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Bureaucracy

Six primary characteristics of a bureaucracy (whether it be governmental or private):

Division of labor – experts are coordinated to perform complex tasks

Allocation of functions – no one makes a whole product – each task is assigned

Allocation of responsibility – each task becomes a personal responsibility – no task can be changed without permission

Supervision – some workers are assigned the function of watching over other workers – communications between workers or between levels move in a prescribed fashion (chain of command)

Purchases of full-time employment – organization controls all the time the worker is on the job

Identification of career within the organization – workers come to identify with the organization as a way of life – seniority, pension, and promotions are geared to this relationship

What do bureaucrats do?

            Communicate with each other – coordinate their specializations

Maintain “red tape” or paperwork of all communications and actions -Purpose is to establish responsibility- reaction to citizen’s distrust of bureaucracy

Implement congressional laws and executive orders

Interpret vague laws into action and concrete policy (this is known as “rule-making” or “discretionary authority”)

Size and nature of the federal service

- Early days of the bureaucracy – smaller size, function to serve and not regulate, and jobs were sometimes awarded as part of the “spoils” system.

            - The federal bureaucracy grew dramatically at the start of the 1900s – from 1916 to 1920 it grew from 399,000 to 845,000 – it peaked at around 1968 at 2.9 million and has remained at around that level  – it was about 2.7 million in 1997 (or about 4 percent of the nation’s workforce)

This however only counts civil servants there are also 5.6 million on federal contracts, 4.6 million under federal mandate for state and local government, and 2.4 million on federal grants

            (much bigger growth in state and local governments which employ about 17 million people in 1997 or about 12 percent of the workforce)

            The ratio of federal employees to total workforce is steady – the bureaucracy (whether it be federal or state) keeps pace with the economy.

Agencies and their politics

Clientele agencies: Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Department of Transportation, Department of Energy, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services

                        Designed to promote the promote the interests of their clientele – that in turn means that the agency has a built in political base to resist change (remember the “iron trangles”?)

Agencies for the maintenance of the union

            Revenue agencies: Internal Revenue Service

                        Collects taxes for US government – pressured to stop tax fraud but is supposed to do it while not upsetting taxpayers – after mounting complaints Congress passes the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 which included shifting the burden of proof from the taxpayer to the IRS in court and improving “customer service”

            Internal security: Department of Justice

Is the prosecutor for federal criminal cases, represents the federal government in civil litigation, handles federal criminal investigations (through the FBI)

                        External security: State Department and Defense Department

Regulatory agencies: Food and Drug Administration (within the Department of Health and Human Services), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (within the Department of Labor), Federal Trade Commission, Environmental Protection Agency

While these agencies are often instituted against the opposition of the groups they regulate sometimes those groups can use the programs to the advantage (example: Civil Aeronautics Board)

            Why? Top agency personnel often drawn from regulated industry, regulatory agencies often rely on the industries to provide data on their compliance, industry experts are often involved in drafting new regulations

            In the 1970s there were two reactions:

                        “Public Interest Groups” began to advocate for a more adversarial relationship between regulatory agencies and industry

                        Also began to be pressure to deregulate some industries (like the airline industry) to make them more competitive in the global market

Redistributive Administration:  Agencies that transfer billions of dollars between the public and private spheres and influence how much money is in the economy, who has that money, who has credit

Fiscal and Monetary Agencies: Treasury Department and Federal Reserve System

            Treasury manages the federal debt and prints money

Federal Reserve System adjusts the supply of money through the prime lending rate and minimum deposit requirements

Welfare Agencies: Like clientele agencies except that they discriminate in who they serve –

            Social Security – most important and most expensive

            Traditional “welfare” has been largely devolved to state-run programs through large, discretionary block grants but that means that a federal bureaucracy is still needed to oversee the use of that money

Issues of control

            The Managerial Presidency – job of the president to maintain a connection between the popular aspirations and day-to-day administration and Congress has been willing to expand presidential power to fulfill that function – President has the ability to fire people within the bureaucracy and the Executive Office of the President (like the OMB) and White House staffers have created a bureaucracy to manage the bureaucracy – Almost every president since Roosevelt has attempted to expand the executive’s managerial and oversight powers –

                        (but in reality the president is often better suited at creating a new program or adding new responsibilities than in controlling preexisting programs)

Congress and Responsible Bureaucracy – When Congress makes vague laws it is up to the courts, the presidency, the bureaucracy, and interest groups to decide what they mean – that in turn leaves the bureaucracy with the question of determining legislative intent – but from whom?

Congress attempts to assert its role in that question through subcommittee and committee oversight of the agencies (often using hearings or the appropriation process) -- In addition case work can also act to control the bureaucracy because it can reveal some aspect of bureaucratic misbehavior  -- there has also been the creation of Congressional bureaucracies (like the GAO) which keeps an eye on bureaucracies in the executive branch

            Courts – Citizen groups can file lawsuits forcing agencies to comply with existing federal law or constitutional rights

            Media and Special Interest Groups– media coverage of the bureaucracy is often critical and can draw attention to misbehavior

            The Freedom of Information Act – see below

            “Red Tape” – paperwork is created as a means of keeping bureaucrats accountable for their decisions

Limits to control (at least according to some critics)

            The rise of a professional bureaucratic class (once the “spoils system” was eliminated in the late 19^th and early 20^th century) means the presence of a permanent group exists within an agency that may be hard to control

            Bureaucracies often develop internal “cultures” that may be hard to modify or control

            Cabinet secretaries can sometimes become part of that “culture” and so the Cabinet is less of a Board of Directors and more of a group of people defending their own fiefdoms

            Legal protections (Merit Systems Protection Board, union grievances, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “whistleblower” laws)  can make it difficult to fire low- and middle-level employees who are not performing

            Iron Triangles:

Freedom of Information Act

            Passed in Congress in 1966, amended in 1974

Agencies affected: executive branch (CIA, OMB, FBI), regulatory agencies (EPA, FCC), government-controlled corporations (Amtrak, Postal Service)

Does not affect: Congress, federal courts, state governments, private businesses, schools

___ of information: how it operates, how it comes to a decision, its decisions, information it has gathered (on you for instance), how it spends its money

Exemptions:

1-     national security

2-     internal agency rules- personnel procedures

3-     exempted by statute

4-     trade secrets, privileged trade information

5-     personnel files; medical files

6-     law enforcement investigations

- if it is ongoing, would interfere with enforcements

- endanger life, disclose investigate procedures

Who can make a FOIA request?

            US citizens, universities, permanent resident aliens, foreign national

Agencies have 10 days to comply or refuse.  They have 20 days to respond to an administrative appeal

Fees- can charge for searching, reviewing documents, duplication

            Commercial pays all three

            Non-commercial pays for search and duplication only

            Educational institutions or media pay for only the duplication

They can ask for the fees to be waived if the documents will improve public understanding of the agency