The Federal Bureaucracy
American Govt. Chapter 12

Objectives

• -Outline the organization

• -Relationship between Fed. Bureaucracy and politics

• -Historical background

• -Rule making

• -Political resources of the president, Congress,

interest groups and bureaucrats

• -Sub-government or Iron triangle

• -Issue network

Bureaucracy

• à Bureaucracy consists of departments, agencies, bureaus,

& offices that perform the functions of government.

• àit is a hierarchical authority structure of career bureaucrats

that uses task specialization where power flows from top

down and responsibility flow from bottom up.

characteristics of American bureaucracy include:

• Hierarchy of authority structure

• Task specialization

• Career employment

• Bureaucrats are also known as civil servants

Bureaucratic power or job description

àonce a law is made, conflicts about the law shifts

from Congress and the president to bureaucracy

àBureaucratic job description are to:

1. implement policies

à that is develop procedures and objectives to carry

out policies legislated by Congress

2. counsel the president on policy formulation

3. Help to lobby president’s programs through Congress.

4. enforce regulations

à regulatory enforcement is done through:

(a) Rule making process & (b) Adjudication

(a) rule making process

• this is the legislative process

• first, there is announcement through Federal Register that

a new regulation is being considered.

• Bureaucratic agency then hold hearings throughout the country to allow

interested groups to be affected by such regulations and the public to

comment on the proposed regulation.

• disagreements between various interest groups and the federal agency

in-charge of writing the rules are referred to OMB for negotiations.

• then the final new regulatory policy is publicized in the

Federal Register.

(a) adjudication process

• is the legal process of regulation

whereby persons or firms who disagree with the final adopted

regulations and failing to comply with the adopted regulations could

apply for administrative hearings.

• such individuals or firms can hire lawyers for such administrative hearings

and the judges involved are employees of the Fed agency.

• losers of administrative hearings could still appeal to federal courts.

Judicial constraints on the bureaucracy

• federal courts only intervene when law suits are filed

• courts can issue injunctions to block regulations on the grounds that:

• à violation of laws passed by Congress

• à that there have been no fair hearings throughout the nation.

Organization of Federal bureaucracy

· The federal bureaucracy, a part of the executive branch consists of 2.8 million

civilian employees plus another 1.4 million persons in the

armed forces organized into Executive Office of the President (EOP),1

5 cabinet and independent agencies.

1) At the top is the Executive Office of the President (EOP) followed by

2) The 15 Cabinet level that are headed by secretaries with the

exception of attorney general for Justice Department.

· The fifteen cabinet-level departments account for about

60 percent of all federal employees.

· Power and prestige of cabinet departments are associated

with size and budget, as well as its function.

· Rarely are nominees rejected by Senate but with the

exceptions of late John Tower 1989, (Zoe Baird 1993,

and Linda Chavez, 2001 who withdrew their nominations

due to (Nanny Gate), as in Water Gate.

criteria used by the president for selecting cabinet heads

· knowledge, administrative ability, experience, loyalty, geographical balance.

· acceptability of the cabinet head to the interest groups with which

the department will be working for..

3) Next to the cabinet is Independent Establishments & Government Corporations.

• à The Fed. Govt. is the nation’s largest employer.

Independent Regulatory Commission

· were created before 1960s to regulate single or

groups of related business industries.

the purpose of creating these commissions were for them to

protect the interest of the public.

· Independent regulatory commissions are more independent

from the president than are cabinet agencies.

· President nominates cabinet heads with Senate confirmation.

· Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was the

1^st agency created in 1887 to regulate rail roads

· Congress later created others commissions:

FTCàFed. Trade Comm. to enforce antitrust laws

against monopolies

FCC à regulate radios and TV’s

SEC à regulate stock and bonds

· presidents appoints these commissions with Senate

confirmation but can not fire them.

· commissions have been accused of being "captured agency"

à that is these commissions now represents the interest of

the industries they were supposed to regulate rather than

representing “the people”.

Independent Executive Agencies

· Independent Executive Agencies were created by Congress as

from 1960s because the public and interest groups were

dissatisfied with Independent Regulatory Commission

because of the theory of their being captured agencies.

· Their goals were to regulate for clean water, clean air, safety products,

clean environment and some of them (OSHA) can regulate across industry lines.

· these agencies were not created for economic reasons but for social reasons

· presidents appoints them and can fire them to prevent them from

being captured agencies

· some examples are: EPA, OSHA, FAA, FDA

Government Corporations

· are organized like private corporations.

