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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 wayBureaucracy� What does it do?� From protecting the environment to collecting revenue to regulating the economy� American bureaucracies implement a $2 trillion budget� Vague lines of authority allow some areas of the bureaucracy to operate with a significant amount of autonomyMax WeberGrowth of the Federal Bureaucracy� 1789 � 50 federal government employees� 2000 � 2.8 million (excluding military, subcontractors, and consultants who also work for federal government)� 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 21 million peopleOrganization 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) at the top who are directly accountable to the president� However, staff under secretaries are permanent employees who may resist changeIndependent 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 last year)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)� Leads to pro-business, rather than pro-consumer, behavior� Examples: Federal Reserve Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Nuclear Regulatory CommissionStaffing 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 inefficientCivil Service Reform� Pendleton Act of 1883� Employment on the basis of merit and open, competitive exams� Civil Service Commission to administer the personnel service� Hatch Act of 1939� Civil service employees cannot take an active party in the political management of campaigns� Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinios (1990)� Court ruled that partisan political considerations as the basis for hiring, promoting, or transferring public employees was illegalPolitical 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 autonomousTheories of Bureaucratic Politics� Politics-Administration Dichotomy� Bureaucracy should be free of politics� Iron Triangles� Interest groups� Congressional subcommittees� Bureaucratic agencies� Issue Networks� Principal-Agent ModelPolitics-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 relationshipsIssue 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� Agents want to have the least amount of control exerted over it� To keep agents in check, two possibilities:� Monitoring/oversight� Minimizing goal conflictWho is part of the federal bureaucracy?The United States federal government's bureaucracy is part of the executive branch. It consists of 15 cabinet departments, scores of regulatory agencies, and even more independent agencies. All told, the US bureaucracy includes more than 2.1 million civilian employees.
Who counts as a bureaucrat?Bureaucrats are officials who work in a large administrative system. You can refer to officials as bureaucrats especially if you disapprove of them because they seem to follow rules and procedures too strictly.
Which of the following is an example of a federal bureaucracy?Examples of Bureaucracy
All of the approximately 2,000 federal government agencies, divisions, departments, and commissions are examples of bureaucracies. The most visible of those bureaucracies include the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Veterans Benefits Administration.
Who are the bureaucrats quizlet?What is a bureaucracy? -Large, complex organization in which employees have very specific job responsibilities and work within a hierarchy of authority. -The job of a bureaucrat is to implement government policy, to take the laws and decisions made by elected officials and put them into practice.
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