Article Analysis #8- The Executive and Federal Bureaucracy

"The successes of

modern

democratic

government have

to be considered

the successes of

government

bureaucracies as

well."

The Case FOR Bureaucracy

Most criticisms of government bureaucracy are based more on myth than reality. These agencies actually play a valuable and indispensable role in making our society a better place to live.

We all know the case against bureaucracy. Just say the word to

yourself and consider the images it evokes. Massive waste.

Inefficiency. Poor service. Ever-growing organizations. Mindless

rules. Reams of useless forms. The term “bureaucrat” also comes

loaded with a whole host of negative connotations: lazy, hostile,

overpaid, imperious, and inflexible. In short, bureaucracy and

bureaucrats are unmitigated bad things – with absolutely no

redeeming qualities.

Conservatives like to play on this popular prejudice by constantly

equating government with bureaucracy. The comments of Charlton Heston are typical: “Of course,

government is the problem. The armies of bureaucrats proliferating like gerbils, scurrying like

lemmings in pursuit of the ever-expanding federal agenda testify to that amply."1 Once government

is thought of as “bureaucracy,” the case for reducing it becomes obvious. Who could complain if

Republicans want to reduce these “armies of bureaucrats”? Everyone knows that we would all be

better off with less bureaucracy and fewer bureaucrats in our lives. So when conservatives want to

make shrinking government sound attractive, they say they are cutting “bureaucracy” – not

“programs.” Most people value government programs – especially in the areas of education, health

and the environment – and do not want to see them reduced; but everyone hates bureaucracy. Using

the term “bureaucracy” in this way is a rhetorical sleight-of-hand that obscures the real costs of

cutting back on government programs.

But while disparaging and attacking government bureaucracy has become a very effective tactic for

anti-government activists, it is based more on mythology than reality. Much of what we think is

wrong with bureaucracy – and what conservatives keep telling us – is highly exaggerated and often

simply mistaken. This article takes a careful look at bureaucracy and finds that there is little evidence

to support most of the common criticisms of these administrative agencies. Studies show that

bureaucracy and bureaucrats are not nearly as bad as we usually think they are. We will also

An Unapologetic Defense of a Vital Institution A web project of Douglas J. Amy, Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College

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consider the case for bureaucracy – that these much-maligned organizations and the public servants

that work in them are actually playing many valuable and indispensable roles in our society. Many of

the significant achievements of modern democratic government would in fact not be possible

without the large bureaucracies that oversee and implement them. It turns out that government

bureaucracies are actually good.

Myth No. 1: Bureaucracies Are Immensely Wasteful

A few years ago, local officials in my town were holding a public meeting to promote a referendum

that would raise taxes to pay for vital city services. A man in the audience rose to object to the tax

increase, arguing that instead the city should first get rid of all the waste in the city bureaucracy. The

mayor explained that after years of cutbacks in city government, there really was no “fat” left to cut

from the budget, and then asked the man what specific cuts he was suggesting. The man said that he

didn’t know much about the city budget, but that he “knew” that there “had to be” some waste that

could be cut out instead of raising taxes.

Such is the strength of the notion that government bureaucracies are inherently wasteful. Even if we

don’t know much about government, we are absolutely certain that government agencies are

wasteful. In fact, waste is the number one citizen complaint about government – and bureaucracy

usually takes most of the blame for this. Seventy percent of Americans agree that when something is

run by government, it is usually wasteful and inefficient.2 And conservatives never tire of taking

advantage of this view to lambaste the government. As two conservative economists have explained:

“As every taxpayer knows, government is wasteful and inefficient; it always has been and always will

be.” Cutting bureaucratic waste has become a constant theme of conservatives, and it has become a

major rationale for cutting taxes. They argue that we can have the best of both worlds: we can reduce

taxes and also not cut back on needed government programs. How? By simply cutting out all the

“fat” in government.

In the public’s view, government agencies are not only wasteful, they are enormously wasteful.

Surveys reveal that Americans believe that 48 cents of every tax dollar going to bureaucracies like the

Social Security Administration are wasted.3 Yet investigations by the Government Accounting Office

and various blue-ribbon commissions have found that waste amounts to only a small fraction of that

figure. Al Gore’s National Performance Review, conducted when he was vice-president, examined

the federal bureaucracy in great detail and discovered that waste consisted of less than two cents of

every tax dollar.4 Of course we should be ever vigilant about waste and try to eliminate it wherever

we can find it, but it seems clear that the extent of this problem is being highly exaggerated by

conservative critics of government. As one set of scholars who examined a wide variety of the studies

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on government waste concluded: “There is … little evidence to support the widespread impression

that government inefficiency squanders huge amounts of money.”5

People tend to think there is a large amount of waste in government in part because of the loose way

this term is used. For instance, some conservative critics of government count as waste those

programs they simply don’t like – such as the Legal Services Corporation, the National Endowment

for the Arts, Americorp, and subsidies for public television. But to use the term “waste” in this way

makes it entirely a political judgment and renders it essentially meaningless. Normally the term

“government waste” refers to the inefficient use of funds because of overstaffing, poor productivity,

etc. But conservatives are not opposed to the National Endowment for the Arts because that agency

is inefficient; they oppose it on ideological grounds. They wouldn’t support the NEA no matter how

“lean and mean” it was. It is a misleading, then, to use the term “waste” in this way.

