Um, I already know how a bill becomes a law. Why am I taking this exam again?
Download 0.75 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Growth of the Bureaucracy
- Divisions of the Bureaucracy
- Congress vs. the President (Again)
- Bureaucracy: Really Good in Theory, We Swear
- Staffing the Bureaucracy
- Study Break
The Federal BureaucracyHave You Read This?If yes, click here. Thank you for your interest in this section. Please take a number and wait until your number is called. No, that was not your number. Your number was called two minutes ago. Please take another number. How may we help you? To continue reading this section, you will have to fill out Federal Form 9728 ("Intent to Continue Reading Section") in triplicate and deliver a notarized copy to the Shmoop offices between 3:07 and 3:12 a.m. on Thursdays. Please also attach your latest bank statements and your dental records. Yep, you guessed it—this is the section on the bureaucracy. To be sure, the federal bureaucracy provides absolutely essential services. Agencies within the bureaucracy ensure that our water and air are relatively clean, our prescription drugs are pure, and our food is safe to eat. They keep an eye on Wall Street and our banks to make sure our money is safe—okay, so they messed up on that one. But all in all, they provide countless essential services. Yet at the end of the day, they take a lot of abuse (check out these bureaucrat jokes). Is it deserved? Before piling on, you ought to take a look at how the federal bureaucracy is structured and how it has grown. Perhaps, as Shakespeare said, "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our bureaucrats, but in ourselves." Growth of the BureaucracyThe first executive department created by Congress was the Department of Foreign Affairs (quickly renamed the State Department) in 1789. The federal bureaucracy grew slowly over the first half century; on the eve of the Civil War, the federal government employed only 36,000 people, most of them postal workers. But thereafter, the number of government workers grew steadily, and mushroomed during the Great Depression and World War II. Today, some 500 departments, agencies, and commissions make up the federal bureaucracy, together employing about 2.7 million people (if you include the postal service; another 1.3 million are in the armed forces). The number of federal employees has been relatively constant since the 1970s. As a result, the federal bureaucracy has actually shrunk as a percentage of the nation's total workforce over the past 40 years. But the number of persons indirectly employed by the federal government has grown dramatically as more and more federal dollars are funneled to state and local governments and to private firms working on government contracts. The federal government employs perhaps 12 million people indirectly. Divisions of the BureaucracyThe federal bureaucracy has 2,799 distinct divisions, each more important than the last, and all of them on the AP exam. We'll start by covering 1-200, then break for lunch, then… Okay, these bureaucracy jokes are getting old. Really, you only need to know that the bureaucracy can be broken into three main parts: the Executive Office of the President, the executive departments, and theindependent agencies. The Executive Office of the President (EOP) consists of a number of agencies that provide advice and assistance to the president. These include the Office of Management and Budget and the National Security Council. The president appoints the heads of these offices. Some require Senate confirmation, but many, such as the head of the Office of Management and Budget, do not. The fifteen executive departments (the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Justice, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs) represent the largest part of bureaucracy. Administered by cabinet officials or secretaries (the Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, etc.) appointed by the president and approved by the Senate, these executive departments oversee dozens of agencies, commissions, boards, authorities, and administrations. Several independent agencies sit somewhat outside this framework. These are in the executive branch but are not under the supervision of one of the fifteen main executive departments. In some cases, Congress defines their responsibilities more precisely and attempts to retain some control over their operations. Among the independent agencies are the Central Intelligence Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency.Government corporations also fall within this branch of the bureaucracy. These are at least partially owned by the government but provide a service for a fee or engage in a commercial activity. Examples include the Postal Service and Amtrak. Perhaps the most important independent agencies are the independent regulatory commissions. Like other independent agencies, they do not fall under the oversight of an executive department. But they are distinguished by their regulatory responsibilities: for instance, the Federal Communications Commission is responsible for the airwaves and, therefore, television and radio (and, therefore, laying down the law after Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction"). The commissions include the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Federal Trade Commission. In many ways these are the most powerful parts of the bureaucracy, as they possess quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions. They are empowered to establish rules and regulations that have the force of law, and they are authorized to adjudicate complaints and alleged violations within their area of responsibility.
