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Unit 5: The President, the B ureaucracy and the Judiciary. p pt. 6. How Bureaucracies are Organized. In general, there are four types of bureaucracies Cabinet departments Regulatory agencies Government corporations Independent executive agencies. Cabinet Departments.
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Unit 5: The President, the Bureaucracy and the Judiciary ppt. 6
How Bureaucracies are Organized • In general, there are four types of bureaucracies • Cabinet departments • Regulatory agencies • Government corporations • Independent executive agencies
Cabinet Departments • 15 cabinets; headed by a secretary except the Department of Justice, which is headed by the Attorney General. • Each department manages specific policy areas, and each has its own budget and staff. • Real work is done in the bureaus. • 1970s-1995: Department of Health and Human Services was the largest federal department in dollars spent. • Social Security Administration became independent in 1995, spending 1/3 of the federal budget.
Regulatory Agencies • Each independent regulatory agency has responsibility for some sector of the economy, making and enforcing rules designed to protect the public interest. • Alphabet Soup of American government: • ICC • FRB • NLRB • FCC • FTC • SEC
Continued… • Each of the agencies is governed by a small commission, appointed by the president for fixed terms of office and confirmed by the Senate; regulatory commission members cannot be fired by the president.
The Government Corporations • Provide a service that could be handled by the private sector. • Typically charge for their services, though often cheaper than the consumer would pay a private sector producer. • Examples include: • Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) • Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) • US Postal Service
Independent Executive Agencies • Are not part of the cabinet departments and generally do not have regulatory functions; they usually perform specialized functions. • Their administrators are typically appointed by the president and serve at his discretion. • Examples: • NASA • NSF (National Science Foundation) • GSA (General Services Administration)
Bureaucracies as Implementors • Bureaucrats play three keys roles: • Policy Implementors • Administer public policy • Regulators
Implementation • Carries out decisions of Congress • Rarely self-executing: bureaucrats translate legislative policy goals into programs • Congress typically announces the goals in broad terms, sets up the administrative apparatus and leaves the bureaucracy the task of working out the details of the plan. • Three elements of implementation: • Creation of a new agency or assignment of responsibility to an old one. • Translation of policy goals into operational rules of thumb and guidelines • Coordination of resources and personnel to achieve the intended goals.
Reasons implementation breaks down • Faulty program design – program defective in basic theoretical conception • Lack of clarity – if laws are unclear, implementation becomes complex (Congress can create loopholes) • Lack of resources – lacks staff (along with training, funding, supplies and equipment) • Administrative routine – SOP (standard operating procedures) – this is where the “red tape” comes in • Administrator’s dispositions – administrative discretion – authority of administrative actors to select among various responses to a given problem • Street-level bureaucrats have the most discretion (police officers, social workers, etc)
Continued… • Fragmentation – responsibility for a policy is sometimes dispersed among several units within a bureaucracy • Diffusion of responsibility makes the coordination of policies time-consuming and difficult.
Voting Rights Act of 1965 • Successfully implemented because the goal was clear: to register African-Americans to vote in the southern counties where their voting rights had been denied for years. • The act singled out 6 states in the Deep South in which the number of African-American registered voters was minuscule. • The Justice Department was ordered to send federal registrars to each county in those states to register qualified voters. • Congress outlawed literacy tests and other tests previously used to discriminate against African-American registrants. • Implementation of this act helped bring the vote to some 300,000 African-Americans in less than a year.
