Blue Team
 Clients in terms of “the role of groups” (Picard, Lecture note)
 “how bureaucracies stop solving other people’s problems and start
generating their own. (Branch, 1976, p. 157)”



Golden oldies
Literary map
Synthesis
◦ Morris
◦ Kotz
◦ Taylor Branch




How the bureaucratic culture can twist the foreign
policy into unintended and often harmful positions
The peculiarly “insular culture of their
bureaucracy”; a parochial view of the national
interest; cliency makes diplomats align their
interests with those of their hosts.
Cliency has become a major occupational disease
in modern American diplomacy; has taken a heavy
toll on government in honesty and objectivity
Cliency influences much of what the United States
does—from it failure to speak out against genocide
in Africa to the tragedies of Vietnam




Blurring boundary between US national
interest and the bureaucratic or private
interests of American officials abroad
The answer to the many problems of cliency
starts with the opening of the foreign policy
process.
A sophisticated cliency—as a sensitive
appreciation of other societies
The answer to the many problems of cliency
starts with the opening of the foreign policy
process



Investigative reporting in the 1960s resulted in the
raising of consciousness of the problem of hunger in
the United States
Had been no comprehensive governmental
accounting of the hungry in America
Perception that hunger often caused by individual
negligence by the poor; no public intervention could
change this
◦ “The poor spend all of their money on coke and potato
chips” (qtd. In 119)


Government officials saw existing Department of
Agriculture programs as effective
Role of expertise, information in moving an issue
onto the public agenda

Introductory taxonomy of the bureaucratic way of life,
proposing such theories as DETMAHOG (“Deliver the
Mail/Holy Grail” ) and LICTBOSS (“Life-Cycle Theory of
Bureaucratic Ossification”).

Discussing when and how bureaucracies “stop solving other
people’s problems and start generating their own. (p. 157)”

Idler Gears: a term that describes the Executive branch of the
federal machine.

The theory
◦ Life-Cycle Theory of Bureaucratic Ossification (LICTBOSS):
the proportion of idler-gears increases with the age of the
organization; Similar to the Parkinson’s Law; LICBOSS
predicts 80 percent of the government’s multi-headed
independent agencies are useless.
◦ Short Public Responsibility Theory (SPURT): “the maturing
process of a bureaucracy involves movement away from
service to publicly stated goals and toward service to the
organization itself (p. 165)”; SPURT has happened to the
Department of Housing and Urban Development and the
Office of Economic Opportunity.

The theory (Continued)
◦ Soft-Hard theory of product identification (SOHA): “Any hard
bureaucracy can be expected to have fewer idler-gears spinning
than a comparable soft one (p. 165)”; “A hard bureaucracy is one
which produces a tangible product”, whereas a soft bureaucracy
produces intangibles (p. 166)”
◦ Deliver the Mail/Holy Grail dichotomous theory of problem
protection (DETMAHOG): problem solving agencies have an
inherent propensity toward wheel-spinning ; “a Holy Grail
bureaucracy cannot persist over time without acquiring large
numbers of idler-gears-either by solving its problem and not
going away or by not solving the problem (p. 166)”
Clients and
Political
Process
Culture of
Bureaucracy
Bureaucratic
Reform
Heady
Peters
Morris
Greene
Branch
Orwell
Barzelay
Johnson
Hummel
Kotz
Smith
Development
Management
Community
Development
Corruption
and
Dysfunction
Agenda Setting




Clients: “the role of groups,” “iron triangle,” “the iron
triangle and revolving door (Picard, Lecture note)”
Culture: language, communication, ritual, routine
Political control of bureaucracy
Main point: understanding bureaucracies and client
behavior and demands is complicated
◦ Myriad spheres of influence, power play and networks
◦ Special consideration regarding developing states,
bureaucracies.



Cooptation
Interests articulation: revolving door, lobby of
interests groups
Clients and democracy


“[I]n and around bureaucracies [language]
separates people from one another” (156)
Upon closer examination…
◦ Language of bureaucracy has a certain logic, but this is
different than how an individual versus a bureaucracy
perceives the world
 E.g., speech is contextless and one-directional (versus
contextual and reciprocal)
 E.g., thought is analogizing, general, referential to abstract
model (versus concrete, particular, immersed in experience)
◦
◦
◦
◦
Top-down language
Ambivalent and ambiguous: used as a management tool
Jargon
Acronyms (e.g., Challenger disaster)


All bureaucratic organizations “tend, because of
their inner logic, to become detached from the
boundary with outer reality” (162)
Constraints: “policies and programs predefine
what can become real for bureaucracy”
◦ “It is the program that must always be obeyed. It
becomes the referent point for what is authorized to
happen” (158).

