Executives and Bureaucracies Chapter 13 PDF

Chapter 13 Executives and Bureaucracies Learning Objectives 13.1 Compare and contrast presidents and prime ministers. 13.2 Evaluate the charge that the U.S. presidency has become too powerful. 13.3 Contrast cabinet ministers in parliamentary systems with...

Chapter 13 Executives and Bureaucracies Learning Objectives 13.1 Compare and contrast presidents and prime ministers. 13.2 Evaluate the charge that the U.S. presidency has become too powerful. 13.3 Contrast cabinet ministers in parliamentary systems with departmental secretaries in the U.S. system. 13.4 Consider the thesis that bureaucratization is inevitable. 13.5 Explain with examples how bureaucracy can become pathological. 248  Executives and Bureaucracies 249 Blocked at every turn by congressional Republicans who hated him, President Obama turned to techniques developed by a long line of presidents of both parties— use existing laws and powers to bypass Congress. Republicans charged Obama with exceeding constitutional limits on presidential power, but Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes had done the same with Republican approval. Constitutional challenges to it seldom work because hundreds of laws allow the president to issue “executive orders” to fill in the details, make exceptions, and go slow on enforcement. It was an old problem—one at the heart of the 1776 American Revolution—how to keep executives from amassing so much power they could rule without leg- islatures. The Republicans were right to worry about a too-powerful presidency, but a major rollback is unlikely. Presidents, faced with economic and security threats, refuse to be paralyzed by what President Truman first called a “do-nothing Congress.” Economic and technological change in a continent-sized republic mean we can no longer get by with the minimal governance the U.S. Founding Fathers had in mind for the thirteen largely rural original states. The Founders had an ingenious solution for the time: a legislative branch that would check and balance a potentially abusive executive. But, in an unstoppable trend, executives have become more powerful than legislatures. Furthermore, some political scientists see another trend: Within the executive branch, power is shifting from elected officials to bureaucrats. There is no simple cure for these two trends. There have been executives a lot longer than there have been legislatures. Kings and emperors appeared with the dawn of civilization; only recently have they had legislatures to worry about. Indeed, the word government in most of the world means the executive branch. In Europe, government equals cabinet. The “Cameron government” is just another way of saying Prime Minister David Cameron’s cabinet plus some additional subcabinet assistants. In the United States (and increasingly in some other countries), this configuration is called the administration. What Americans call “the government,” meaning all of the bureaus and bureaucrats, is known in the rest of the world as the state. state In Europe, all branches of the national political Presidents and Prime Ministers system; what Americans call “the government.” 13.1 Compare and contrast presidents and prime ministers. Two terms that sound almost alike often confuse students. A head of state is theo- retically the top leader but often has only symbolic duties, such as the queen of England or king of Sweden. These monarchs represent their nations by receiving foreign ambassadors and giving restrained speeches on patriotic occasions. In republics, their analogues are presidents, some of whom are also little more than figureheads. The republics of Germany, Italy, and Israel, for example, have presi- dents as heads of state, but they do little in the way of practical politics. (They are also not well known. Can you name them?) 250 Chapter 13 The chief of government is the real working executive, called prime minis- ter, premier, or chancellor. They typically also head their parties, run election campaigns, and guide government. In Britain, this is Prime Minister David Cameron, in Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel. The United States combines the two offices—our president is both head of state and chief of government. In parliamentary systems, a national legislature indirectly elects a chief executive from its own ranks, a prime (originally meaning “first”) minister. Such parliaments serve as electoral colleges that stay in session to consider legisla- tion. They can also oust a prime minister and cabinet by a vote of no confidence, although this is now rare. Still, prime ministers are responsible to parliament. If they represent a party with a majority of seats, they are secure in office and can get legislative programs passed quickly and with little backtalk. A British prime minister with a sizable and disciplined majority in the Commons wields powers that might make a U.S. president jealous. If no party has a majority, however, a government is formed by a coalition of parties, each of whom gets one or more ministries to run. Sometimes the coali- tion partners quarrel over policy and threaten to split up. This weakens the hand of the prime minister, as he or she knows that any major policy shift could lead to new quarrels. It is not quite right to say that prime ministers are “weaker” than presidents in presidential systems; it depends on whether prime ministers have a stable majority in parliament. A presidential system bypasses this problem by having a strong president who is not dependent on or responsible to a parliament but is elected on his or her own for a fixed term. The U.S. Congress may not like the president’s poli- cies and may vote them down, but it may not vote out the president. The U.S. president and Capitol Hill stand side by side, sometimes glaring at each other, knowing that there is nothing they can do to get rid of each other. It is some- times said that presidents are “stronger” than prime ministers, and in terms of being able to run the executive branch for a fixed term, they are. But they may not be able to get vital new legislation or budgeting out of their legislatures. deadlock This “deadlock of democracy,” the curse of the U.S. political system, parallels In presidential parliamentary immobilism. Neither system can guarantee cooperation between systems, executive and legislative legislative and executive. Any system that could would be a dictatorship. branches blocking each other (current term: gridlock). “Forming a Government” in Britain Great Britain is the classic of parliamentary systems, one in which we still see its historical roots. The monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II, formally invites the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons—usually just after an election—to become prime minister and “form a government,” meaning take minister office with a cabinet. The prime minister appoints two dozen ministers and a Head of ministry, greater number of subcabinet officials. All are members of Parliament (MPs) and equivalent to U.S. departmental mostly from the prime minister’s party, usually chosen to represent significant secretary. groups within the party. Theoretically, the prime minister is primus inter pares  Executives and Bureaucracies 251 (first among equals) and guides the cabinet to consensus. But the prime minister is the chief and can dismiss ministers. Ministers who oppose government policy are expected not to go public but to resign and return to their seats in Commons. Recently, the British cabinet mostly concurs on decisions the prime minister has reached earlier with a few advisors, on the American pattern. “Constructive No Confidence” in Germany The chancellor of Germany is as strong as a