Bureaucracy was not anticipated by the framers of the Constitution though some, like
Hamilton, thought the president might need an elite corps of experts in order to become a
world economic and military power. But nowhere in the Constitution are there any specific
rules about how to deal with the bureaucracy. Despite this, bureaucracy or administrative
government has grown enormously, beginning in the late 19th century, and has
done so at all levels of government.
The first major wave of bureaucratization occurred during the Progressive era.
Progressive reformers looked to science and rational administration to solve the social
and political problems created by industrialization and the corruption of the party
system. The reformers themselves were overwhelmingly from the professional middle-class,
and thus were advancing a vision of the important role their class ought to play in
government.
The second major wave was the New Deal. The New Deal was a politically ambiguous
era-both an effort to use bureaucracy for popular democratic ends and to stabilize the
corporate capitalist system by making the state a macro-economic manager while embedding
corporate power in the new interest group politics.
The third wave of expansion came during the late sixties and early 1970s, and emphasized
the popular democratic goals of consumer safety, environmental protection, and the
elimination of poverty.
President Reagan's attack on "big government" marked a major effort at
retrenchment.
Bureaucratization is not limited to government. Modern corporations and virtually all
other large-scale institutions are bureaucracies.
Delegation: Governmental bureaucracy developed as government became
involved in activities that could not be performed by its traditional branches. Congress
passed laws with general instructions, delegating to
administrative agencies the power necessary to do such things as:
Gather data and conduct scientific research required to implement laws;
Develop specific regulations (rule-making authority) which have the
force of law;
Convene meetings, organize seminars, hold press conferences, and engage in other
activities for the purposes of collecting the views of affected individuals and
organizations, educate the public and interest groups, and so forth.
Negotiate with "stakeholders" over the drafting of rules.
Monitor and enforce compliance.
Discretion: Because the issues Congress faces are often highly complex,
and because they are also frequently very controversial, Congress passes "hollow
laws"-laws that employ general language that avoids complexity and masks
political differences. In doing so, they pass on to administrative agencies the
responsibility for dealing with the complexity and resolving differences. This often
confers a great deal of power on the agencies.
Scientific Expertise: Because many problems are only visible
and comprehensible in terms of scientific data and theories, science itself is
increasingly enmeshed in governance. Global warming is an outstanding example. No one can
see, hear, or feel global warming. In order to believe in it, one must trust in a huge
global network of data gathering instruments, some of the world's most powerful computers
(used to simulate weather and climate), and the climate theories of experts. When
scientists speak with one voice-as they very nearly do on this issue-they can exert
tremendous pressure for action on the political system.
Quasi-judicial role: Affected parties may contest the way rules have
been applied. When they do, administrative agencies conduct adjudicatory hearings. Only
when all administrative appeals are exhausted may complaints seek relief in federal court.
Agency autonomy: Some agencies succeed in acquiring considerable
autonomy, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover being an extreme example.
Constraints: Typically, however, autonomy is multiply constrained:
Congress - oversight, purse, delegation
President - appointment, use of financial oversight and control/OMB
Interest groups - Need support for appropriations
Media - possibility of sudden exposure of failures or corruption.
In sum, bureaucratic agencies are relatively autonomous
institutions having quasi-legislative (rule-making) and quasi-judicial
(adjudicatory) powers, as well as executive powers (implementation and enforcement of laws
and regulations). Despite this,
Bureaucratic officials are unelected, and
There are no Constitutional checks on bureaucratic power.
The danger of iron triangles: We've
already examined iron triangles in the lectures on Congress. Iron triangles are, in
effect, the opposite of checks-and-balances: symbiotic interrelationships among public
agencies and private interests contrary to any public purpose.
It may be worthwhile to look briefly at two cases where the symbiotic relationship among
the partners in iron triangles broke down, in order to appreciate both the limits of this
power system and its resiliency.
The Divad anti-aircraft tank: Congress appropriated money for a tank of
this kind, leaving development up to the army.
This was a classic iron triangle. Military contractors set up PACs and funnel money to
Congress (and give assurances of investments and jobs in key districts if particular
projects are funded). In the military, mid-level officers head up weapons development
systems, developing a great stake in its success.
