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The Federal Bureaucracy: What is it and how is it organized? 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: members apply specific rules of action to each case in a rational, nondiscretionary, predictable, and impersonal way • Bureaucracy • What does it do? – From protecting the environment to collecting revenue to regulating the economy – American bureaucracies implement a $2.174 trillion budget – Vague lines of authority allow some areas of the bureaucracy to operate with a significant amount of autonomy Growth of the Federal Bureaucracy 1789 – 50 federal government employees 2010 – 2.8 million excluding military, subcontractors, and consultants who also work for federal government (14.6 Million Including all groups) 2,823,777 workers paid $15,10,511,892 • 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 17.8 million people • • • • Organization of Bureaucracy A complex society requires a variety of bureaucratic organizations Four components of Federal Bureaucracy: – Cabinet departments – Independent executive agencies – Independent regulatory agencies – Government organizations (USPS, FDIC, TVA) Cabinet Departments 15 departments which serve as the major service organizations of federal government – State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, HHS, HUD, Transportation, Energy, Education, Vet. Affairs, Homeland Security • Political appointments (Secretaries/Under Secretaries) at the top who are directly accountable to the president – However, staff below under secretaries are permanent employees who may resist change • • Independent Executive Agencies Not located within any cabinet department, but report directly to the President – This gives it some independence from a department that may be hostile to the creation of the agency • Secretary of the Interior vs. Environmental Protection Agency – Examples: EPA, Office of Homeland Security (before it was made a department in 2002) Independent Regulatory Agencies • Make and implement rules and regulations in a particular sector of the economy to protect the public interest – Congress unable to handle complexities and technicalities required to carry out specific laws • Are they truly independent? – Suppose to work for public interest, but industries can “capture” them (ICC – International Code Council) *Creation of codes and standards for safety in the built environment influenced by those they regulate • Leads to pro-business, rather than pro-consumer, behavior • Examples: Federal Reserve Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission • • • • • • 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 Civil Service Reform Pendleton Act of 1883 – Employment on the basis of merit and open, competitive exams OPM – Office of Personnel Management – Civil Service Commission to administer the personnel service Hatch Act of 1939 – Civil service employees cannot take an active part in the political management of campaigns May not run for office, use their job to advance a candidate or manage a partisan campaign 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 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 • • • • • • 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 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” 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 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) Principal-Agent Model • • • Who are principals, who are agents? Principals and agents both seek to maximize their interests – Principals want to control bureaucracy - Key decision makers - Regulators – Agents want to have the least amount of control exerted over it - Firms To keep agents in check, two possibilities: – Monitoring/oversight – Minimizing goal conflict - Incentivizing - Gov’t subsidizes certain business behaviors