British prime minister. The chancel- chancellor lor, too, is head of the largest party in the lower house (Bundestag). Once in the Germany’s prime minister. office, the chancellor can be ousted only if the Bundestag votes in a replacement cabinet. This is called “constructive no confidence,” and it has contributed to the stability of Germany’s governments. It is much harder to replace a cabinet than just oust one; as a result, constructive no confidence has succeeded only once, in 1982, when the small Free Democratic Party defected from the Social Democrat– led coalition to the opposition Christian Democrats. A prime minister with con- structive no confidence is more powerful than one without it, as one might see in a comparison of the average tenures of Italian and German cabinets (several months as compared with several years). “Cohabitation” in France President Charles de Gaulle of France (1958–1969) designed a semipresiden- tial system that has both a working president and a prime minister (as have Russia and China). The president was elected directly for seven years (now reduced to five) and a parliament elected for five years. If both are of the same party, there is no problem. The president names a like-minded premier, who premier is the link between president and parliament. The 1993 Russian constitution France’s and Italy’s prime ministers. incorporated a French-style system with both president and premier, and it produced executive-legislative deadlock, no longer the case under Putin, who controls both the executive and the Duma. In China, the head of the Communist Party is also the president; under him a prime minister carries out day-to-day operations. In 1986 and again in 1993, though, a French Socialist president, François Mitterrand, with two years left in his term, faced a newly elected parliament dominated by conservatives. The constitution gave no guidance in such a case. Mitterrand solved the problem by naming opposition Gaullists as premiers and letting them dismantle many Socialist measures. Mitterrand reserved for himself the high ground of foreign policy. The French called the arrangement “cohabita- tion,” like an unmarried couple living together. In 1997, the reverse happened: Gaullist President Jacques Chirac called parliamentary elections early, lost them, and had to face a Socialist-dominated National Assembly. The solution was cohabitation again; Chirac named Socialist chief Lionel Jospin as premier. Cohabitation works, and the French accept it. France thus handled the problem of deadlock that is common in the United States. 252 Chapter 13 Democracy Israel’s Directly Elected Prime Ministers In 1996, Israelis, under a new law, elected a parlia- confidence, and coalition cabinets were as hard to ment and a prime minister separately and directly, form as ever. something never before done in the world. Each Even worse, Israeli voters, figuring that selection Israeli voter had two votes: one for a party in the of prime minister was taken care of by one ballot, used legislature and one for prime minister. By definition, the other to scatter their votes among a dozen small parliamentary systems elect prime ministers indirectly, parties, making the Knesset even more fractionated. usually the head of the largest party in parliament, After two unhappy tries of the unique hybrid system, while presidential systems directly elect their chief the Knesset repealed it in 2001. The experiment executives. So, Israel turned from purely parliamentary showed that halfway borrowings from one system to presidentialism, but not all the way. The Knesset (presidential) into another (parliamentary) do not work. could still vote out the prime minister on a motion of If you want stability, go all the way to presidentialism. Knesset Israel’s 120-member The “Presidentialization” of Prime Ministers unicameral Parliamentary systems tend to “presidentialize” themselves. Prime ministers parliament. with stable majorities supporting them in parliament start acting like presidents, powerful chiefs only dimly accountable to legislators. They know they will not be ousted in a vote of no confidence, so the only thing they have to worry about is the next election, just like a president. This tendency is strong in Britain and Germany. (Japan, whose faction-ridden parties produce mostly weak and short- lived prime ministers, shows little such tendency.) Increasingly, elections in parliamentary systems resemble presidential elec- tions. Technically, there is no “candidate for prime minister” in parliamentary elections. Citizens vote for a party or a member of parliament, not for a prime minister. But everybody knows that the next prime minister will be the head of the largest party, so indirectly they are electing a prime minister. For these rea- sons, virtually all European elections feature posters and televised spots of party chiefs as if they were running for president. As in U.S. elections, personality increasingly matters more than policy, party, or ideology. Executive Terms Presidents have fixed terms, ranging from four years for U.S., Brazilian, and Nigerian presidents (they can be reelected once) to a single six-year term for Mexican presidents. French and many other presidents can be reelected without limit. Putin changed Russia’s two four-year terms to two six-year terms, repeat- able after an interval out of office. When presidents are in office a long time, even if “elected,” they often become corrupt and dictatorial, as President Robert Mugabe did in three decades at Zimbabwe’s helm, even as the country’s economy collapsed.  Executives and Bureaucracies 253 Democracy Putin’s Authoritarianism Vladimir Putin (president 2000–2008 and again in 2012, strong hand at the top, and Putin continually strength- prime minister in between) used democratic-looking ened his. He brought the energy industry and televi- moves to consolidate authoritarian power. The 1993 sion back under state control, waged war against Russian constitution, which set up a de Gaulle-type Chechens, and cracked down on uncooperative semipresidential system, tilted power to the presidency; regional governors and the “oligarchs”—people who Putin made it even stronger. He had been a KGB colo- had gotten rich fast through insider privatization deals. nel and headed the post-Soviet equivalent, the Federal Putin called his system “managed democracy,” Security Service (FSB in Russian). Unstable President staffed with KGB comrades—the siloviki, the “strong Yeltsin plucked Putin from obscurity and named him his men.” He paid little attention to the Duma, where few fifth prime minister in seventeen months. opposed him. Some who criticized Putin were arrested Some thought Putin would be another temporary, or assassinated, but few Russians cared when the econ- but he pulled what amounted to a KGB coup. He used omy was good, thanks to oil and natural-gas revenues. his police sources—detailing who had robbed what— In 2008, Putin pulled a bold switch: He named to keep and expand his power. With Russia in steep an obedient protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, to be elected decline, the unpopular Yeltsin in late 1999 handed over president and accepted, by prearrangement, the the presidency to Putin, who was easily elected to it prime ministership. Putin “demoted” himself but stayed in 2000, 2004, and 2012. He set up his own United in charge and set things up to return to the presidency Russia Party, which won most of the Duma seats. four years later. Playing to Russian nationalism, Putin Putin pulled Russia out of a climate of despair made himself even more powerful and popular with his and immediately became popular. Russians like a thinly disguised invasion of Ukraine in 2014. In parliamentary systems, prime ministers have no limits on their tenure in KGB office, provided their party wins elections. As noted, increasingly their winning Soviet Committee on State Security, depends on the personality of their leader, almost as if they were presidential powerful intelligence candidates. Britain’s Margaret Thatcher was elected for a third time in 1987, but by and security agency. 