Another problem is that critics of bureaucracy often lump together “fraud” and “abuse” with “waste”

to come up with high figures for government losses. But does it really make sense to blame

government when doctors defraud the Medicare program, criminals scam the food stamp system, or

private contractors cheat the Pentagon? We usually don’t consider it the fault of business that they

lose over $15 billion a year to employee theft and $10 billion to shoplifting. Most people blame the

thieves for these losses and few consider these thefts to be an indication of something inherently

wrong with capitalism. Similarly, it is unfair to consider the problems of fraud and abuse of

government programs to be a product of inherently “wasteful” bureaucracies. Naturally, government

should do everything it can to reduce these losses, but we should not be blaming the victim.

Myth No. 2: Business is Always Better than Bureaucracy

Another of the more persistent myths about bureaucracy is that “business is better” – that

businesses are always more efficient than government efforts. Since government bureaucracies don’t

have to produce a profit and they are not subject to market competition, it is argued, they have much

less incentive to be cost-efficient in their management and delivery of services. The assumed

superiority of business has become so commonsensical that it is hardly ever questioned at all. This

notion has also become an important argument for conservatives in their effort to reduce

government and to privatize many of its functions. But are public agencies always less efficient than

businesses? A careful look at this issue casts doubt on this common belief.

There have been many empirical studies examining the efficiency of government bureaucracies

versus business in a variety of areas, including refuse collection, electrical utilities, public

transportation, water supply systems, and hospital administration. The findings have been mixed.

Some studies of electric utilities have found that publicly owned ones were more efficient and

charged lower prices than privately owned utilities. Several other studies found the opposite, and yet

others found no significant differences.6 Studies of other services produced similar kinds of mixed

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results. Charles Goodsell is a professor of Public Administration and Public Affairs at Virginia

Polytechnic Institute and State University who has spent much of his life studying bureaucracy. After

examining these efficiency studies, he concluded: “In short, there is much evidence that is

ambivalent. The assumption that business always does better than government is not upheld. …

When you add up all these study results, the basis for the mantra that business is always better

evaporates.”7

Further evidence that business is not always superior to government bureaucracy can be found in the

area of health care. This is a critical issue today and it is well worth examining in some detail the

question of whether market-based health care is superior to government run programs.

Conservatives constantly warn us that adopting “socialized” medicine would put health care in the

hands of government bureaucracies, which would be a recipe for incredible waste and inferior care.

But is this really the case? We can answer this question by comparing the performance of public

versus private health care systems. Every other developed country has some form of universal health

care with a substantial amount of public funding and administration. In contrast, while the U.S. has

a few programs like Medicare and Medicaid, most of our health care system is privately funded and

administered. According to conservative mythology, this market-based system should produce better

health care and do so more cheaply. But neither of these claims hold up when we look at studies of

the actual performance of public and private approaches to providing health care.

First, studies have found that the U.S. health care system is by far the most expensive in the world.

We spend 13.6% of our gross domestic product on health care – the highest in the world. The

average for the other 13 industrialized countries in the OECD is 8.2%.8 We also rank number one in

terms of health care expenditures per capita, with U.S. spending $4,090 a year for every citizen. The

highest figures for other industrialized nations are $2,547 per year for Switzerland, $2,339 for

Germany, $2,340 for Luxembourg, and $2,095 for Canada.9 But while we clearly have the most

expensive health care system in the world, it does not always deliver the best health care nor does it

provide health care in the most efficient way.