· but are not owned by shareholders.

· these were created to make products or provide a service.

· they are to be self-financing but not to make profits

· examples:

àpostal services

àAmtrak

àCPB (Corp. for Pub. Broadcasting)

à FDIC (Fed Deposit Ins Corp.)

àTVA (Tennessee Valley Authority)

Expenditures of bureaucracy

· àcost to run the Fed. Govt. + 50 states + 89,000 local government

is over $4.5 trillion per year

· à this amounts to about 30% of $15 trillion US GDP

· àthis 35% is still less compared to other countries expenditures

· à however, fed bureaucracy and expenditures have

been growing since early 20th century.

Reasons for the growing fed. Bureaucracy

1. societal demand in (education, welfare, public health)

2. wars and crises

3. interest groups pressures (to create agencies for their benefits)

4. politicians seeking votes (make promises to their constituents)

5. growth feeds on growths

How representative is the Fed. Bureaucracy?

• Fed. Bureaucracy is representative of the overall

population except at the top level positions.

Diversity in the bureaucracy:

2000, U.S. pop: %Whites %Women %Blacks %Hispanics

%ethnic groups 68.6 50.9% 12.3% 12.5%

% within bureau 56.7 44.4% 16.9% 7.3%

pay grade:

GS 1-4 56.7 64.8 24.2 9.3

GS 14-15 74.9 -- 13.3 5.5

Executive 80.7 32.3 8.9 3.9

Who is qualified to be employed by Federal govt.?

• the questions of who should be employed by the govt. have centered on:

• (a) partnership (spoils system or patronage jobs)

• (b) competence (merit system)

• merit system

• was established in 1883 with the Pendleton Act.

à to eliminate favoritism

à to increase competence

• spoils system or patronage jobs is the selection of employees for government

agencies on the basis of party loyalty, electoral support and political influence.

Politics and administration or regulatory battles

• question is, who should control federal bureaucracy?

• àlisted below are powers used by the president, congress,

interest groups and bureaucrats to influence bureaucracy

president

• Has power of appointment & removal

• Uses OMB to reevaluate & scrutinize budget request by agencies.

• Uses the White House staff to block phone calls from

un-cooperative agency heads

• Can propose reorganization of agencies or out outsource

their work to private contractors.

Congress (has more power than the president)

• Congress has the power of oversight to investigate an agency.

• Congress can audit an agency expenditures.

• Congress has purse string --> power to cut agency budget or

abolish an agency out right through Sun Set review process

i.e. which is when Congress fails to re-authorize an agency &

the agency ceases to exist.

Interest Groups

· can lobby bureaucratic agencies to get policies written to benefit interest groups.

· lobby key members of Congress to put pressure on bureaucrats

so that policies are written to benefit interest groups. A good explanation is the

àIron Triangle or Sub-government = which is (a cozy 3 sided relationship among

key members of congress, special interest groups and

govt. agencies where each benefits from the other’s existence)

Congressional leadership

interest Groups

govt. agencies

Iron Triangle or Sub-government

• First, Interest groups lobby Congress by contributing money for reelection

campaigns to members of Congress. Then congress put pressure

on government agencies to write policies favoring interest groups in order

reward interest groups for their campaign contributions.

• Govt. agencies then write policies to enhance the economic status of

the interest groups clientele through favorable regulations or contracts.

• Congress reward government agencies by appropriating

more money during budgeting.

• Interest groups can also file law suit to block or reverse an agency decisions.

Bureaucrats (manage to stay in power through):

• behind the scenes resistance to policy changes

• they find power in alliance with key members of Congress

• they leak information to media to obstruct regulations

• have technical know how and task specialization

to maintain power and position.

Issue Network & Iron Triangle

• Iron triangle is one way of explaining how interest groups

influence policies in the federal or state governments.

• However, political scientists now believe that policymaking today is better

characterized by Issue Network rather than iron triangle.

• this is because of better educated population, better communication, a decentralized

Congress, and a larger attentive public, involved in policy making process.

• Issue network is when a group of political actors (interest groups)

that are concerned with some aspects of public policy get involved.

• membership in issue network is flux and are not fixed like iron triangle.

• Issue network supports the theory of pluralism, that is many interest groups

competing among themselves for control, run the country and not few elites

or elitism

K. Ituah