Magleby & Light Government by the People Chapter 12 The Federal Bureaucracy

1. Magleby & Light Government by the People Chapter 12 The Federal Bureaucracy

2. The Importance of the Federal Bureaucracy: Disaster Relief • The federal government has been providing aid to victims of disaster since 1803 • By the 1970s, dozens of federal agencies were active in some form of disaster relief • In 1979, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was established • Budget cuts following 9/11 • Poor response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 • Resultant reforms • Rapid response to tornado destruction in 2008

3. The Undefined Branch The Federal Bureaucracy has only one task— to faithfully execute all the laws The Framers believed that the bureaucracy would be relatively small and left most of the details up to the president and Congress

4. Constitutional Controls • Members of Congress may not hold executive branch positions • President has complete authority to nominate the senior officers of government • President also is in charge of monitoring presidential appointees, and may ask them to resign for any reason

5. Defining Bureaucracy • A form of organization that operates through informal, uniform rules and procedures • Characteristics (Max Weber) • Specialization • Centralization • Formal Rules • Standardization • Expertise • Accountability

6. Defining Bureaucracy • Originally meant fast, effective, and rational administration • Over time, has come to mean a large, inefficient organization clogged with red tape • Problems • Today’s jobs are too complex to be divided into specialized pieces • Too many leaders at the top creates confusion among lower-level bureaucrats • Rules are almost impossible to enforce within a very large workforce • Duplication and overlap between units creates confusion

7. Four Types of Federal Organizations • Departments • Independent regulatory commissions • Independent agencies • Government corporations

8. The Federal Departments

9. Leading the Federal Bureaucracy • ~3,000 presidential appointees head federal departments and agencies • 600 subject to Senate confirmation • 2,400 serve entirely “at the pleasure of the president”

10. Becoming a Presidential Appointee • Selection by White House Presidential Personnel Office • White House clearance • Submission of name to Senate • Senate review

11. The Senior Executive Service • ~7,000 members • ~6,400 career executives • ~600 political executives • Along with the president’s political appointees, help run federal departments and agencies

12. The Civil Service • Federal employees who work for government through a competitive, not political, selection process • Spoils system • Merit system • Office of Personnel Management (OPM) • Merit System Protection Board

13. Types of Federal Employees

14. Civil Service Realities • Only about 15 percent of career civilian employees work in Washington, D.C. • More than 25 percent work in a defense agency • 30 percent work for the U.S. Postal Service • Fewer than 10 percent work for the Social Security Administration and the Medicare program • Almost half of federal employees work in the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State • Most workers are white-collar employees • Federal civil servants “look” more like regular Americans than do political appointees or members of Congress

15. Regulating the Civil Service The Hatch Act Federal statute barring federal employees from active participation in certain kinds of politics and protecting them from being fired on partisan grounds

16. Government Employee Unions • Since 1962, federal civilian employees have had the right to form unions • About one-third currently belong to a union

17. The Job of the Federal Bureaucracy • Implementation • Administrative discretion • Making regulations • Federal Register • Spending money • Uncontrollable spending • Entitlement program

18. Uncontrollable Spending in 1962 and 2008

19. Presidential Controls Appointment Reorganization Budgeting Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned from office only days after the 2006 elections. His management of the war in Iraq had been widely criticized, and he was blamed for the deep Republican losses in the elections.

20. Congressional Controls Establishing agencies Formulating budgets Appropriating funds Confirming personnel Authorizing new programs Conducting investigations Terminating agencies

21. Shared Controls Oversight Central clearance Vice President Al Gore shows David Letterman how to smash an ashtray under federal rules.

22. A History of Great Endeavors We may complain about red tape and waste in Washington, but we also recognize that our federal bureaucracy continues to make progress in solving very difficult problems

23. The Bureaucracy Bureaucracies are large, complex organizations in which employees have very specific job responsibilities and work within a hierarchy of authority The employees are known as bureaucrats and the manner in which they are organized affects how well they accomplish their tasks

24. 4 areas of growth in society that have caused the bureaucracy at all levels of government to expand: • Science and technology; • Business regulation; • Social welfare programs; • 4. Administrators who look for new ways to serve clients, which leads to new programs, larger staffs, etc.