1990 her mounting political problems persuaded her to resign after eleven years in office. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl won four elections in a row and served sixteen years (1982–1998). Most prime ministers can dissolve parliament when dissolve they wish, namely, when they believe they’ll do best in elections. A good economy, Send a parliament home for new sunny weather, and high ratings persuade prime ministers to call elections a year elections. or two early. Powers such as these might make an American president jealous. On the other hand, British prime ministers can get ousted quickly if they lose the support of a majority of parliament. When Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan, head of a minority government, lost the support of the eleven Scottish Nationalist MPs in 1979, he slipped below a majority in Commons and was replaced overnight by Tory chief Thatcher. Some Italian premiers have held Tory office only briefly as their coalitions disintegrated. Japanese prime ministers, the Nickname for British Conservative. playthings of powerful faction chiefs within the two large parties, have recently averaged only about a year in office. Theoretically, prime ministers can serve a 254 Chapter 13 Classic Works Lasswell’s Psychology of Power Harold Lasswell of Yale introduced concepts from crazy. They’ve got to, as they can trust no one. They Freudian psychology into political science. In his imagine, probably accurately, that they have many 1936 classic Politics: Who Gets What and other enemies, and they amass more and more power to works, Lasswell held that politicians start out men- crush these real and imaginary foes, thus creating tally unbalanced and that they have unusual needs even more enemies. It’s an insightful description of for power and dominance, which is why they go into Hitler and Stalin. According to Plato, tyrants must go politics. Normal people find politics uninteresting. insane in office; there’s no such thing as a sane tyrant. If Lasswell is right, many executives should be re- The problem is not personal psychology but the nature moved from office, and only people who don’t want of a political office that has grown too powerful. The the job should be elected. This is the kind of analysis solution, if Plato is right (and we think he is), is to limit that cannot be applied in practice; it is fascinating power and have mechanisms to remove officehold- but useless. ers who abuse it. In the U.S. system, the threats of It was Plato who first wrote that even sane electoral defeat and impeachment tend to keep the people who become too powerful in high office go presidency and its occupants healthy. long time; in practice, their tenure depends on political conditions such as elec- tions, coalition breakups, and scandals. Parliamentary systems practice a kind of easy-come, easy-go with their prime ministers, something an American president would dislike. Presidents in presidential systems are partially insulated from the ups and downs of politics. In his second term, for example, President Obama’s popularity sagged, but there was no way to oust him until his term expired. impeachment A U.S. president can face impeachment, but this is a lengthy and uncer- President indicted by tain procedure that has been attempted only three times. Andrew Johnson the House and tried by the Senate. was impeached by the House in 1868 but acquitted in the Senate by one vote. Richard Nixon was about to be impeached by the House but resigned just before the vote. Bill Clinton was impeached but not convicted. If a problem character becomes chief executive, parliamentary systems have a big advantage over the U.S. system—a simple vote of no confidence and the rascal is out. This helps explain why, even though there are many scandals in parliamentary sys- tems, few have the opportunity to become as big and paralyzing as Watergate. Executive Leadership 13.2 Evaluate the charge that the U.S. presidency has become too powerful. Back to back, America saw two distinct leadership styles. President Carter (1977–1981) was a hands-on, detail person; he tried to supervise much of his administration. With intelligence and energy, he put in long hours and memo- rized much data. Critics, including management experts, say this is the wrong  Executives and Bureaucracies 255 Democracy An Imperial Presidency? “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, But this failed to happen, for the U.S. system needs a and judiciary, in the same hands,” James Madison strong president to function properly. wrote in The Federalist no. 47, “may justly be pro- When Jimmy Carter took office in 1977, he nounced the very definition of tyranny.” Checks and attempted to deimperialize the presidency, but this led balances, John Adams declared, are like “setting a thief to an ineffective White House. As an outsider, Carter was to catch a thief.” In recent years, however, many fear ignorant of the ways of Washington and quickly alienated that the modern presidency has amassed power and a Congress dominated by his own party. His legislation overturned the checks and balances of the constitution. stalled on Capitol Hill and was diluted by amendments, Congress and the presidency no longer balance especially his energy proposals. By the 1980 election, (maybe they never did). Samuel Huntington noted that much of the American electorate and Congress wished from 1882 to 1909, Congress initiated 55 percent of for a more forceful and experienced chief executive. significant legislation; between 1910 and 1932, the Congress’s reassertion of independent authority figure dropped to 46 percent; and from 1933 to 1940, in the 1970s proved brief, for with the arrival of Ronald Congress initiated only 8 percent of all major laws. Reagan in the White House in 1981, the president once The legislative function, said Huntington, “has clearly again commanded Capitol Hill. In 1986, it was revealed shifted to the executive branch.” that officials of the president’s National Security Council As the Vietnam War wound down and Watergate bypassed Congress in selling arms to Iran and using the boiled up, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. captured money to fund the overthrow of the Nicaraguan govern- the worried feeling of the time in his book The Imperial ment. Even Reagan’s supporters in Congress turned Presidency. Lyndon Johnson had taken the country to angry and grilled his appointees in committee hearings. war without a declaration of war. Richard Nixon had Once again, a Congress disappointed with executive expanded that war into Laos and Cambodia, again with misuse of power tried to check the executive branch it no declaration. Nixon also “impounded” appropria- had repeatedly invested with enormous powers. tions made by Congress; he simply refused to spend With the terrorist attacks of 2001, Congress gave funds in certain areas, in effect exercising an illegal item even more powers to the executive branch. Bush 43 veto. Was the president overstepping constitutional advisors argued a “unitary executive theory” that gives bounds? Was America becoming an imperial presi- the president essentially unlimited power to safeguard dency, going the way of ancient Rome, from republic to the country, including warrantless wiretaps, imprison- rule by Caesars? ment and trial outside of normal courts, and “aggres- Congress