POLYS4.txt

  1. The Bureaucrats
    •Who They Are and How They Got There
    • •Most demographically representative part of government.
    • •Diversity of jobs mirrors the private sector.
    • •Civil Service: From Patronage to Protection.
    • (- Patronage: Job given for political reasons.)
    • - Civil Service: System of hiring and promotion based on merit and nonpartisanship.
    • - Merit Principle: Entrance exams and promotion ratings to find people with talent and skill.
    • - Office of Personnel Management: The federal office in charge of most of the government's hiring.
    • •The Other Route to Federal Jobs: Recruiting from the Plum Book
    • - Published by Congress.
    • - Lists the very top jobs available for Presidential appointment.
    • - Presidents work to find capable people to fill the positions.
    • - Some plum jobs (ambassadorships) are patronage.
  2. Some Theories of Bureaucracy
    •The Weberian Model.

    •The Acquisitive, Monopolistic Bureaucracy

    •Garbage Cans and Bureaucracies.
  3. The Weberian Model.
    • •Hierarchical authority structure
    • •Uses task specialization
    • •Operate on the merit principle
    • •Behave with impersonality
    • •A well-organized machine with lots of working parts.
  4. The Acquisitive, Monopolistic Bureaucracy
    • •Bureaucracies seek to maximize their budgets
    • •Work to expand their powers and programs, even joining with Congress to expand their functions
    • •Often operate under monopolistic conditions
    • •Privatization could cut back on the monopolistic attitudes of the bureaucracies
  5. Garbage Cans and Bureaucracies.
    • •Operate by trial and error
    • •Typically loosely run
    • •Bureaucracies aren’t necessarily trying to find solutions to problems, sometimes the solutions are in search of problems.
  6. How Bureaucracies Are Organized
    • •The Cabinet Departments
    • - 15 Cabinet departments headed by a secretary
    • (Department of Justice headed by Attorney General)
    • - Each has its own budget, staff and policy areas
    • - Republicans have been trying to eliminate several departments

    • •The Government Corporations
    • - Business like-provide a service like private companies and typically charges for its services.
    • - Ex. Postal Service, Amtrak

    • •Independent Executive Agencies
    • - The agencies that don’t fit in anywhere else.
    • - Ex. NASA
  7. Bureaucracies as Implementers:
    What Implementation Means
    • •It involves translating the goals and objectives of a policy into an operating, ongoing program.
    • •It includes:
    • - Creating / assigning an agency the policy
    • - Turning policy into rules, regulations and forms.
    • - Coordinating resources to achieve the goals.
  8. Bureaucracies as Implementers:
    Why the Best-Laid Plans Sometimes Flunk the Implementation Test
    • •Program Design.
    • •Lack of Clarity.
    • - Congressional laws are ambiguous and imprecise.
    • - Sometimes the laws conflict with each other.
    • •Lack of Resources.
    • - Agencies may be big, but not in the right areas.
    • - Many different types of resources are needed: personnel, training, supplies & equipment.
    • - May also lack the authority to act.
    • •Administrative Routine.
    • - SOPs bring uniformity to complex organizations.
    • - It is often difficult to change the routines.
    • •Administrator’s Dispositions.
    • - Ability to select among various responses.
    • - Street-level bureaucrats have the most discretion.
    • •Fragmentation.
    • - Some policies are spread among several agencies.
    • - Some agencies have different rules for the same policy.
  9. Bureaucracies as Regulators:
    Regulation in the Economy and in Everyday Life
    •Regulation: Use of governmental authority to control or change some practice in the private sector.

    • •A Full Day of Regulation.
    • - Federal agencies check, verify and inspect many of the products and services we take for granted.
    • - Federal and state agencies provide many services.
  10. Bureaucracies as Regulators:
    Regulation: How It Grew, How It Works
    • •Command-and-Control Policy: Government tells business how to reach certain goals, checks the
    • progress and punishes offenders.

    •Incentive System: Market-like strategies are used to manage public policy.

    •Some agencies are proactive, some are reactive.
  11. Bureaucracies as Regulators:
    Toward Deregulation
    •Deregulation: The lifting of restrictions on business, industry and professional activities.

    • •Regulatory problems:
    • - Raises prices
    • - Hurts U.S.’s competitive position abroad
    • - Does not always work well

    •But some argue regulation is needed.
  12. Bureaucracy and Democracy
    • •Presidents Try to Control the Bureaucracy
    • - Appoint the right people.
    • - Issue executive orders.
    • - Tinker with the agency’s budget.
    • - Reorganize an agency.

    • •Congress Tries to Control the Bureaucracy
    • - Influence presidential appointments.
    • - Tinker with the agency’s budget.
    • - Hold hearings.
    • - Rewrite the legislation or make it more detailed.

    • •Iron Triangles and Issue Networks
    • - A mutually dependent relationship between bureaucratic agencies, interest groups, and congressional committees or subcommittees.
    • - Exist independently of each other.
    • - They are tough, but not impossible, to get rid of.
    • - Some argue they are being replaced by wider issue networks that focus on more policies.
  13. Bureaucracy and the Scope of Government
    • •Many state that this is an example of a government out of control.
    • •But, the size of the bureaucracy has shrunk.
    • •Some agencies don’t have enough resources to do what they are expected to do.
    • •Only carry out the policies, Congress and the president decide what needs to be done.
Author
everanime91
ID
38234
Card Set
POLYS4.txt
Description
Political Science 4
Updated