25. *Recent years have witnessed a movement toward reducing the size of the bureaucracy • This is difficult because different segments of the population work hard to protect the programs that serve them • 2. Efforts at budget cutting reflect the tension between majoritarianism and pluralism. The broader public wants to reduce the size of government, but those who benefit from specific programs organize to protect those programs and agencies they value

26. The basic types of government organizations: • Departments; • Independent agencies; • Regulatory commissions; • Government corporations. • Civil Service and the Pendleton Act – a federal worker cannot give or receive money for a political party in a federal building

27. Presidents can appoint less than 1% of all executive employees, though the ones they appoint fill the top policy-making positions Many Presidents have argued for an increase in the % of appointed officials, feeling that they have insufficient control over the executive department This may not necessarily be true. The fact is that pluralism may pull agencies in different directions and may not make appointed officials solely respond to the wishes of the President

28. “Administrative discretion” is the latitude that Congress gives agencies to make policy in the spirit of the legislative mandate Some argue agencies exercise too much discretion and are “out of control” Congress has the “power of the purse” which can express its preferences through budget control *Since Congressional statutes authorize agencies, regulations issued by them have the force of law

29. Regulations are first published as proposals so that all interested parties have an opportunity to comment on them Regulations are often controversial because they force businesses and people to act in prescribed ways In the article, “The Science of Muddling Through”, Charles Lindblom compares policy making in the real world and in the ideal world:

30. The ideal, rational-comprehensive model hold that administrators can rank values, objectives, explore all possible solutions, and then choose the most effective means to reach the desired goal • 2. Real-world decision making does not meet these criteria) • It is often difficult to precisely define values and goals and problems may be too pressing to allow for a complete study

31. An answer frequently given by bureaucrats in making policy is that they are “ going by the book” (a source of irritation) – yet the “book” contains the laws they are obligated to enforce *Implementation of policy is an incremental process in which trial and error may eventually lead to the policies that work! Reforming the bureaucracy has been called for in Reinventing Government by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler. The book’s ideas were adopted by the Clinton administration and by many state and local governments

32. “Deregulation” is a reform championed by many conservatives who prefer less government involvement in the economy Deregulation of the long-distance phone service seems to have led to a more competitive market, but it is more difficult to decide the appropriate level of deregulation in agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) *Government must balance the freedom of the marketplace with appropriate regulation to protect the public!

33. Some government agencies are imitating the private sector by employing the “total quality management” (T.Q.M.) methods: • T.Q.M. relies on employee teamwork; • 2. It emphasizes that the client is the “customer”, but in government the decision of who is the customer becomes a major problem (ex. the patient or the pharmaceutical company)

34. In addition to regulating for a responsible marketplace, government must increase the efficiency and responsiveness of its own bureaucracies Regulations have the effect of law, but the right policy is often not politically acceptable The ultimate responsibility for policy decisions is made by Congress and the “book” is the set of laws that a regulatory commission is obligated to enforce

35. The largest organizational unit in the executive branch is the department and the “largest” department is the Defense Department and the “smallest” is the Department of Education A government corporation is a government agency that provides services that could be provided by the private sector, such as The Postal Service and Amtrak. There has more recently been a move to reduce the size of bureaucracy by using private contractors Government began to regulate businesses as new public attitudes favored intervention

36. Congress often gives regulatory agencies a great deal of discretion due their increasingly expanding workload, often being vague about their functions, especially if Congress cannot agree on the specific roles of the new agency Only 2% of the U.S. workforce is made-up of civil servants (which is based on the merit system) The Pendleton Act of 1883 was created by Congress due to assassination of President Garfield by a disappointed job seeker

