| NAVIGATION | |||
| Reading | Test Material | Discussion | Links |
O'Connor and Sabato, Chapter 9, (pages 313-341
These are clues to the multiple choice questions on the final from this chapter:
Controlling the Bureaucracy
What we normally mean by the word "government" are all the departments, bureaus, offices, agencies, and commissions which constitute the executive branch of government. The answer to how the president "controls" this vast multi-million employee branch of government is that he doesn't, not very well at least. Since the advent of civil services, most of the jobs are not distributed by the president and his party (the spoils sytem), but are obtained through competitive examination. Nevertheless, the president can make upwards of 20,000 appointments or more in an 8 year (two term) span. The main influence the president has is with his main political appointees. But even there he may be limited by events and even law.
Most of the secretaries and undersecretaries of the various departments in the cabinet are his political appointees. When we say "secretary" here we don't mean the clerical staff of a department, but the word is used in the same sense as "Secretary of State". It is a very great skill of a president to be able to get action within a department that the department staff does not want to do. As Richard Neustadt has said in his books on the presidency, "The power of the president is the power to persuade."
The President has better control over the Executive Office of the President. This is where most of his White House Staff are located including the Office of Management and Budget, the White House Office, and the Council of Economic Advisors. I mention the White House Office especially because it is there that the series of 12-14 special assistants to the President are housed.
Finally there are all the Boards, Commissions, and Committees along with the "independent" agencies. We call them independent because they are not "under" any of the main large cabinet departments. The word "independent" also applies to some of the regulatory commissions such as the Federal Reserve Board which oversees the banking system of the U.S. The President has appointment powers but he cannot remove the board members (this is true of most independent regulatory commissions). This ability to "fire" cabinet members, White House staff, and others is overrated. Having to fire someone is a public embarassment to the President. Either he didn't pick the right person, or he can't get them to do what he wants them to do (or both). Either way, the President loses too.
You can check out the range of offices in the executive branch in your text or use the links in the "links" section below.
Getting Advice From Everywhere
Just to give you a good example of the level of complexity of decision-making, let's imagine a decision the President has to make with serious budget and economic implications, say...a major tax cut. Besides the public, the taxpayers associations and virtually every member of Congress, who will have input (suggestions, advice, commentary, demands, whatever) on the President on this matter? Well, let's see. In the cabinet departments certainly the Secretary of the Treasury will be a main player. Then there's the Secretary of Commerce (big business) and the Secretary of Labor (unions) and any other department head that a tax cut will have impact on. In the White House Office, The Director of the Office of Management and Budget will have to be consulted along with the Council of Economic Advisors. The President's Chief of Staff and Capitol advisors and his domestic political advisors, and even his press secretary will be in on the decision. (the tv program West Wing does a pretty good job on explaining the role and politics of this staff). On the "regulatory" side, the Federal Reserve Chairman will probably weigh in, and the President doesn't have much control over him.
I think you get the idea. An to top it all off, any player in the scenario can take his case to the public by leaks to the press or by contacts through members of Congress. The President ignores advice at his peril.
In the end, what "glues" everyone together is the fact that the President has to make a decisions and it is he who will have to bear the consequences of his decision. That's probably as it should be in a democracy.
A classic work on bureaucracy is:
Wilson, James Q., Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, 1991, Basic Books
An older "brief" work is Rossiter, Clinton, The American Presidency, 1987, Johns Hopkins University Press
If you want to read about what can go wrong with "bureaucracy" go back and check on a book that I recommended earlier. It really deals more with courts, but there are a couple of chapters that really hit home on bureaucracy.
Howard, The Death of Common Sense1994, Random House
This area contains links to sites that have material that applies to the subject. The text sites are included as the first links.
| LINK SUBJECT |
|---|
| The text site |
| Organization of the executive branch |
| The Cabinet offices |
| The national budget game |
| Congress Budget Office CBO |
| Office of Management and Budget |