Research has shown that the U.S. ranks poorly compared to many other countries in terms of some

common measures of health. For example, we rank 26th among industrialized countries for infant

mortality rates.10 We also do much less well in terms of life expectancy. In one typical study, the

World Health Organizations (WHO) looked at “disability adjusted life expectancy”– the number of

years that one can expect to lead a healthy life. The U.S. came in a disappointing 24th on this

measure. As one WHO official concluded: “The position of the United States is one of the major

surprises of the new rating system. … Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if

you’re an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries.”11 Moreover, an article

in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000 noted with concern the results of a

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comprehensive study that compared how 13 industrialized nations were ranked on 16 different

measures of health. The U.S. ranked an average of 12th – second to last.12

Why do Americans spend so much on health care but not get superior care? There are several

reasons. One is that doctors tend to make more in the U.S. than in other countries, and another is

that governments in other countries negotiate better deals with pharmaceutical companies on drug

prices. But the other major reason is that our private, multi-payer system is much less efficient than

the public single-payer systems in other countries. Consider this: the New England Journal of

Medicine estimates that administrative costs take 31 cents out of every health care dollar in the U.S.,

compared to only 17 cents in Canada.13 Why is this the case? Private insurance companies spend

much more on paperwork and administrative overhead. The sheer number of people that are

working in these private insurance bureaucracies far outstrips those required in government-funded

programs. In Massachusetts alone, Blue Cross/Blue Shield employs 6,682 workers to cover 2.7

million subscribers. This is more people than work in all of Canada’s provincial health care plans,

which cover over 25 million people.14 Why do insurance companies need so many workers? One

reason, as Paul Krugman explains, is that millions of health insurance personnel in the U.S. are

employed not to help deliver health care at all, but to try to get someone else to pay the bills instead

of their company.

Another source of administrative inefficiency in our private multi-payer health care system is the

enormous amount of overlap between companies. Each insurance company must maintain its own

records and develop its own billing processes. This is much more expensive than using a single

government administrative structure. Moreover, our multi-payer system drives up the

administrative costs for doctors and hospitals. They must deal with dozens of different insurance

plans, each with their own coverage, payment rules, etc. We then need to add to all of this excessive

overhead the need for private insurers to make a profit – something that government needn’t do.

This makes our private system become more expensive. It has been estimated that higher overhead

and the need for profit together add from 15% to 25% to the costs of private insurance plans, while

the overhead for the government-run Medicare program is a mere 3%. Given all this, it should not

come as a shock to find that a 2004 study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Public

Citizen concluded that the U.S. could save up to $286 billion a year on paperwork if we switched to a

single-payer, national health insurance program.15 This money saved from eliminating the private

health care bureaucracy would be more than enough to offset the costs of extending coverage to the

millions of Americans who now have no health insurance at all. (Unfortunately, this single-payer

plan was blocked by Republicans and conservative Democrats in the 2010 health care reform bill.)

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To sum up, government-funded universal health care plans provide better care to more people at a

lower cost. This one example by itself should be enough to explode the myth that business and

privatization are always better than government bureaucracy in providing vital services to the public.

Myth No. 3: We Want the Government to Act Like a Business

The astronaut John Glenn tells a story about his first trip into space. As he sat in the capsule, waiting

nervously on the launching pad, he couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that NASA had given the

contract for the rocket to the lowest bidder. This raises another important point about government

bureaucracies: we don’t always want them to act like businesses. Conservatives are constantly saying

that we would all be better off if government were run like a business. But would we? Businesses are

obsessed with their bottom lines and are always looking for the cheapest way to make a product or

deliver a service. But in many cases, we don’t want government services to be as cheap as possible.

Often, with government, the main concern is the quality of the service, not its costs. For example, do

we really want to spend the least amount of money possible on our air traffic control system?

Obviously not – the main goal should be maximizing the safety of the aviation system. Also, do we

want the cheapest possible workforce in charge of security at our airports? Again, of course not –

and this point was even acknowledged by Republicans when they agreed to abandon private security

companies in favor of a federalized system in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. Private security had

certainly cost less, but it is clearly better to have a federal program that spends more money on

training personnel and pays higher salaries to attract employees who are more capable.

Similarly, we don’t really want the cheapest system for dispensing justice in our society. We could

certainly save a lot on court costs if we didn’t pay for lawyers for those who can’t afford them and if

we got rid of jury trials and lengthy appeal processes. But this would undermine the main goal of

providing justice. The point here is clear: unlike businesses, public agencies are not just concerned

with the bottom line. We expect our government organizations to pursue a wide variety of important

goals, and often cost is not the most important consideration. In this sense, it is unfair to expect

many government bureaucracies to be as cheap to run as businesses.

Myth No. 4: Bureaucracy is a Major Cause of Government Growth

Conservatives also like to charge that bureaucracy is one of the main causes of government growth.

They argue that government bureaucracies have an inherent tendency to expand. The reason is this:

agency officials bent on their own career advancement are always pushing to increase their power

and their budgets. Thus, bureaucracies – like cancer – inevitably become ever-growing entities with

ever-increasing destructive effects. Bureaucracies are constantly eating up more tax-payer dollars

and imposing more and more rules on American citizens.