Take away: bureaucratic speech is different to
understand because it is different than ordinary
speech; “technical acts and language” translated
into meaning by “practical people”; if we want to
control bureaucratic behavior, should keep this in
mind and allow it to stay in place (184-185)


Officials should see themselves as
“Possibilists” and ask themselves, “What is to
be done”
Follow six principles for managing staff
agencies
1. Spread responsibility for economizing and
compliance
2. Conceptualize work as providing services
3. Identify customers with care
4. Be accountable to customers
5. Reorganize to separate service from control
6. Let the customer fund the providers

Building off of Peters’ critique of the way
comparative administrationists approached
research questions, IV’s suggested to explain
the DV of public official behavior in
administrative positions
◦ Relationship with clients
◦ Management: i.e., relationships between
subordinates and superiors in the formal structure
◦ Implementation
◦ Corruption
◦ Policy-making

Also examines utility maximization

Logical Critique

Economic Model

◦ Often based on economic assumptions such as Niskanen’s
maximizing bureaucrat
◦ Calls into question preceding model
◦ Points to examples such as Cohen, March and Olsen’s “garbage
can”
◦ Through examples of budget and personnel decisions
◦ Empirical looking at, for example, changes in civil service pay in
the United States from 1971-1984 and changes in salary levels,
1970-1984; also examines federal civilian employment, 19501984
Main point: calls into question various above models; need
to work as scholars to develop better, more realistic and
feasible ones



Role of the political party as an institution
Often common in developing countries
Polyarchal competitive systems
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
Political competition
Well-organized political groupings competing for power
Shift in power relations without disruption the system
Do not need to have Western-style parties
Bureaucracy may become a focus for competition
 Here, external controls sometimes lead to unintended
consequences—that is, bureaucracies cannot meet demands



From 1949 to 1954, Japanese forged the
institutions of their high-growth system
MITI’s high-growth system derived from the
government’ selection of industries for
“nurturing” (199)
Tools of bureaucrats:
◦ Control over foreign exchange; imports of
technology
◦ Ability to dispense preferential financing; tax
breaks; protection from foreign competition
◦ Authority to order the creation of cartels and
bank-based industrial conglomerates


New apparatus for export promotion: Supreme
Export Council; EPA (Economic Planning
Agency); Japan External Trade Organization
(231)
Japan’s “miracle” was based on “improved
institutional arrangements” (Chandler 1980)
◦ Institutional arrangement: formal and informal,
explicit and implicit social structures “developed to
coordinate activities within large formal organizations
such as corporations, government bodies, and
universities and to link those organizations to
another”

Improved institutional arrangements: twotiered banking system, FILP (Fiscal Investment
and Loan Plan), MITI
◦ Total control of foreign exchange, total screening of
foreign capital, and a tax system that made Japan a
“businessman’s paradise” (240).
◦ MITI
 Most important “improved institutional arrangement”
 Roleas “pilot agency” or “economic general staff”
 Ironically, effectiveness was improved by the loss of its absolute
power of state control (240)
 After the expiration of the Temporary Materials Supply and
Demand Control Law, MITI had to learn to employ indirect,
market-conforming methods of intervention (240)






A story of Maurice Castle
◦ Bureaucrat in the British secret service
◦ Married to an African woman
◦ Help the Communists who had helped his wife’s escape
Individuals in the context of the Cold War; impact of
international affairs on the lives of individuals
Communist/imperialist/Apartheid/romantic love/death/
loyalty
“For a while I half believed in God, like I half believed in
Carson’s. Perhaps I was born to be a half believer” (140).
“When you talk about Prague and Budapest and how you can’t
find a human face in Communism. I’ve seen-once-the human
face…I don’t have any trust in Marx or Lenin any more than I
have in Saint Paul, but haven’t I the right to be grateful?”
(141).
“[H]e might find a permanent home, in a city where he could
be accepted as a citizen, as a citizen without any pledge of
faith, not the City of God or Marx, but the city called Peace of
Mind” (141).



Description of lives in poverty in Paris
and London; tour of the underworld
Describes the tramp’s life in London
looking for a paid job
“ My story ends here…I have definitely
learned by being hard up. I shall never
again think that all tramps are drunken
scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be
grateful when I gave him a penny, nor be
surprised if men out of work lack energy,
nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant.
That is the beginning” (213).




Background: in January 1970, Indonesian student’s
organizations’ protests against government’s corruption;
Commission on corruption investigation in Indonesia
Causes of corruption: historical factors, cultural factors, and
economic factors
Key variables identified by Indonesian bureaucrats
◦ Structural variables: a highly centralized governmental
structure make corruption possible
◦ Political party factors: new political parties have financing
needs; beyond election needs, there are day-to-day routine
expenses
On the whole, corruption in Indonesia seems to present more
of a recurring political problem than an economic one
◦ Undermines legitimacy of the government in the eyes of the
young, educated elite and most civil servants

Barzelay, Michael , Breaking Through Bureaucracy (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992)

Greene, Graham, The Human Factor (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1979 or New York: Pocket Books, 1988).

Guy, Peters, B., Comparing Public Bureaucracies: Problems of
Theory and Method (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press,
1988)

Heady, Ferrel, Public Administration: A Comparative
Perspective 6th Edition (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1994)

Hummel, Ralph P., The Bureaucratic Experience (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1987)





Johnson, Chalmers, MITI and the Japanese Miracle (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1982)
Kotz, Nick, "Jamie Whitten, Permanent Secretary of Agriculture" in
Nick Katz, Let Them Eat Promises: The Politics of Hunger in America
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969)
Morris, Roger, "Rooting for the Other Team" in Charles Peters and
James Fallows, eds., Inside the System (New York: Praeger, 1976),
pp. 171-181.
Orwell, George, Down and Out in Paris and London (New York:
Harvest, 1961).
Smith, Theodore M., “Corruption, Tradition and Change in Indonesia,
in Arnold Heidenheimer, Michael Johnston and Victor T. LeVine, eds.
Political Corruption: A Handbook (New Brunswick, NJ.:Transaction
Publishers, 1990).