Chapter 15 Bureaucracy How the Bureaucracy Grew Before

Chapter 15 Bureaucracy

How the Bureaucracy Grew • Before the rise of the bureaucracy, government jobs were distributed as spoils, or political rewards. Reformers challenged this system and eventually built a national bureaucracy. • The ideal bureaucracy has five characteristics: hierarchy, division of labor, fixed routines, equal rules for all, and technical expertise. • Bureaucracies are prone to pathologies, like hewing too closely to a routine, fighting over turf, favoring some clients over others, and refusing to coordinate. These are all exaggerations of the very features that make bureaucracies efficient. • Because they rely on specialized expertise and information, bureaucracies pose a dilemma for democratic governance.

What Bureaucracies Do • Once a law is passed or an executive order is signed, the program goes to the bureaucracy to be put into effect. • Bureaucrats propose rules, publish them in the Federal Register, gather comments, rewrite the rules, and publish the final version. The law or executive order is now in effect. • At every step of the process, lawyers and lobbyists interact with the bureaucracy; this interaction engages experts far from the political limelight. • Bureaucratic officials take part in every step of the political process— from proposing legislation to putting it into effect.

How the Bureaucracy Is Organized • The federal bureaucracy includes five different types of agencies. The fifteen cabinet departments, forming the largest group, employ roughly 1. 8 million civilians. • The government includes four other kinds of bureaucracies: executive agencies focus on one type of issue, like environmental quality; independent regulatory commissions oversee specific industries; central service agencies staff and supply the entire bureaucracy; and private contractors are licensed to provide goods and services for the government. Different kinds of agencies face different political problems and challenges. • The president appoints a small number of executives; the rest are members of the permanent civil service. The cabinet has grown far more diverse in the past twenty-five years. • The cabinet and other appointed executives provide political direction; the civil servants provide expertise and continuity. • Among the many challenges to a smoothly functioning system is the time—often more than a year—that it takes a new administration to get its leadership team in place.

Who Controls the Federal Bureaucracy? • In a democracy, the public must ultimately control the government bureaucracy. The question is how. • Different actors exert some influence over the bureaucracy: the president (who names the leaders), Congress (through funding and oversight), and interest groups. • Bureaucrats still operate with considerable autonomy, especially those at the “street level. ”

Reforming the Bureaucracy • Critics of the bureaucracy focus on cost, inertia, and public mistrust. • Solutions include sunshine reforms, reinventing government to make it more constituent-friendly, and privatizing some of its functions.