– Civil Rights Act (1964)
– Voting Rights Act (1965)
• how is this possible??
The Development of Legal
Segregation (1883-1896)
• Supreme Court decisions
– Voting Rights Act (1870)
– Civil Rights Act (1875)
• limited to official acts not private citizens (1883)
Forms of Discrimination

different forms of discrimination at issue
– overt discrimination by the state
» segregation
– implicit discrimination by the state
» eg. voting rights
» e.g. defining primaries as private (not public)
– systemic discrimination
» not direct discrimination by the state
» often primarily in the private realm
» effects are the same -- segregation
The Development of Legal
Segregation (1883-1896)
• Supreme Court decisions
– Voting Rights Act (1870)
– Civil Rights Act (1875)
• limited to official acts not private citizens
The Development of Legal
Segregation (1883-1896)
• Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896)
– “separate but equal”
• Jim Crow (1896-1950)
– legal, government enforced, court supported
(e.g. constitutional) segregation based on race
Roots of the Segregated System
• institutional supports of segregation
– state imposed segregation
– federal segregation
• esp. armed forces
– Supreme Court and the Constitution
Roots of the Segregated System
• societal support for segregation
– southern landed aristocracy
– poor southern whites
• segregation and social status
• segregation and the segregated labour market
– challenges to segregation were seen to tear
at the very fabric of white southern society
Challenges to Segregation
• World War II
• the Great Migration
The Supreme Court and Civil
Rights
• the Supreme Court prior to 1954
– how did such blatant discrimination exist under the
Bill of Rights and in full view of the Supreme
Court?
– with the support of the Court!!
• Why did the civil rights movement turn to
the courts in the 1950s?
• they had nowhere else to go!
• recognition that Supreme Court could be made to
respond to forces of change...
Affirmative Action
• illustrating the ‘American dilemma’
– arguments in favour of affirmative action
• required to redress past discrimination
• time alone not sufficient to overcome effects of
historical discrimination
– arguments against affirmative action
• requires disadvantaging individuals in historically
advantaged groups
– dilemma – pitting one constitutional principle
against another
Affirmative Action after the “Civil
Rights Era”
•
•
•
•
Bakke, 1978
Hopwood vs. Texas, 1996
California, Proposition 209
University of Michigan, 2003
Main Point!
• the politics of race poses a dilemma for
the American political system
– political practice that does not meet with
constitutional principles (e.g. equality)
– remedies require sacrificing certain
constitutional principles