In the case of Divad the iron triangle led to corruption. Progress was slow and the army
needed a demonstration to impress Congress and the media. They staged one in the
mid-1980s; tanks shot down unmanned targets. In reality, however, the project coordinators
detonated the targets by remote control from the ground-the demonstration was a fraud.
How did this ever come to the public's attention? A "counter-triangle"
emerged: a whistle blower within the military, the media, and a dissident
Congressperson-two term Republican Denny Smith from Portland. Smith had been a fighter
pilot in Vietnam; his experience made him very attentive to the technical aspects and
detailed costs of military technology. Smith alerted the media, and the resulting exposure
killed the Divad program. The army, and the corrupt officers, were held accountable.
However, the Army whistle blower was given a choice of retirement or reassignment to a
small base in Alaska, and Denny Smith forfeited a great deal of reelection campaign money.
In time he was voted out of office.
Maxxam's saws silenced: Maxxam bought Pacific Lumber, a northern
California company noted for its worker and environment friendly policies, in 1986. Having
borrowed heavily to do so, it immediately set about ruthless liquidating the forests it
acquired, doubling Pacific Lumber's harvest rate (see text, p77). Two weeks ago, the
company had its license to log revoked by the California Department of Forestry and Fire
Protection.
This represented a remarkable breakdown of an iron triangle, as the following statement,
in which Maxxam is referred to as PALCO (the name it gave Pacific Lumber), shows:
"No major logging company has lost their license like this before - it's a
historical precedent," says Paul Mason of the Environmental Protection Information
Center. "That the department - [in a state] with a Republican administration that has
been in cahoots with the timber industry - felt compelled to yank PALCO's license, that's
pretty extraordinary." ("Saws Silenced," Eugene
Weekly, November 19, 1998).
Why did the informal alliance between Maxxam, the Department of Forestry, and the
Republican administration unravel? Most likely for the following reasons:
Maxxam was a notoriously bad operator even by the lenient standards of the Department,
amassing over 300 violations of the state's Forest Practice Rules, nine criminal
misdemeanors, citations for destroying domestic water sources, 10 violations of a plan
regarding logging on steep hillsides, non-compliance with winter logging regulations, and
two violations of the Endangered Species Act for logging old-growth redwoods. When an
agency develops regulations with industry interests in mind, it doesn't want to be
embarrassed by excessive and blatant noncompliance.
Maxxam also received bad publicity for threatening to cut one of the few remaining old
growth redwood forests, the Headwaters forest, and then for extracting very lucrative
buyout terms from the federal and state governments.
Earth First! and other environmental groups have campaigned against Maxxam for years.
This past fall a protester was killed when a log fell on him. Eyewitness accounts and
videotape suggest that the death was intentional. In any case, it once more focused media
attention on Maxxam.
In sum, rogue behavior, dedicated activism, and media attention worked to undermine the
iron triangle. But Maxxam isn't dead-it can apply for a new license in January.
From iron triangles to issue networks: Some iron triangles are not as
rigid as they once were. As the number of interest groups and policy experts has expanded,
congressional committees and government agencies have been affected by competing demands
from multiple sides, which together form issue networks. This change is largely
attributable to bureaucratic reforms of the late sixties and early seventies, which
affected both administrative procedures and political involvement:
Administrative procedures: The Freedom of Information Act (1966),
amended and improved in 1974, has led to much greater disclosure of information by
agencies (text p3660. The Government in the Sunshine Act (1976) requires regulatory
commissions to open their meetings to the public. These two acts have made it more
possible for public interest groups to successfully monitor and scrutinize bureaucratic
behavior. In addition, the National Environmental Policy Act (1969) requires all federal
agencies to evaluate the environmental impact of all proposed actions, as well as to
consider a range of alternatives. Though NEPA does not require agencies to choose the most
environmentally benign alternative, it has had two environmentally desirable effects.
First, it compels agencies to take the environment seriously; and second, it makes it
easier for citizens and environmental groups to intervene.
Increased political involvement: The public interest movement inspired
(and initially built) by Ralph Nader (text p245-249) helped repoliticize the bureaucracy.
(During the early Cold War bureaucratic politics was largely the province of insiders.)
The elite countermobilization that this provoked (text 249-253) could not return
bureaucratic procedure to its former insularity, but rather aimed at assuring that the
preferences and perspectives of corporations and other elite groups prevailed in the more
open political environment--hence the major investment in think tanks, for example (text
p251).