 Bureaucracy
 A set of complex hierarchical departments, agencies,
commissions, and their staffs that exist to help a chief
executive officer carry out his or her duties
 Bureaucracies may be private organizations of
government.
 1789 only three departments under the Articles of
Confederation
 Foreign Affairs, War, and Treasury
 Washington inherited these.
 Head of each called a “secretary”
 Foreign Affairs renamed Department of State
 1816 to 1861 size increased and demands increased
 Post Office expanded as country grew
 Major source of jobs (spoils system/patronage)
 Civil War spawned need for new government agencies.
 Department of Agriculture (1862)
 Not given Cabinet-level status until 1889
 Pension Office (1866)
 Department of Justice (1870)
 Spoils system
 The firing of public-office holders of a defeated political
party and their replacement with loyalists of the newly
elected party
 Patronage
 Jobs, grants, or other special favors that are given as rewards
to friends and political allies for their support
 Garfield’s presidency
Besieged by office-seekers (patronage seekers)
Wished to reform the system
Irony: assassinated by a frustrated job seeker
Reaction to Garfield’s death and increasing criticism of the
spoils system was the Civil Service Reform Act in 1883
 Also called the Pendleton Act
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 Reform measure that created the Civil Service Commission to
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administer a partial merit system
The act classified the federal service by grades to which
appointments were made based on the results of a competitive
examination.
It made it illegal for federal political appointees to be required to
contribute to a particular political party.
Civil service system operated to 1978
New version is the merit system
 Growth of big business, price fixing, and other unfair
business practices after the Civil War stimulated Congress
to create the Interstate Commerce Commission
 First independent regulatory commission
 An agency created by Congress that is generally concerned with a
specific aspect of the economy
 Theodore Roosevelt
 Department of Commerce and Labor
 Woodrow Wilson
 Divided it into two separate departments
 Encouraged Congress to create the Federal Trade Commission
 16th Amendment
 Franklin Roosevelt
 Great Depression
 FDR created hundreds of new government agencies to
regulate business practices and various other areas of
the national economy.
 WWII
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Affected the economy
Manufacturing of goods related to the war
Tax rates increased and never fell again
After the war
 Demands for services/new money infusion=more government
 Civil Rights Movement
 War on Poverty
 Who Are Bureaucrats
 2.7 million federal workers
 1/3 in the U.S. Postal Service
 Tests usually for entry-level positions
 Mid-level to upper ranges of federal positions do not normally
require tests.
 10 percent of federal workforce not covered by civil service.
 Appointive policy-making positions (cabinet secretaries, for example)-
Schedule C
 Independent Regulatory Commissioners (appointed by the president)
 Low-level, non-policy patronage positions
 Secretarial assistants to policy makers, for example
 Many located in Washington, D.C., but many are spread out
throughout the country (decentralized)
 Graying of the federal workforce
 Hiring of outside contractors
 Cabinet Departments
 Major administrative units with responsibility for a broad area of government operations
 Indicates a permanent national interest
 Government Corporations
 Businesses established by Congress that perform functions that could be provided by
private businesses
 Example: Amtrak, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
 Independent Executive Agencies
 Governmental units that closely resemble a Cabinet department but have a narrower area
of responsibility and are not part of any Cabinet Department
 Example: Central Intelligence Agency
 Independent Regulatory Commissions
 Agencies created by Congress to exist outside the major departments to regulate a specific
economic activity or interest
 Example: Federal Reserve Board
 Hatch Act
 Law enacted in 1939 to prohibit civil servants from
taking activist roles in partisan campaigns
 Could not make political contributions, work for a
political party or campaign for a particular candidate
 Federal Employees Political Activities Act
 1993 liberalization of the Hatch Act
 Allowed federal employees to run for office in
nonpartisan elections and to contribute money to
campaigns in partisan elections
 Weber
 Chain of command
 Division of labor/specialization
 Clear lines of authority
 Goal orientation
 Impersonality
 Productivity
 Implementation
 The process by which a law or policy is put into operation by
the bureaucracy
 Iron triangles
 Relatively stable relationships and patterns of interaction that occur
among an agency, interest groups, and congressional committees or
subcommittees
 Issue networks
 The loose and informal relationships that exist among a large
number of actors who work in broad policy area
 Interagency Councils: working groups that bring together
representatives of several departments and agencies to
facilitate the coordination of policy making and
implementation
 Increasing complexity of policy domains
 Interagency councils
 Administrative discretion
 The ability of bureaucrats to make choices concerning the
best way to implement congressional intentions
 Rule making
 A quasi-legislative administrative process that has the
characteristics of a legislative act
 Regulations
 Rules that govern the operation of a particular government program
that have the force of law
 1946 Administrative Procedures Act
 Public notice of time, place and nature of rule-making proceedings
provided in the Federal Register
 Submission of written arguments
 Statutory purpose and basis of rule to be stated
 Once rule is written, 30 days must elapse before it takes effect.
 Administrative adjudication
 A quasi-judicial process in which a bureaucratic agency
settles disputes between two parties in a manner similar
to the way courts resolve disputes
 Executive Control
 Appointments
 Executive orders
 Rules or regulations issued by the president that have the
effect of law
 Congressional Control
 Constitutional powers
 Power of the purse
 General Accounting Office, Congressional Research
Service, and Congressional Budget Office
 Judicial Control