attempted to reassert some of its sive interrogation techniques.” As he signed new laws, authority, passing the War Powers Act in 1973 and Bush issued more than 800 “signing statements,” moving toward impeachment of Nixon the following telling Congress that he would enforce this law as he year. It looked like the beginning of a new era, with saw fit. Critics feared the unitary executive theory was Congress and the president once again in balance. a step toward one-man rule. approach and that chief executives only scatter and exhaust themselves if they appropriation try to run everything. Government funds voted by legislature. President Reagan (1981–1989) was a hands-off president, preferring to set the broad course and leaving the details to trusted subordinates. He took afternoon naps and frequent vacations. Critics say Reagan paid no attention to crucial matters, letting things slide until they turned into serious problems. The 256 Chapter 13 Y axis Iran-contra fiasco showed what happens when subordinates get only general The vertical leg of a directions and go off on their own. The National Security Council staff thought graph. it was doing what the president wanted when it illegally sold arms to Iran and X axis illegally transferred the profits to the Nicaraguan contras. The horizontal leg of Can there be a happy middle ground between hands on and hands off? Some a graph. say President Eisenhower (1953–1961) achieved it by appearing to be a hands- line graph off president with a relaxed style. Princeton political scientist Fred Greenstein, Connection of data points showing however, analyzed Eisenhower’s schedule and calendar and concluded that he change over time. was a very active president who made important and complex decisions but did Methods Graphs Thanks to computers, graphs are easy and colorful but scale, usually from zero to a little more than the highest sometimes misused. A bunch of numbers does not number we find, say 2,937, plus a little more to make necessarily make a good graph. The numbers should it 3,000. Divide that scale into increments of whatever display some pattern. If upward, you would show the interval fits the study. It might be every 5 percent or growth of something; if up and down, you would show every $5,000 per capita GDP or every hundred interest cycles. We could do a longitudinal study of the growth groups. A metric ruler can make drawing scales easier. of Washington-based interest groups taking them over Now take the horizontal leg, the X axis, and mark 30 years, from 1970 to 2010. Our hypothesis is that off steps from 1970 to 2015. Measuring rightward they grow over time. from the Y axis, mark with a dot the number of interest We can either have the computer set up a graph groups above the year on the X axis. For easier read- or do it with paper and a ruler. First, draw a big “L.” ability, you may connect the dots (or have the com- The upright leg is the Y axis, on which you draw a puter do it), thus making a line graph.  Executives and Bureaucracies 257 not show it, preferring to let others take the credit (and sometimes the blame). Greenstein called it the “hidden-hand presidency.” In 1954, for example, faced with sending U.S. forces to help the French in Indochina, Eisenhower called top senators to the White House. He knew they would be cautious for we had just ended the unpopular Korean War. The senators opposed sending U.S. forces, and Eisenhower went along with their view. Actually, he never wanted to send troops, but he made it look as if the senators had decided the issue. bar graph Stand-alone data President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) used a style that some call points comparing deliberate chaos. Setting up numerous agencies and advisers, some of them categories. If the line generally rises (and it will always have Democrat.) Pie charts are not very useful; use them to some ups and downs), you have demonstrated your show popular preferences in pies. thesis: Interest groups keep growing in Washington. If Not every graph should be a line graph. The the line trends downward, alter your thesis, now stating zigzags of line graphs show change over time but are a decline of D.C.-based interest groups (unlikely). And meaningless for comparing categories at the same if the line is generally flat, neither trending up nor down, time. For that, use a bar graph. A line graph indicates change your thesis to match your findings. that one data point sets the stage for the next; a bar If you want to compare how two or more things graph does not. If you want to show change over change over time (covariance), you could use different- time, say, percent voting Republican over several colored lines, say, blue for the percent Democratic elections, use a line graph. If you want to show dif- vote in Altoona, PA, and red for size of the railroad ferences between items at the same time, say, voting workforce in Altoona, to show how both decline at differences among income levels in the 2016 election, about the same rate. (Unionized workers tend to vote use a bar graph. 258 Chapter 13 working at cross-purposes, Roosevelt would let them clash. The really difficult and important decisions would reach his desk; the others would be settled without him. This, too, was a kind of middle ground between hands on and hands off. The Clinton White House borrowed this spontaneous and creative approach, but Clinton participated personally in many policy deliberations in a more hands-on manner. Obama was noted for his keen intellect and balanced decisions but also for the long time he took to make decisions; a readiness to dilute and compromise; and loose, uncoordinated management. The Danger of Expecting Too Much In both presidential and parliamentary systems, attention focuses on the chief executive. Presidents or prime ministers are expected to deliver economic growth with low unemployment and low inflation. They are expected to keep taxes low but government benefits high. They are held responsible for anything that goes wrong but told to adopt a hands-off management approach and delegate matters to subordinates. The more problems and pressure, the more they have to delegate. How can they do it all? How can they run the government, economy, sub- ordinates, and policies? They cannot, and increasingly they do not. Instead, the clever ones project a mood of calm, progress, and good feeling to try to make most citizens happy. President Reagan was a master of this tactic. The precise details of governance matter little; they are in the hands of advisers and career civil servants, and few citizens care about them. What matters is getting reelected, and for this personality counts for more than policy, symbols more than performance. Worldwide, power has been flowing to the executive, and legislatures have been in decline. The U.S. Congress has put up some good rear-guard actions, but it too has been in slow retreat. Some observers have argued that this cannot be helped and that several factors make this shift of power inevitable. If true, what can we do to safeguard democracy? Democracies still have a trump card, and some say it is enough: electoral punishment. As long as the chief executive, whether president or prime minister, has to face the electorate at periodic inter- vals, democracy will be preserved. Friedrich’s “rule of anticipated reactions” will keep them on their toes. Perhaps the concept of checks and balances was a great idea of the eighteenth century that does not fit the twenty-first. Maybe we will just have to learn to live with executive dominance. Cabinets 13.3 Contrast cabinet ministers in parliamentary systems with departmental secretaries in the U.S. system. ministry Major division of Chief executives are assisted by cabinets. A cabinet member heads one of the executive branch; equivalent to U.S. major executive divisions of government called a department in the United States department. and a ministry in most of the world. The former is headed by a secretary and the  Executives and Bureaucracies 259 latter by a minister. Cabinets range in size from a compact fifteen in the United States to twenty or more in Europe. The United States enlarges its cabinet only slowly and with much discus- sion for it takes an act of Congress and the provision for the related depart- ment’s budget. For most of its history, the United States had fewer than ten departments. Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security were added only since the 1960s. In Europe, chief executives add, delete, com- bine, and rename ministries at will; their parliaments routinely support it. In the 1980s, for example, most West European governments added environmental ministries. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stayed at the sub-cabinet level, and environmental responsibilities were divided between it and several other departments. What is the right size for a cabinet? That depends on how the system is set up and what citizens expect of it. The United States has been dedicated to keeping government small and letting the marketplace make decisions. When this led to imbalances—for example, bankrupt farmers, unemployed workers, and collapsed businesses—the U.S. system added the Departments of Agriculture, Labor, and Commerce. The Department of Energy was added after the “energy shocks” of the 1970s. Slowly, U.S. cabinets have been creeping up to European size. Who Serves in a Cabinet? In parliamentary systems like those of Britain and Germany, ministers are drawn from parliament and keep their parliamentary seats. They are both legislators and executives. Usually they have had years of political experience in winning elections and serving on parliamentary committees. The chair of Germany’s Bundestag defense committee, for example, is a good choice to become defense minister. In a presidential system like that of the United States or Brazil, secre- taries or ministers are generally not working politicians but businesspersons, lawyers, and academics. They may have some background in their department’s subject area, but few have won elective office. President Bush 41 named four members of Congress to his cabinet; Presidents Clinton and Obama named three each. This made U.S. cabinets look a bit European, but the secretaries had to first resign their seats in Congress. Which is better, a cabinet member who is a working politician or one from outside government? The elected members of European parliaments who become ministers have a great deal of both political and subject-area knowledge. They know the relevant members of parliament personally and have worked closely with them. Ministers and parliament do not view each other with suspicion, as enemies. The ministers are criticized in parliament but from the opposition benches; their own party generally supports them. Outsiders appointed to the cabinet, the traditional U.S. style, may bring with them fresh perspectives, but they may also be politically naive, given 260 Chapter 13 Classic Works American Paranoia In 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote his cele- impossible goals, but failure to reach them “heightens brated essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” the paranoid’s sense of frustration,” and he redou- to explain the right-wing takeover of the Republicans bles his efforts. Only traitors and weaklings criticize; and their nomination of hawkish Barry Goldwater. they must be denounced and ignored. The media More generally, the work pointed to a persistent are branded cowardly and defeatist. Some critics tendency in U.S. politics, the “sense of heated exag- claimed the paranoid tendency appeared in the Bush geration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” 43 administration. Actually, paranoia is an ever- With this comes a belief in evil empires out to get us, present danger in all regimes, especially those with “a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil.” no checks on power, such as Stalin’s, Hitler’s, and The paranoid then aims at “total triumph,” what- Saddam Hussein’s. ever it may cost. This, wrote Hofstadter, leads to to brash statements and unrealistic programs that get them in trouble with Congress, where members of their own party do not necessarily support them. Their lack of political experience in the nation’s capital leads to another problem. In the United States especially, the cabinet counts for less and less. A cabinet meeting serves little purpose and takes place rarely. Few Americans can name three or more cabinet members. Why has the cabinet fallen into such neglect? Part of the problem is that few cabinet secretaries are well-known political fig- ures. And their jobs are rather routine: Get more money from Congress to spend on their department’s programs. Cabinet secretaries are in charge of administer- ing established programs with established budgets, “vice presidents in charge of spending,” as Coolidge’s Vice President Charles G. Dawes called them. Presidents generally rely on advisors on their staff for political and policy deci- sions rather than cabinet secretaries, who often become advocates of the bureau- cratic agencies they head, lobbying the president and his staff. As such, they are not consulted on much. They are largely administrators, not generators of ideas. Bureaucracies 13.4 Consider the thesis that bureaucratization is inevitable. bureaucracy The term bureaucracy has negative connotations: the inefficiency and delays The career civil citizens face in dealing with government. The great German sociologist Max service that staffs government Weber, who studied bureaucracy, disliked it but saw no way to avoid it. A executive agencies. bureaucracy is any large organization of appointed officials who implement laws and policies. Ideally, it operates under rules and procedures with a chain of command or hierarchy of authority. It lets government operate with some  Executives and Bureaucracies 261 rationality, uniformity, predictability, and supervision. As Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama argues, the early founding of effective bureaucra- cies builds strong, prosperous states. Corrupt bureaucracies permanently retard their nations’ development. Initially and for centuries, officials were simply relatives of the king and nobles. They treated their jobs as private property to enrich themselves. In much of the world, this is still true. Ancient China initiated the first nationwide merit- based bureaucracy, in which mandarins were selected by rigorous competi- mandarin tive exams based on Confucius and other classics. Like a modern civil service, Official of imperial China, schooled in mandarins were arrayed hierarchically in ranks, usually nine. Some argue that Confucianism. Confucius invented the very notion of good governance, one that strove for sta- bility and prosperity, centuries before European thinkers. Another definition of bureaucracy—or “civil service”—is that it is the permanent government. Much of what we have studied might be called the “temporary government” of elected officials who come and go. The career civil career servants often spend their working life with one agency. They take orders from Professional civil servant, not political elected officials, but they also follow the law and do things “by the book.” They appointee. usually know a lot more about their specialized areas than their new politi- cally appointed boss, who wants to redo the system with bold, new ideas. The bureaucrats, who have seen bold, new ideas come and go, move with caution. A bureaucracy, once set up, is inherently conservative, and trying to move it is one of the hardest tasks of politicians. Bureaucracy comes automatically with any large organization, public or private. In the Middle Ages, when European states were weak balances of feudal powers, the Roman Catholic Church had a complex and effective administra- tive system. Through a hierarchy of trained people who spent their life in the Classic Works Weber’s Definition of Bureaucracies Max Weber (1864–1920) was the first scholar to ana- 6. The official does not own his or her office. lyze bureaucracy. His criteria for defining bureaucracy 7. The official is subject to control and discipline. included the following: 8. Promotion is based on superiors’ judgment. 