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This criticism of bureaucracy seems plausible, but is it really true? The evidence suggests that it is

not. Consider, for example, the assumption that we are plagued by an ever-growing federal

bureaucracy. Figures show that federal agencies have not been growing at an alarming rate. If we go

back to 1970, we find that 2,997,000 civilians worked for the federal government at that time. By

2009, that figure had actually gone down – to 2,804,000.16 So much for the constantly expanding

federal bureaucracy.

Second, it is not clear at all that bureaucrats are always seeking to expand their agencies and their

budgets. This budget-maximizing thesis was directly contradicted by a study conducted by Julie

Dolan.17 She compared the views of members of the federal senior civil service to those of the general

public when it came to whether we should be spending more or less in a wide variety of policy areas,

including education, healthcare, defense, welfare, environment, college financial aid, AIDS research,

homelessness, etc. She found that in most areas the public was willing to support increased spending

much more than the agency administrators. And in most cases, a majority of these administrators

did not support increased budgets. This was due, she believed, to administrators having a more

realistic and sophisticated knowledge of these issues and programs. Her conclusion: “In sum, the

budget-minimizing tendencies of federal administrators reported here suggest that self-interest is

not as powerful a motivator as previously believed, and they suggest we should revise our theories

about self-interested bureaucrats inflating government budgets for their own gain.”18

Another theory of bureaucratic expansion suggests that the government grows because once an

administrative agency is established, it will stick around even when its program is no longer needed.

In short, the bureaucracy never shrinks, it only grows. However, studies have shown that the

conservatives are just plain wrong when they claim that outmoded programs are rarely purged from

government. Robert Stein and Kenneth Bikers completed a study in which they examined the

number of federal programs that were eliminated between 1971 and 1990. During that twenty-year

span, an average of thirty-six federal programs were terminated each year.19 A pretty amazing figure.

The commonly held notion that bureaucracies never die is clearly false.

The Real Causes of Government Growth

Ironically, during the last several decades, as right-wing complaints about ever-increasing

government have escalated, little growth has actually occurred in the federal government. However,

if we look back over a longer historical period, say to the early 1900s, there is no denying that the

size and scope of the federal and state governments have grown considerably. Our governments have

much greater responsibilities in regulating corporations and the economic system, and we have

many more programs in areas like health care, education, and the environment. But the question is

whether this kind of historical growth in government has been caused by the inherent tendency of

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bureaucracies to expand. The answer is no. As one political scientist, Max Neiman, who studied this

question extensively, has concluded, “Bureaucratic imperialism, by which public agencies generate

an autonomous force for government growth, seems fairly insignificant as a cause of growing

government size.”20 But if this is true, what has driven the historical expansion of government in the

United States?

One important clue can be found by identifying those periods in which government has expanded

the most. For example, 70% of the growth in federal regulatory agencies occurred during three

decades, the 1930s, the 1960s, and the 1970s.21 What these decades have in common is that they

were times of enormous economic and social upheaval and increased political activism. In other

words, government responsibilities increased because the public demand for social programs and

economic regulation increased. During those eras, mass-based social movements – including the

labor movement, the civil rights movement, and the environmental movement – insisted that the

government address a wide variety of pressing social and economic problems.

We have big government today primarily because citizens have realized that large-scale public

programs are necessary to solve big problems – economic depressions, an elderly population mired

in poverty, widespread racism, growing environmental degradation, a health care crisis, etc. As

Nieman has concluded, “A substantial source of growth in government activity in democratic

societies is driven … by citizens and other groups using government to improve their life-chances.”22

So it makes little sense to argue that growth in government has been something forced onto the

American people by power-hungry bureaucrats. Government has grown mainly because we have

wanted it to grow – something conservatives seem unable to admit. Growth in government is

primarily a product of democracy at work, and so it should be something that is celebrated, not

condemned.

Myth No. 5: Bureaucracies Usually Provide Poor Service

Yet another common criticism of government bureaucracies is that they routinely provide very poor

service to the public. Unlike businesses, where the rule is “the customer is always right,” public

agencies seemed to adhere to the rule that “it’s my way or the highway.” Many people have stories of

at least one frustrating encounter with a government worker where they received rude or inadequate

service.

But how frequent are these bad experiences? How widespread is dissatisfaction with government

workers and the services they provide? Studies show that negative experiences are not nearly as

common as many think and that most people’s encounters with government workers actually turn

out well. For example, when a survey was done in Virginia about the quality of the services provided

by local government workers, the results were surprisingly positive. Over 80 percent of citizens said

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that the services they receive from the fire department, EMS service, police department, public

library, and parks and recreation were either “excellent” or “good.” An average of a mere 2.7 percent

of citizens rated these public services as “poor.”23 Pretty impressive figures for any organization.

