8 Brazilian Bureaucracy

1. 8Brazilian Bureaucracy

2. Bureaucracy, It Goes to Eleven • Many of us find interacting with bureaucracies to be frustrating • Why? • Not because they are flawed • Rather, it has more to do with their ideals of strict adherence to rule-based actions • Why do we have to have this in every large organization? • Indispensible for performing routine administrative functions • The vast majority of stuff that governments do is done by bureaucracies

3. The Ideals of Bureaucratic Governance • Max Weber (1864-1920) recognized that modern nation-states need bureaucracies • He argued that an ideal bureaucracy should be rational and efficient • A few critical elements: • Clear Assignment of Roles: Clear organization avoids both duplication of efforts and gaps in the process

4. The Ideals of Bureaucratic Governance • Rules: to ensure decisions are impersonal and consistent and avoid favoring or discriminating • Hierarchy: allows for effective control of the bureaucracy and for handling challenges to the rule-based decision making

5. The Ideals of Bureaucratic Governance • Professionals: recruitment and promotion on the basis of merit to make sure the right people are in the optimum position • The ideal of rule-based decision making is to protect less powerful and influential from those with more power and influence • To make sure everyone is treated the same

6. Bureaucratic Roles • Bureaucracies are omnipresent • Can categorize by function • Service: providing services such as education, health care, welfare programs, parks • Regulation: watching over particular segments of the economy (i.e. the FDA or the SEC

7. Bureaucratic Roles • Implementation: making sure that laws get put in place and determining all of the relevant details • Policymaking: legislatures often pass general laws describing what they want but leave the specifics to the expertise of bureaucracies

8. The Iron Triangle • Elected leaders typically have little interest in exerting the effort necessary to monitor and control bureaucracies • In contrast, the interests groups directly affected by the bureaucracy have a great deal of interest • This can result in an iron triangle formed by bureaucracies, interest groups, and the relevant congressional committee(s)

9. The Iron Triangle • The bureaucracy can be “captured” so it focuses on the needs of the interest group rather than the public interest • These iron triangles can be very powerful and all but impenetrable by outside actors • Are bureaucracies and democracy compatible? • The vast majority of agencies perform quite effectively in the democratic context

10. Agency Theory and the Responsive Bureaucracy • Agency Theory or the Principal-Agent Model asserts that bureaucracies work like contractors to the legislature • Elected officials do not have to monitor closely, they just need to monitor the results and keep an eye out for problems • This explains how bureaucracies do adjust to the will of elected officials and the public

11. The Cockroach Theory of Bureaucracy • Bureaucracies struggle against other demands for limited funds • Those that fail to meet their public service demands or draw critical attention could have their budgets cut • The goal is to avoid negative attention (from the media or elsewhere) • The bureaucracies monitor their own behavior accordingly