US Lecture 11: Congress, president and the bureaucRATs

Explain the historical reasons behind the fact that democracy and bureaucracy have a different from most contries’ relationship. What are the implications of it?

In most countries, democracy was created after bureaucracy. In the US, this is quite the opposite: it was democracy that through orderes and entities being created formed the modern US bureaucracy. When a congress makes a policy, it decides what to do with the decree: specify and tighten more or let the bureaucracy do more. 99% of the legislature contains some form of delegation to the bureaucracy.

Explain three types of agencies in the United States.

Executive presidential orders:

Agencies whose primary purpose is to aid the president in carrying out the President’s constitutional and statutory responses. The EPOs act more like warehouses for agencies, with multiple specialites under each. Examples are the White house, Office of the US Trade rep, etc. These usually operate the closest under the exec.

Executive Departments:

Most administrations work within 15 executive departments, first of them being created by the congress. The examples of departments are the department of defence, treasury, internal affairs.

Independent agencies:

Any agency created outside the EOP or exec. departments is an independent one. They are protected against political interferecneces. Examples are the Federal trade commission, national labor relations board. The idea behind greater indepdence is to prevent conflict of interest.

Run through the Lowi vision of trends in US federal bureaucarcy(1970s model)

The idea is that bureacracies tend to replicate themselves over time, as it is virtually impossible to dis-embed them from the public functioning once this embedding has been done. Once bureaucracy has been established, debates slowsly shift from whether it should be grown or limited to the areas in which it should be grown, thus increasing its role. The preliminary data about the US government spending over time sees to confirm this statement.

Moreover, an increased government means an increase in lobbying and interest-group politics. Recent data from the congress control over certain government apparratus seems to confirm this (congressional abdication).

For lowi, this is when democracy gets replaced by technocracy. Womp womp.

Explain the example by McCubbins in opposition to Lowi. What data does he provide to confirm that?

The lack of intervention into bureacracies may well mean that bureaucrats don’t deviate, meaning Congress actualy didn’t concede real control. The reason why bills aren’t specified isnt because they want to leave more power to bureaucracy, but rather as a margin for in-house negotiations on the bill.

Agencies shift their preferences depending on the vote of the majority, thus alligning with the principal. A change in the congressional subcommitee leads to a change in the behavior of the agent implementing.

Explain the system of Fire alarms in the context of the US Congress

Fire alarms are a system of rules and procedures so as to charge executive agencies with violating congressional goals. This is a punishing power, but it also controls the anticipations for agents, so they adjust their application without needing to be explicitly told to do so by the Congress.

Explain the Rinquist position on congressional involvement in implementing agents’ actions, what two factors does it depend on?

It mainly depends on media salience(how public it is) and issue techinicality(how much of an expert one needs to be to understand it).

What does Moe say about the power of the US president in all that sharade?

McCubins argues that congress doesn’t have the internal organiation to set its own legislative agenda. Moe puts forward the theory of imperial presidency, where the president can, through executive orders override the decisions of the congress or try to mitigate the impacts. This is another example of the negative power of the US president.

Explain the paradox of more committees — less control. Give 1 example.

The more oversign committees there are, the less the chance one will actually interven into agency operation. This is because they are afraid that the other one(or the president) will do more, thus claiming credit for intervening.

If there is a crisis with the FDA, a lot of committees will try to control the FDA and give hearings, but the presidency will interven as well. In the context of multiple principles being involved, various committees of cogress will fail to coordinate and expect others to do more action. Therefore, the intervention of the president is the one that will be more effective.

What is the broader issue with neglecting bureacracy?

Because reforming bureacracy is seen as not important for getting re-elected, this is going to be unpopular and bureacracy will be allowed to grow, partially through agents pursuing other strategies.

Presidents inherit a vast administrative structure that is hard to manage, and from which they are strongly incentivized to dissociate or to politicize when something goes wrong.

Describe the trends in federal spending in recent time.

Since the 60s, the amoung of Federal spending increased over time, the federal civilian employment has stayed the same. This is due to the bueraucracy growing while gatekeeping the places available to prevent new people from entering the system.