Perhaps more surprisingly, surveys show high citizen evaluations for most large federal agencies as

well. The Pew Research Center conducted a survey in 2000 of citizens and businesspeople who used

the services of the Social Security Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food

and Drug Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Predictably, only 47.6 percent had a favorable view of the IRS. But 84.5 percent had favorable views

of the FDA. For the Social Security Administration that figure was 72.0; for the FAA, 69.3; and for

the EPA, 68.0. What makes these strong favorable ratings all the more impressive is that they

include the views of people from businesses being regulated by these agencies – respondents who

are going to naturally feel some hostility toward these bureaucracies.

Of course, to really evaluate the quality of services being provided by public sector bureaucracies, we

need to compare them to services provided by the private sector. Such a study was done by Theodore

Poister and Gary Henry, who conducted a survey of citizen satisfaction with both public and private

services in Georgia.24 They compared satisfaction with public services like the police, public health

clinics and trash collection, to that of private doctor’s offices, fast-good restaurants, banks, etc. As

they explained their findings: “Given the conventional wisdom about the poor quality of services

provided by government and the general superiority of the private sector in delivering services, the

private services included in this survey might have been expected to receive consistently higher

ratings than the public services. But this was clearly not the case.” 25 We can see this in their findings

summarized in Table 1. Both public and private service providers received consistently high scores

from people who had recently used their services. On a scale of 0-100, the public agencies averaged a

score of 73.5 for customer satisfaction, while the private businesses averaged 73.9 – a negligible

difference. Clearly, people’s actual experiences and evaluations of public agencies runs directly

contrary to the negative stereotype that government organizations consistently provide inferior

service to that available in the private sector.

Table 1 Citizen Ratings of the Quality of Public and Private Services

Ratings by Recent Customers

Public

Fire department 82.8

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U.S. Postal Service 76.1

Public health clinics 74.4

Municipal trash collection 75.5

Police 71.3

Parks and Recreation 77.1

Public transportation 76.6

Public schools 68.2

Street maintenance 59.2

All Public 73.5

Private

Private mail carriers 84.5

Grocery stores 77.1

Banks and savings and loans 81.7

Private doctors' offices 80.6

Fast-food restaurants 68.5

Movie theatres 75.5

Auto garages 71.7

Cable TV providers 66.2

Taxicabs 59.6

All Private 73.9

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Source: Theodore H. Poister and Gary T Henry, “Citizen Ratings of Public and Private Service

Quality: A Comparative Perspective,” Public Administration Review 54, no.2 (March/April 1994), p.

158.

This is not to suggest that people don’t sometimes have bad encounters with government

bureaucracies – we all have. The point here is that these encounters are not the rule, and we usually

get pretty good service from our public agencies. It is also worth keeping in mind that bad

encounters with bureaucrats are not limited to the public sector. Who hasn’t had a horrible time

trying to get approval for a drug or a medical procedure from the rigid bureaucrats in private health

insurance companies? And who hasn’t wandered through seemingly endless phone trees and spent

hours on hold just trying to get some technical help from large computer and software companies?

Instances of poor service are hardly confined to government bureaucracies.

Myth No. 6: Agencies Should Treat Us as Individuals

People are sometimes frustrated because government administrators do not treat them as

individuals. Instead, they are treated like a “number” – simply one case among many others –

without any seeming sensitivity to the distinctiveness of their particular situation. Why must

bureaucrats slavishly follow the rules, and not treat each person uniquely depending on his or her

circumstances? Why can’t that police officer see that we were speeding because we were late in

picking up our child at school, not because we were being irresponsible? Why can’t that city official

simply wave the zoning rules so that we can run our new business out of our home?

It is true that bureaucrats’ treatment of us is often based on general rules and policies, rather than

who we are as individuals. But what we fail to see is that this is actually a good thing. We should

want bureaucrats to not treat people as individuals. Treating everyone the same is in the public

interest – and often in our own interest as well. It is what ensures that government agencies treat

everyone fairly and impartially. Dealing with us impersonally is what guarantees that our treatment

is not arbitrary, discriminatory, or abusive. It is what discourages police officers from handing out

tickets based on your race or the political bumper stickers on your car. It is what helps to ensure that

government contracts are given to the lowest bidders, not those companies that give the most in

campaign contributions.

If government workers had the ability to ignore procedures and treat us as individuals, this would

also give them enormous power over us – which is exactly what we don’t want to happen. Imagine

that you had been waiting in a long line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. A clerk recognizes a

friend at the end of the line and decides to serve them next. It is unlikely that you would praise this

“bending” of the rules for this individual – you would undoubtedly be mad about the unfairness of

this action. You would be upset about the lack of impersonal, rule-based treatment by officials.

