Major Players: Bureaucracies in American Government

The Goal of this Essay I mean by "bureaucracies" all the people who are on the payroll of some unit of government, federal, state, or local, but are not elected, not in the legislative or judicial branches, and are not removable at the pleasure of whoever appointed them. Much of the time, they are not high in our consciousness; we become aware of them only when we have to be in contact with them. So we don't usually think of them as significant parts of the governmental process. Actually, however, they are important participants in the formation of public policy at all levels of American government. To be accurate, any description or analysis of the governmental system must take their role into account. They are major players. Most introductory American government textbooks and courses do cover them. But it seems to me that many students making their first acquaintance with the subject come away with only a vague image of what it is that makes bureaucracies a consequential component of the system. They grasp the principle in the abstract; the actualities are often unclear to them. Their experience doesn't make it easy for them to visualize the substance of the bureaucratic role. This essay is directed to students in this predicament. I would like to leave them with a clearer sense of what it is that makes bureaucracies worthy of careful study by anyone interested in American government. The presentation is brief because I believe it isn't necessary to burden my intended readers with a great deal of institutional detail to achieve this end; the old adage about forests and trees seems to me to apply here. I have also omitted the notes on sources and the bibliography usually included in academic papers. Those satisfied with only an overview will not miss the documentation. Those who wish to go more fully into the field will find fuller treatments in textbooks on public administration and organization theory and in treatises on bureaucracy, which they will have to consult in any event. I assure readers I believe that all I have said in this essay is drawn from the relevant literature and amply supported by evidence. But I will be pleased if some of them are skeptical enough and interested enough to check me out. Compressing and simplifying a large topic can lead to error. I would rather be embarrassed than misleading. The Importance of Bureaucrats Do I seem to claim too much when I attribute great importance to bureaucrats? Then consider this: the words in statutes and judicial decisions and executive orders and electoral rhetoric and party platforms and journalistic reports and editorials don't deliver mail or build dams or construct roads or put out fires or patrol streets and highways or collect taxes or provide financial assistance or protect the public against impure food and drugs and water and air or teach students or do any of the other thousands of things the highest organs of government proclaim officially to be public policy. Nor do elections get these things done. Nothing actually happens until people go to work on the "grubby details." As the overworked metaphor proclaims, reality is at the point where the rubber meets the road. How Bureaucrats Shape Policy Directly Official powers. The administrative agencies of government at all three governmental levels, federal, state, and local, have been invested with substantial grants of authority by the actions of legislatures, chief executives, and courts. Their official powers include the issuance of regulations of general application and effect (a form of legislating), the application of laws and regulations to specific individuals and organizations (a form of adjudicating), and the employment, direction, and management of staff to perform these duties (the essence of the executive function). Some of them even have summary powers in emergencies--to block distribution of contaminated food, for instance, or to destroy herds of cattle afflicted with grave infectious diseases, or to shut down hazardous mines, or to compel the evacuation of buildings in dangerous condition. …