It takes Congressional legislation to create a government agency—but actually organizing and running them is the job of the president. Therefore, while Congress may define an agency's function at the beginning, presidents impose their own objectives and priorities by appointing agency heads and issuing executive orders that add details to the legislative mandate and guide the agency in carrying out its responsibilities. To prevent presidents from setting objectives and priorities contrary to Congress's original intentions, Congress sometimes defines the purposes and responsibilities of the agency it creates with great precision. Congress can also pass new legislation to fine tune the agency's practices. And, since Congress passes the appropriations bills that fund these agencies, it can attach provisions to these bills specifying how the funding must be utilized. Congress can also mobilize political pressure on the president and the agency to force the agency to operate in a certain way. The bottom line is that executive agencies often find themselves pulled in two directions—and often three or four, since interest groups affected by the agencies apply their own forms of pressure. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency faces scrutiny not just from Congress and the president, but also from environmental organizations that want rigorous enforcement of anti-pollution standards, and private industries just as anxious to negotiate concessions in the enforcement of those standards. Political scientists have coined the term "iron triangle"(which sounds like an awesome wrestling move) to describe the interaction and tension between executive agencies, Congress, and interest groups outside of Congress. But some have suggested that since the president is at times in disagreement with established practices of the agency, a four-sided model might be more appropriate. For example, during the 1980s, President Reagan and his appointee to the directorship of the Environmental Protection Agency were sharply at odds with a large portion of the agency rank and file.
The federal bureaucracy, like all bureaucracies, is designed to accomplish complex tasks efficiently through the implementation of three organizational principles: role specialization, clear and rigid rules, and hierarchical authority. Yet in practice, many criticize the federal bureaucracy as inefficient and redundant. An individual facing economic hard times might be forced to wade through the red tape of four different agencies: one for unemployment benefits (Department of Labor), one for food stamps (Department of Agriculture), one for housing assistance (Department of Housing and Urban Development), and another for direct financial help (Department of Health and Human Services). Perhaps worse, some agencies actually pursue conflicting objectives. For example, the Department of Commerce, interested in promoting business development, frequently clashes with the Environmental Protection Agency. There are a couple of reasons for this. For starters, the agencies of the federal bureaucracy were not created at the same time. Instead, they were produced at different times and reflect the particular concerns of those times. One agency may have been created when economic development was the greatest concern, another when environmental protection was at the top of the list. In addition, since our Congressional representatives and presidents change, the agencies are constantly forced to take on the priorities of the current congress and administration. Thus to a certain extent, the imperfections within the Federal bureaucracy are inherent in democratic government. Staffing the BureaucracyAfter reading this section, you're no doubt thrilled about the possibility of graduating from college and getting a high-paying, well-respected job as a federal bureaucrat! Well, read on, because this next part is for you. Well into the nineteenth century, most government positions were distributed by the president himself in order to reward political supporters (political scientists call this the principle of "I know a guy who knows a guy"). President Andrew Jackson is often credited with (or criticized for) introducing the "spoils system" as a tool for strengthening the base of his political party. But in 1883, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, reforming the civil service to make a portion of all federal government jobs attainable only through a competitive process that usually began with a written examination. Initially, only about ten percent of all government jobs were distributed through these means. Today, closer to two-thirds of all federal jobs are distributed through a competitive process overseen by the Office of Personnel Management (the federal government's hiring office). Almost all of the rest are distributed by the individual agencies using their own merit-based criteria. Only about three percent of all federal employees today are appointed by the president or hired outside of the formal merit-based processes. (Sorry, you're probably out of luck if you intend to brown-nose your way into the system, unless you're a senator's nephew or something.) To further insulate the federal bureaucracy from politics, Congress passed the Hatch Act in 1939 and the Federal Employees Political Activities Act in 1993. Study BreakBureaucracy at work! Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 0.75 Mb. Share with your friends:
|