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When things go terribly wrong in bureaucracies, it is often because they are not acting bureaucratic

enough. We often hear horror stories about someone being caught in a government bureaucracy in

some developing country, where nothing can get done unless you have the right connections or

unless you offer a bribe to an official. But the problem in these situations is not that officials are

being “bureaucratic,” but that they are not being bureaucratic enough. These abuses occur because

officials are engaging in personal favoritism and not treating people the same according to a set of

administrative procedures. The cure in these situations involves creating a civil service that is

strongly committed to more impersonal, rule-based form of bureaucratic behavior.

So we should not be so quick to condemn government officials for not dealing with us as unique

individuals. While we might not always enjoy being treated like everyone else by government

workers, we should try to remember that this practice is an important political safeguard of the

modern democratic state.

Bureaucracy is Good

So far, we’ve seen that government bureaucracies are not nearly as bad as conservative critics and

popular mythology make them out to be. However, there is a much more positive case that can be

made here – the case for bureaucracies actually being a good thing. It is not a difficult case to make.

It begins with a simple fact: the modern state as we know it cannot exist without large bureaucratic

agencies to implement its programs. Modern democratic governments are necessarily bureaucratic

entities. And if this is true, then the successes of modern government have to also be considered the

successes of government bureaucracies as well. The fact that Social Security has dramatically

reduced poverty among the elderly should be counted as an achievement of this agency’s

bureaucracy. The Environmental Protection Agency should also get much of the credit for our being

able to breathe cleaner air and drink safer water.

In short, if government is good, then government bureaucracies are good. If government programs

have had many enormously positive impacts on the lives of every Americans, some of the credit for

this has to go to the agencies that make these programs work. Without bureaucracy, modern

democratic governments could not possibly fulfill all the crucial roles it plays in society – including

creating more economic security, curing diseases, caring for the environment, dispensing justice,

educating our children, and protecting us from a variety of harms.

Most of us also know, on some level, that public agencies are primarily there to help us, and that they

often do so reasonably well. That is why we keep asking for more of them. Kevin Smith and Michael

Licari are two political scientists who have written a textbook about public administration. They

have noticed a curious fact: that even those of us who say we don’t like government are usually more

than willing to demand and accept a new bureaucracy if it will make our lives better off. Even people

who live in that notoriously anti-government state of Texas. As Smith and Licari explain:

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Rural Texans tend to be an independent bunch. The stereotypical image is a politically

conservative business owner, farmer, or rancher, raised on the myth of rugged

individualism and a strong supporter of property rights. Not the sort of people, in other

words, who favor big government programs. Or even small ones. Surely such citizens

are the least likely group to start agitating for more government bureaucracy. So what

does a conservative, small-government group like this do to help spur economic

development and advocate for their issues? Well, it asks for a bureaucracy. And it gets

one: the Office of Rural Community Affairs (ORCA). Created in 2001 by the Texas

legislature, ORCA annually spends tens of millions of dollars on a wide variety of

programs ranging from health care initiatives to business development to disaster

relief. Rural Texas communities and their legislators are by all accounts pleased with

ORCA. Now there is an agency full of bureaucrats whose job, as Texas State

Representative Warren Chisum put it, is to get to work in the morning and ask

themselves, “What are the people out in rural Texas doing, and how can we help

them?” 26

However, it is important to see that the case for bureaucracy is about more than what those agencies

can do for us as individuals, it is about the crucial role they play in creating a better society for all of

us. As Charles Goodsell has noted, government bureaucracies form the public infrastructure that is

essential to maintaining a free and prosperous society:

A good bureaucracy is indispensable to a free society, a democratic polity, and a

capitalist economy. The freedom to wander the streets at night, for example depends on

competent law enforcement. The ability to vote governments out of office without

disruption requires a reliable administrative apparatus. A prosperous business

community demands good schools, highways, health departments, post offices, and

water and sewer systems.27

So if you feel that America is a good place to live, at least part of the credit for that must be given to

government bureaucracies. Literally, the good life as we know it in the United States could not exist

without the numerous and various essential tasks being performed by these public agencies on all

levels of government.

Bureaucrats or Public Heroes?

If we should be thankful for government bureaucracies, we should also be thankful for the people –

the “bureaucrats” – who work in them. Yet they are one of the most maligned groups in our society.

They are constantly the butt of jokes and are stereotyped as being lazy, rude, rigid, arrogant, and

controlling. Of course, some are like that. But you find these kind of people in every organization,

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including business bureaucracies. Moreover, studies have found that government bureaucrats are

much like all other Americans and that there is no credible evidence supporting the charge that a

pathological “bureaucratic mentality” is prevalent among government workers.28

On the whole, our civil servants are hard workers dedicated to serving the public and improving our

lives. There are times when this point is made in such dramatic way that no one can deny it. In the

wake of the 9/11 tragedy in New York, there was an outpouring of public praise and appreciation for

the incredibly brave and self-sacrificing actions taken by numerous police officers and firefighters.