1. Administrative offices are organized in a hierarchy. Weber felt he was studying a relatively new phe- 2. Each office has its own area of competence. nomenon. Some of the above characteristics could 3. Civil servants are appointed, not elected, on the be found in classic China, but not all. Like the nation- basis of technical qualifications as determined by state, bureaucracies started in Western Europe around diplomas or examinations. the sixteenth century but were reaching their full 4. Civil servants receive fixed salaries according to powers, which Weber distrusted, only in the twentieth rank. century. 5. The job is a career and the sole employment of the civil servant. 262 Chapter 13 Church, authority flowed from the pope down to the parish priest. Until they developed their own administrators in the Renaissance, kings depended on clerics, who were among the few who could read and write. Armies also have bureaucratic structures, based on the military chain of command and myriad regulations. The United States Fewer than 15 percent of American civil servants are federal. Of our 21.5 million civil servants, some fifteen million are employed by local governments, four million by state governments, and only 2.8 million (not counting military personnel) by the federal government. Remember, most government services—schools, police, and fire protection—are provided by local governments. The United States was later than Europe in establishing a merit-based civil service. American politicians used patronage appointments to reward political supporters. Fukuyama argues that this is what happens when democracy starts earlier than the establishment of a rational, merit-based bureaucracy. Only the 1883 Pendelton Civil Service Reform Act required competitive examinations for federal jobs. State and local patronage jobs, the basis of political machines, lin- gered into the twentieth century. The fifteen current U.S. cabinet departments (George Washington started with four) employ between 85 and 90 percent of all federal civil servants. They share a common anatomy. Each is funded by Congressional appropriations and headed by a secretary appointed by the president (with the consent of the Senate). The undersecretaries and assistant secretaries are also political appoin- tees and, thus, in Weber’s definition are not bureaucrats. This differs from most other systems, where officials up through the equivalent of our undersecretaries are permanent civil service. Bureaucracies may be more important in innovating laws than the public or Congress. A prominent example was the fight to place health warnings on cigarette packages and in advertisements. Congress would never have moved by itself because the tobacco industry is generous to candidates. Change came via a branch of the bureaucracy—public-health specialists and statisticians equipped with computer models. In 1965, the Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health and the surgeon general (the nation’s chief public health officer) presented solid data that cigarette smoking increased lung cancer and shortened lives. The report built public pressure on Congress, which in 1966 had cigarette manufacturers print warnings on all packs, and in 1969 the FCC banned ciga- rette advertising on radio and television. The departments carry out legislative and executive policies whose details are often unclear. Most laws are general and let the department establish specific working policy, so experts can tune policy. Bureaucrats have a lot of knowledge, and knowledge is power. The Reagan administration said it would abolish the Department of Energy (DOE). One of the authors of this book asked a friend,  Executives and Bureaucracies 263 an official of the department, why he wasn’t worried. “They won’t abolish us,” he asserted knowingly. “They can’t. DOE manufactures nuclear bombs, and the administration needs the DOE budget to disguise how big the nuclear-bomb budget is.” Reagan did not abolish the DOE. The U.S. bureaucracy is rela- tively small and light compared with many other countries. Europe and Latin America, with their strong statist traditions, have more bureaucracy and regula- tion than the United States. Communist Countries The Soviet Union was one of the world’s most bureaucratic nations, and that was one of the causes of its undoing. Tied to the Communist Party, the Soviet civil service was corrupt, inefficient, and unreformable. According to Marxist theory, a dictatorship of the proletariat had no need for Western-style bureaucracy, but immediately after the 1917 revolution the Soviets instituted strict bureaucratic management, and Stalin increased it with his Five-Year Plans in the 1930s. Five-Year Plans Top Soviet bureaucrats, the nomenklatura, were a privileged elite, often Stalin’s plans for rapid, centrally the most energetic and effective. They got nice apartments, special shops, and administered Soviet country houses. At the top of each ministry was a minister, who was a member industrial growth. of the Council of Ministers (roughly equivalent to a Western cabinet), the highest nomenklatura executive authority that was made up of high-ranking party members, some of Lists of top Soviet whom were also members of the party’s Politburo. Trusted party members were positions and those eligible to fill them, placed in subordinate positions to carry out party policy. This made the Soviet the Soviet elite. bureaucracy conservative, an obstacle no Soviet president could overcome. In China, too, all officials, called cadres, are party members and the back- cadre bone of the Communist system. The party is supposed to fight corruption, but In Asian Communist systems, party China’s administration is dangerously decentralized to the provincial and local members serving as levels, leaving officials free to collect bribes and fake “taxes” and to transfer land officials. from peasants to developers. Major riots break out in China every year over such corruption, the system’s Achilles heel. Since 2012, corruption among high officials—many stashed millions in overseas banks—has shaken the regime. The Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has broad pow- ers to demote or expel party members or send cases to criminal courts, where some are sentenced to death. Party chief and President Xi Jinping swore to root out corruption and had the Discipline Inspection investigate higher cadres, even in Beijing. It is difficult to end all corruption in China, however, because the cadres are precisely the people the regime depends on to run the country. France In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, France set the pattern for most of Europe with its highly bureaucratized state. After the French Revolution destroyed département the monarchy, Napoleon restored central control by the bureaucracy and made it Department; main French territorial more rational and effective. Napoleon, with the intendants of Richelieu as his subunit, now model, created the prefects to carry out government policy in each département. numbering 96. 