Day 1
Wildchild
1.0BigDemocracyBigBureaucracy.pptxBig Democracy, Big Bureaucracy
1
1
“The true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.”
Alexander Hamilton,
The Federalist Papers
2
AN UNPROMISING PRECIS
The roots of Americans’ profound suspicion of executive authority are deeply sunk, and are apparent in the nation’s earliest formats of governing.
One such format was Articles of Confederation, which, from 1781 to 1789, provided the first framework for the new nation and exemplified Americans’ contempt for princely prerogatives.
There was no chief executive.
The states reigned supreme under the Articles.
At about the same time that the Articles of Confederation were being written, eleven states were busily drafting their own constitutions and they also reflected the Articles’ anti-executive paranoia.
3
Governing in a Distrusting Culture
Distrust of Government Americans’ distrust focuses on government’s size, direction, performance, and power.
They reserve their deepest distrust for those parts of government that house elected officials,
and display their highest trust for agencies with public safety or military missions, findings that “are consistent to a large extent with findings in other Western countries.”
Over thirteen years, the number of Americans who thought that the federal, state, and local governments have a “negative impact” on their day-to-day lives grew, on average, by more than three-fifths, a startling increase,
4
Why Trust Matters
High levels of trust in government correlate, positively and internationally, with: less political corruption (public esteem, a corollary of trust, for government also associates with lower corruption);
better “government performance on the economy”; greater economic growth and opportunity; superior “perceived outcomes” by networks of governments;
less “negative” popular evaluations of the performance of the entire political system; and even with lower rates of street crime.
In the United States, high levels of trust in government not only associate with lower levels of corruption and street crime,
but also with energetic and widespread public policy innovation.
Indeed, trust trumps public participation in agency decision making, accessibility of services, and even equality of treatment
as a correlate with higher public performance.
5
Hobbled Governments and their Growth
Constraining the Federal Government The American founders created a Constitution that divides power between the national and state governments,
and checks and balances federal power among its executive, legislative, and adjudicative branches.
Constraining State Governments Perhaps the least direct device of direct democracy is the referendum,
or a legislatively authorized popular vote to approve or disapprove proposed policy.
Constraining Local Governments Local governments use most of the devices of direct democracy
even more liberally than do states.
Constraining the Grass Roots The people have imposed on their state and local governments the devices of direct democracy, or the use of specially called elections to approve or disapprove policy proposals or to retain or remove elected officials.
“Every state has some form of legislative process which allows the government to place issues on the ballot.”
Though direct democracy clearly constrains governments, it also associates with some good things:
it likely renders governments more responsive to the electorate, and it correlates positively with lower levels of corruption;
6
Are Bureaucrat’s to Blamed for Government’s Failures?
Do Americans really believe that their public administrators are against them?
Evidently not. Overall, “the American public does not appear as disdainful of bureaucrats as the projected media image would indicate.”
Why do Americans like public administrators in spite of their deepening distrust of elected leaders and government, and the unremitting bombardment fired by politicians, professors, reporters, and entertainers blasting bureaucrats?
Because bureaucrats deliver.
The high regard that Americans have for agencies with which they have dealt is significant because “the impact of a negative experience with a public agency is much more pronounced than the effect of a positive one ….
Decreasing the number of disappointed clients will have a stronger effect on increasing trust in … government than increasing the number of already well-pleased clients.”
A Paradox of Power
So what does all this mean for the American public administrator? It means that the United States has produced a paradoxical public administration characterized
by cultural, institutional, and legal limits on executive action, and by a nonetheless powerful public administrative class.
“The fragmented managerial climate of government” actually grants public administrators more opportunities for
acquiring power than are available to their corporate counterparts.
Note: The importance of staying power by bureaucracies permits them to wait out elected officeholders and the policies that they push.
8
Discretionary Power
Discretionary power refers to a public administrator’s authority to make and administer regulatory and bureaucratic policies, and to interpret and implement legislative policies.
Discretion counts. In the American states, for example, “greater managerial discretion,” in tandem with deregulation, “drove reforms” in the critical areas of budgeting, procurement.
Legislatures frequently enable bureaucratic discretion.
For instance, Congress, in 1988, effectively granted the Federal Emergency Management Agency total authority to determine not only how much assistance is needed in a disaster, but even how much aid is desirable.
For fifty years, Congress battled bureaucratic discretion by imposing on agencies the legislative veto, or the repeal by the legislature of an executive action.
In 1983, the Supreme Court declared the practice to be unconstitutional.
In 2017, Congress remembered its Congressional Review Act of 1996, which allows Congress to review how agencies fill in the blanks in a law,
but only when Congress specifically grants such an authority to the agencies in that law.
The objective is to assure that agencies closely to the spirit of the law
9
Knowledge is Power
Question: How has the bureaucracy grown so in political importance and independence?
Answer: Because the old saw, “knowledge is power,” has never been more salient than it is today.
Public administrators work in bureaucracies, and bureaucracies are more likely to be found in big, complicated systems and societies, where knowledge is critical to success and often to survival.
The more economically and socially complex states, for instance, also have the more advanced, informed, and well-developed legislative bureaucracies.
The larger the city, the likelier the city manager will be intensely involved in municipal policymaking.
When forces external to the executive branch do gain knowledge, they also gain power at its expense.
When governors, legislators, or lobbyists informational advantages over estimated program costs” relative to state agency heads, they “significantly affect agency budget requests.”
The more “have highly professionalized the state legislature, and the larger its staff, the lower the influence of the executive agencies in their own policy areas.
As a matter of course, bureaucracy and knowledge reside most frequently in the executive branch.
Potentially, however, any branch of government, and any special interest, can create its own bureaucratic knowledge base, and when it does, power follows.
As we all know, power can be misused, and, because knowledge is power, knowledge sometimes is deliberately distorted to serve the powerful.
Questions
How do you know when to trust or not to trust your government?
What is fake news and how does it shape and impact your opinions of people you depend on for doing their job?
It’s easy to distrust the people you dislike, but do you verify the information from the people you trust?