What we tend to forget is that for these public employees this was not unusual – they are putting

their lives and health on the line every day, not just during terrorists attacks.

And we also tend to forget that police officers and firefighters are not the only heroes working for the

government. Our government bureaucracies are full of “everyday heroes” – public servants who

labor away in anonymity to protect us from harm and to make our lives better. As Robert Kuttner

has observed:

[We] should not let a week go by without celebrating a public hero, and not just the

firefighters and the veterans. The civil servant at the Food and Drug Administration

who fights drug-industry pressure and keeps a harmful drug off the market is a public

hero. So is the SEC auditor who busts a corporate thief so a million people don’t lose

their pensions, and the Environmental Protection Agency scientist who safeguards our

water from some scofflaw mogul.29

Or consider the government workers of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. These

are the people who do automobile crash tests, evaluate child safety seats, initiate recalls of defective

cars, and so on. The motto of the agency is, appropriately enough, “People Saving People.” They will

never meet you or know your name, but they are working week in and week out to protect your

health and safety. Unfortunately, we rarely celebrate these kinds of public servants – instead they

must put up with the public disdain leveled at everyone who works for the government. This is the

reward they get for choosing to work for the government and to promote the public interest. It is no

wonder that many of our best young people are discouraged from taking on these kinds of public

service jobs.

The Role of Reform

Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that we look at bureaucracy and bureaucrats through rose-

colored glasses – or ignore their shortcomings. There are some inherent problems that can afflict

government bureaucracies – most notably corruption and waste. And a hundred years ago, these

were rampant problems. The enormously corrupt political machines that existed in many large cities

during the early part of the twentieth century are examples of how badly bureaucracies can go

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wrong. But decades of reform efforts have greatly reduced these problems. We have rooted out large-

scale corruption and are increasingly minimizing the amount of bureaucratic inefficiency, excessive

paperwork, etc. These problems have not completely disappeared, and we must continue to try to

improve the performance of our administrative institutions. A good example of this on-going effort

was Vice-President Al Gore’s project, called the National Performance Review, which sought to

reduce excess federal workers. Between 1993 and 2000, the number of civilian employees in the

executive branch was reduced by 193,000. But while we must be vigilant about pursuing these kinds

of reform efforts, we must not exaggerate the extent of the problems in our administrative agencies.

And we should not allow the occasional failures of government bureaucracies to overshadow their

achievements. A more realistic and accurate view of these institutions recognizes that on the whole

they are working well and they continue to play a crucial role in administering vital programs that

are improving the lives of all Americans.

The Real Lessons from Katrina

And yet, what are we to make of the kind of massive bureaucratic failure that occurred when

hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans in the fall of 2005? The Federal Emergency Management

Agency’s response was too little too late, and the agency was harshly criticized for its inadequate and

bungling efforts. This fiasco seemed merely to confirm many peoples’ worst assumptions about the

problems of bureaucracy.

However, it would be a mistake to use the failures of FEMA to paint a negative picture of

government bureaucracies. FEMA failed in New Orleans not because of something inherently wrong

with government bureaucracies, but because of a policy of neglect by the Bush administration. First,

the administration appointed Michael Brown to head the agency, a political crony with no experience

in emergency response management and who was fired from his previous job for mismanagement.

The agency was then downgraded and folded into the Department of Homeland Security, where its

mission was re-oriented toward fighting acts of terrorism. Finally, FEMA’s budget was slashed, with

Bush officials arguing that "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved

into an oversized entitlement program..."30 As the Washington Monthly concluded, “FEMA was

deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of

government.”31 In the end, then, FEMA’s failure in New Orleans was in large part a result of a

conservative administration that had only contempt for the role of government in society and had

little interest in ensuring the wellbeing of vital government agencies.

Ironically, the real problem with many public bureaucracies today is not that they are bloated

institutions who are over-staffed and spend too much money, but that they are understaffed and

don’t have the funds to do their jobs. The continuing right-wing attack on government has left many

agencies in a weakened state, unable to vigorously pursue their missions. There are not enough mine

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inspectors to protect mineworkers. The IRS lacks the personnel to detect and retrieve the billions of

dollars lost every year from individuals and corporations that cheat on their taxes. Many school

districts lack the teachers to keep their class size down to a reasonable level. In many cases, we have

gone way past cutting “fat” out of these bureaucracies and we have begun to cut into flesh and bone.