37. The Social Security Act was created by Congress in 1935, but really income security began after the Civil War Many have argued that government agencies should be held accountable. This was the basic aim of the Government Performance and Results Act The President influences regulatory commissions primarily through the appointment of the members, yet often administration discretion is allowing policy decisions to be made by these agencies

38. The purpose of the Pendleton Act was to reduce patronage (filling government offices with loyal party member, friends, etc.) by creating the Civil Service The Hatch Act extended this by stating that you could not give or receive money for a political party in a federal building An important early step in the social welfare program by the federal government was the Social Security Act of 1935 The largest organizational unit in the executive branch is the “department”

39. Independent regulatory commissions are less influenced by political pressure because for one thing they cannot be removed from office until their terms expire – not when parties change control of the government By its budget, the largest independent agency is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration - NASA

40. The 1st federal regulatory agency was the Interstate Commerce Commission (I.C.C.) in 1887 Most of the department and agencies have a dilemma of how to balance their authority – such as the U.S. Forest Service trying to balance the economics policies of production vs. the policy of forest preservation Majoritarianism would seek to reduce the size of the bureaucracy while at the same time, pluralism would tend to increase its size

41. Often regulatory commissions do not enact a rational policy because that policy may be politically “unacceptable” When a commission or agency formulates new regulations, those regulations have the effect of law Government corporations are often allowed because many argue that they provide services more efficiently, even though the same services could be provided by the private sector, such as Amtrak or even the Postal System

42. Congress is often vague about the creation of a new agency because of the complexity of the problems confronted by the agency and the fact that many in Congress cannot agree on the specifics of functions of the new agency Patronage is the filling of government positions with personal or political friends This is in contrast to the central feature of the civil service systems which is merit-based, nonpolitical employment and promotion

43. In recent years, the size of the bureaucracy has been reduced by turning jobs over to private contractors – instead of using bureaucrats • The ideal, rational decision-making process: • Does not reflect how decisions are made in the “real world”; • Requires administrators to rank values and objectives; • Calls on a careful analysis of all possible solutions.

44. *Lobbying reinforces the pluralist definition of who has power in policy-making, however since elections are majoritarian, the party in power tends to have more say in policy-making “Membership bias” exists in interest groups-some types of people (the middle and upper-middle classes) are better represented by organized interest groups

45. Lower-income people tend to be represented by issue-oriented lobbies whose members are not poor, but who policy positions address the problems of the poor “Public interest groups” are those that have no economic self-interest in the policies they pursue (they can be liberal or conservative in nature) O.S.H.A. used such discretion in the regulation of all types of workplace injuries

46. The growth of regulation by the federal government is one reason the number of business has increased In 1995, Congress passed a law requiring lobbyists to register and file semi-annual reports disclosing clients, activities, and the finances of their activities *Reformers have called for reducing the role of P.A.C.’s in financing elections

47. Alexander Hamilton set many of the precedents for developing the bureaucracy, including the need to expand the workforce as the nation grew (to where it now has reached 15 million) and the concept of “execution in detail” as part of its mission statement The only executive department not headed by a “secretary” is the Department of Justice which is led by the U.S. Attorney General

48. The largest department is the Defense Department and the smallest is the Department of Education The Department of Homeland Security was created by combining 22 agencies in what is often termed an “umbrella department” One of the most difficult parts of the bureaucracy to define is the government corporation which acts as a business corporation but with more flexibility and fewer restrictions on its operations

49. Independent regulatory commissions are less influenced by politics because for one thing, they cannot be removed from office until their terms expire – not by a change in the political leadership in Washington By budget the largest independent agency is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – NASA The Civil Service System (which employees the merit system) was established by the Pendleton Act after the assassination of President Garfield

50. When a law is put into practice by the bureaucracy that phase is called “implementation” and the precise statement on how that law is to be implemented is called a “rule” (Congress often is vague about the functions of the bureaucracy and through “administration discretion” the government allows the bureaucracy to use reasonable judgment in implementing this law