264 Chapter 13 Top French civil servants are now graduates of one of the “Great Schools,” such as the Ecole Polytechnique, an engineering school, or, since World War II, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, created to train government officials. The instability of the Third (1871–1940) and Fourth (1947–1958) Republics increased the bureau- cracy’s power because it had to run France with little legislative or executive guidance. France is still heavily bureaucratic, and centralization is often extreme. Germany Junker Prussia and its ruling class, the Junkers, put their stamp on German administra- (Pronounced: YOON- tion. Obedient, efficient, and hard-working, the aristocratic Junkers were a state care) Prussian state nobility. nobility, dependent on Berlin and controlling all its higher civil service posi- tions. Frederick the Great of Prussia, who ruled from 1740 to 1786, had a passion for effective administration and established universities to train administrators. Germany unified in 1871 under Prussia’s leadership, which brought Prussian culture, namely loyalty to nation and emperor, to much of Germany. One of the reasons the short-lived Weimar Republic (1919–1933) failed was because the civil- servant class had only contempt for democracy. With the coming of the Third Reich, most flocked to Hitler. The current German government has a strongly federal structure that puts most administration at the Land level. Today’s German civil servants are committed to democracy. A section of Berlin’s interior ministry, for example, in cooperation with Land agencies, does educational programs to fight political extremism. Generally trained in law—throughout Europe law is at the under- graduate level—German bureaucrats tend to bring with them the mentality of Roman law, that is, law neatly organized into fixed codes rather than the more flexible U.S. and British common law. Britain Britain, unlike France, has strong traditions of local self-government and dis- persion of authority. This pattern of administration is an outgrowth of the Anglo-American emphasis on representative government, which encourages legislative control of administrative authorities. During the nineteenth century, the growth of British government at the local level also encouraged the disper- sion of administrative authority; it was not until the twentieth century that the central government began to run local affairs. Until the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan merit civil service reforms, the bureaucracy was rife with corruption and nepotism. Positions in the One based on bureaucracy (including military commissions) were openly bought and sold. By competitive exams rather than 1870, earlier than in the United States but later than in most of Europe, a merit patronage. civil service based on competitive examinations had been established. British ministers are accountable to Parliament, but real bureaucratic power is in the hands of the career “permanent secretary” and the career deputy secre- taries, undersecretaries, and assistant secretaries who serve at lower ranks. Thus,  Executives and Bureaucracies 265 even though the British and American bureaucracies share the same tradition of decentralized authority, control over the bureaucracy is tighter in Britain than in America. British bureaucrats pride themselves on being apolitical and claim to apolitical faithfully carry out the ministry’s policies, whichever government is in power. Not interested or participating in politics. Japan Japan is an extreme example of rule by bureaucrats. Modeled on the French civil service by the Meiji modernizers in the 1870s, Tokyo’s ministries were always powerful. Before, during, and after World War II, the same bureaucrats were in charge, boosting economic growth by guided capitalism rather than the free mar- ket. Japan’s bureaucrats view elected officials as clowns who should be ignored. The key Tokyo ministries are finance; economy, trade, and industry; agricul- ture; and construction. They guide their respective sectors by arranging loans, subsidies, and government contracts. Top Japanese bureaucrats are often gradu- ates of Tokyo University (nicknamed “Todai”), Japan’s most selective. Many civil servants retire young to go into lush jobs in the industries they supervised, called “descent from heaven.” Tokyo’s ministries are self-contained and do not cooperate with each other or seek the good of the whole, provoking some to say that in Japan “no one is in charge.” The ministry supervises its specific economic sector, which mostly obeys the ministry. The minister is a political appointee, usually a member of the Diet, but the vice minister, who really runs things, is a career civil servant, much vice minister like a British “permanent secretary.” Civil servant who directs a Japanese The most famous ministry was MITI, the brains of Japan’s export mania ministry. that set economic growth records after World War II and suggested Japanese MITI guided capitalism as a model for others. Since the 1990s, however, the Japanese Japan’s Ministry of economy has been flat, and bureaucratic supervision was blamed for industrial International Trade overexpansion, money-losing investments, bankrupt banks, and the world’s and Industry (now METI). highest consumer prices. A new generation of Japanese politicians is now trying to reform their bureaucracies and bring them under democratic control. The Trouble with Bureaucracy 13.5 Explain with examples how bureaucracy can become pathological. The world does not love bureaucracy. The very word is pejorative. In France and Italy, hatred of the official on the other side of the counter is part of the political culture. Americans like to hear candidates denounce “the bureaucrats”—alleg- edly meddlesome, overpaid (especially in pensions), and unfireable—but none ever solve the problem because at least some regulation is necessary, and some- one has to run the day-to-day operations of government. Politicians don’t have the incentives or the inclination to do so. Incoming U.S. administrations, particu- larly Republican, vow to bring business-type efficiency to public administration 266 Chapter 13 Theories Bureaucratic Politics Some political scientists argue that struggles—often not solve the problem, as the FBI and CIA are not part behind the scenes—among and within bureaucra- of it. Department of Defense (DoD) analysts claimed cies contribute to or even control policy decisions. to have solid evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass Bureaucrats provide the information on which top of- destruction (WMD) and was sponsoring terrorism. State ficials depend. Whoever controls information controls Department and CIA analysts were cautious, saying decisions, goes the theory. America’s many bureau- evidence was unclear. DoD prevailed, making war a cer- cracies gather, analyze, and disseminate information tainty. No WMD were found after the war. Furthermore, in different ways, often quarreling among themselves. State, claiming that it had the expertise, drew up plans Harvard’s Graham Allison found that the 1962 for the occupation of Iraq after the war. DoD ignored Cuban missile crisis turned on when the photographic State and its plans. The result was a chaotic occupation evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba arrived at the White and great anger in the State Department. House. It had been delayed because the Air Force and The bureaucratic politics model is still not per- Central Intelligence Agency quarreled over who should suasive because the president really is in charge and pilot the U2 spy plane. Competition among agencies often has strong personal preferences in advance and and “standard procedures” created the informational decides which agency to listen to. In 2003, President world in which Kennedy and his advisors operated. Bush had long hated Iraq, and DoD told him that Iraq With a widely read 1969 article, Allison founded the was guilty. DoD even had a special staff to make bureaucratic politics model, which political science the case for attacking Iraq; it excluded evidence to briefly embraced. the contrary. By structuring bureaucracies, the White Control of information became a hot issue with House created the informational world it preferred. 