The main threat to the public interest posed by government bureaucracies these days is not that they

are wasting huge amounts of our money, but that many are not healthy enough to do their job of

promoting and protecting our collective wellbeing. To make matters worse, the very right-wing

forces who are starving these vital agencies then turn around and cite any poor performance by these

debilitated organizations as evidence of the ineptness of government.

When President Obama was elected in 2008, he was committed to revitalizing important federal

agencies. For example, he worked to enable the FDA to have enough inspectors to ensure that our

foods are safe to eat; and the Democratic Congress acted to increase the funding for the Consumer

Product and Safety Commission. These were important steps in the right direction, but much more

needs to be done to strengthen the numerous bureaucracies that serve our vital public interests.

Unfortunately, the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 2010 threatens to

undermine any systematic efforts to reinvigorate many federal agencies.

Beyond the Bureaucratic Stereotypes

The negative stereotypes of bureaucracy that we have looked at in this article contribute to a political

atmosphere that legitimizes the right-wing attack on government. The problem with these

stereotypes is not simply that they are exaggerated and mistaken, but that conservatives and

libertarians are able to exploit these misperceptions to justify their attempts to defund and

hamstring the public sector. The more Americans believe that bureaucracies are bad, the more likely

they are to agree with efforts to slash taxes and gut government programs. That is why it is

increasingly important that we begin to see that most of the criticisms of government bureaucracy

are based more on myth than reality, and that these administrative agencies play a central role in

promoting the important missions of a modern democratic government.

*************

For more on why we need to revitalize the federal bureaucracy and abandon the conservative

philosophy of deregulation, see "Stealth Deregulation: The Untold Story."

1. Charlton Heston, in a speech given at Hillsdale College.

http://www.libertyhaven.com/politicsandcurrentevents/governmentreformitsrealrole/reaganright.shtml

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2. Jacob Weisberg, In Defense of Government (New York: Scribner, 1996), p. 32.

3. Joseph Nye, et al, Why People Don’t Trust Government (Cambridge MA: Harvard University

Press, 1997) p. 62

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Charles Goodsell, The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic, 4th ed.

(Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2004), p. 52. This excellent and much underappreciated book is the

basis for most of the arguments made in this article – and for its title.

7. Goodsell, p. 54.

8. Bureau of Labor Education, “The U.S. Health Care System: Best in the World, or Just the Most

Expensive? (Orono, Maine: University of Maine, 2001), p. 4.

9. Robert Evans and Noralou Roos, “What Is Right about the Canadian Health Care System,”

Physicians for National Health Care Newsletter, March 2000.

10. Bureau of Labor Education, p. 5.

11. World Health Organization, “WHO Issues New Healthy Life Expectancy Rankings,” June, 4,

2000. http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2000/en/pr2000-life.html

12. Barbara Starfield, “Is U.S. Health Really the Best in the World?” Journal of the American

Medical Association 284(4), July 26, 2000, pp.483-485.

13. Paul Krugman, “The Medical Money Pit,” The New York Times, April 15, 2005, p. A19.

14. “The Deteriorating Administrative Efficiency of the U.S. Health Care System, New England

Journal of Medicine 324, May 2, 1991, pp. 1253-1258.

15. Physicians for National Health Care, “National Health Insurance Could Save $286 Billion on

Health Care Paperwork,” January 14, 2004.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2004/janaury/national_heath_insu.php.

16. U.S. Government, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government

Printing Office, 2009) Table 478.

17. Julie Dolan, “The Budget-Minimizing Bureaucrat? Empirical Evidence from the Senior Executive

Service,” Public Administration 62, no. 1 (January/February 2002).

18. Dolan, p. 47.

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© 2007 Douglas J. Amy - All rights reserved. You may print, reproduce, and use the articles on governmentisgood.com for personal, educational or non-commercial purposes. Copying, redistribution, or use of any material on this site for commercial purposes is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

19. Cited in Goodsell, p. 123.

20 Max Neiman, Defending Government: Why Big Government Works (Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Prentice Hall, 2000), p. 212.

21. Neiman, p. 38.

22. Neiman, p. 139.

23. Goodsell, p. 25.

24. Theodore H. Poister and Gary Henry, “Standards of Excellence: U.S. Residents Evaluations of

Local Government Services,” Public Administration Review 54, no. 2 (March 1994)..

25. Poister and Henry, p. 158.

26. Kevin Smith and Michael Licari, Public Administration: Power and Politics in the Fourth

Branch of Government (Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing, 2006), p. 1.

27. Goodsell, p. 157.

28. See Goodsell, chapter 5.

29. Robert Kuttner, “Teachable Moments: Every Week, Celebrate a Public Hero,” The American

Prospect, August 1, 2004.

30. Kevin Drum, “Political Animal,” The Washington Monthly, September 1, 2005,

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007023.php

31. Ibid.

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