9/11 and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Before 9/11, Washington bureaucracies played a blame game the FBI and CIA did not share information, partly due to for 9/11 and Iraq’s WMD—several top CIA people legal restrictions. The Department of Homeland Security, resigned—but it was more a question of how these formed in 2002, combined 22 existing agencies but did agencies were used. Bureaucrats mostly obey. bureaucratic politics by drastic deregulation of private industry and trimming the number of bureau- Infighting among and crats. One result was that no one said no to Wall Street’s reckless loans and invest- within agencies to set policy. ments. Efficiency, profitability, and productivity are hard to apply in government programs. Bureaucracies have a momentum, making cuts to most programs like productivity Social Security or Medicare impossible. The efficiency with which goods At its worst, bureaucracy can show signs of “Eichmannism,” named after or services are the Nazi official who organized the death trains for Europe’s Jews and later told produced. his Israeli judges that he was just doing his job. Nazi bureaucracy treated people like things, a problem not limited to Germany. On the humorous side, bureau- cracy can resemble Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the staff time avail- able. Parkinson never called himself a humorist, and many who have worked in featherbedded, purposeless, paper-shuffling agencies confirm Parkinson’s Law. Bureaucracy and corruption are intertwined. Wherever officials carry out rules, some are bent for friends and benefactors. The more regulations, the more bureaucrats, the more corruption. A few countries with a strong ethos of public  Executives and Bureaucracies 267 service—Denmark and New Zealand, for example—have been able to maintain incorrupt public administration. Most countries are corrupt, some a little and some egregiously. Chile became the least corrupt Latin American country by cutting the amount of administration and number of bureaucrats. Under the argument that only specialists from private industry can monitor that industry, businesses often “capture” or “colonize” administrative agencies. Financiers were placed atop the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. They gutted its regulatory role and let it march to the 2008 financial meltdown. It should be noted, however, that political appointees, not career civil servants, made these dangerous decisions. Early theorists of bureaucracy assumed that professional bureaucrats would never make public policy but merely carry out laws. Indeed, nonpartisan administration was the original motivation behind merit civil services, but most nations have administrators who make policy and are not publicly accountable. Japan shows this to an extreme. Making bureaucracies flexible, creative, and accountable is one of the great tasks of this century. Review Questions 1. Is power shifting first to executives and then 5. Explain Lasswell’s psychology of political to bureaucrats? power. 2. Why have prime ministers become more like 6. Are cabinets as important as they used to be? presidents? 7. Must every large organization be bureaucratic? 3. Is the U.S. presidency too powerful? 8. How did Max Weber characterize 4. What are the various styles of presidential bureaucracy? leadership? What is the current president’s 9. Why is it hard for a government to control style? bureaucrats? Key Terms apolitical, p. 265 dissolve, p. 253 ministry, p. 258 appropriation, p. 255 Five-Year Plans, p. 263 MITI, p. 265 bar graph, p. 257 impeachment, p. 254 nomenklatura, p. 263 bureaucracy, p. 260 Junker, p. 264 premier, p. 251 bureaucratic politics, p. 266 KGB, p. 253 productivity, p. 266 cadre, p. 263 Knesset, p. 252 state, p. 249 career, p. 261 line graph, p. 256 Tory, p. 253 chancellor, p. 251 mandarin, p. 261 vice minister, p. 265 deadlock, p. 250 merit civil service, p. 264 X axis, p. 256 département, p. 263 minister, p. 250 Y axis, p. 256 268 Chapter 13 Further Reference Ackerman, Bruce. The Failure of the Founding Maranto, Robert, Tom Lansford, and Jeremy Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Johnson, eds. Judging Bush. Stanford, CA: Presidential Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Harvard University Press, 2005. Miklis, Sidney M., and Michael Nelson. The Baker, Peter. Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the American Presidency: Origins and Development, White House. New York: Doubleday, 2013. 7th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2015. Burke, John P. The Institutional Presidency: Morris, Irwin L. The American Presidency. New Organizing and Managing the White House from York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. FDR to Clinton, 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Neustadt, Richard E. Presidential Power and the Hopkins University Press, 2000. Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Cheibub, José Antonio. Presidentialism, Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press, 1991. Parliamentarianism, and Democracy. New York: Nye, Joseph. Presidential Leadership and the Cambridge University Press, 2007. Creation of the American Era. Princeton, NJ: Ghaemi, Nassir. A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering Princeton University Press, 2013. the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness. Peters, Guy. Politics of Bureaucracy: An Introduction New York: Penguin, 2011 to Comparative Public Administration, 6th ed. Greenstein, Fred. Inventing the Job of President: New York: Routledge, 2009. Leadership Style from George Washington to Pika, Joseph A., and John Anthony Maltese. The Andrew Jackson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Politics of the Presidency. 8th ed. Washington, University Press, 2009. DC: CQ Press, 2013. Helms, Ludger. Presidents, Prime Ministers and Poguntke, Thomas, and Paul Webb, eds. The Chancellors: Executive Leadership in Western Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Democracies. New York: Palgrave, 2005. Study of Modern Democracies. New York: Jones, Charles O. The American Presidency. New Oxford University Press, 2005. York: Sterling, 2009. Rudalevige, Andrew. The New Imperial Presidency. Jreisat, Jamil E. Comparative Public Administration Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, and Policy. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2002. 2005. Kerwin, Cornelius M., and Scott R. Furlong. Savage, Charlie. Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Rulemaking: How Government Agencies Write Presidency and the Subversion of American Law and Make Policy, 4th ed. Washington, DC: Democracy. New York: Little, Brown, 2007. CQ Press, 2010. Wills, Gary. Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency Lindblom, Charles E. The Policy-Making Process, and the National Security State. New York: 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Penguin, 2010. 1992. Wilson, James Q. Bureaucracy: What Government Maraniss, David. Barack Obama: The Story. New Agencies Do and Why They Do It. New York: York: Simon & Schuster, 2012. Basic Books, 1990.