Chapter 8: The Bureaucracy

A complex structure of offices, tasks, and rules in which employees have specific responsibilities and work within a hierarchy of authority. Government bureaucracies are charged with implementing policies.

bureaucracy

The norms and regular patterns of behavior found within a bureaucratic organization. Different agencies often develop their own norms, which shape the behavior of those who work in the agency.

bureaucratic culture

Documents submitted by committees that often instruct agencies on how Congress expects them to use their “discretion.” Though not legally binding, bureaucrats ignore such instructions at their peril.

committee and conference reports

A term that Donald Trump and others used to critique the bureaucracy, voicing their frustration that some agency officials would not follow the president’s will and sometimes alleging a coordinated conspiracy to thwart the president.

deep state

A government publication listing all proposed federal regulations.

Federal Register

The type of oversight in which Congress does not act directly but instead sets up processes that allow organized groups and private individuals to detect failures in the implementation of laws and to alert Congress.

fire alarms

Office with a staff of more than five thousand that audits programs and agencies and reports to Congress on their performance.

Government Accountability Office

Meetings in which bureaucrats are called before subcommittees to explain and defend their decisions, and outsiders are sometimes invited to criticize them. Most agencies must testify annually about their activities before the House Appropriations subcommittee that has jurisdiction over their budgets.

hearings and investigations

Positions with independent offices (outside the normal bureaucratic chain of command) in virtually every government agency that audit agency books and investigate activities on Congress’s behalf.

inspectors general

A stable, mutually beneficial political relationship among a congressional committee (or subcommittee), an administrative agency, and organized interests concerned with a particular policy domain.

iron triangle

A loose, informal, and highly variable web of relationships among representatives of various interests involved in a particular area of public policy.

issue network

A procedure that allows one or both houses of Congress to reject an action taken by the president or an executive agency. In 1983 the Supreme Court declared legislative vetoes unconstitutional, but Congress continues to enact legislation incorporating the veto.

legislative veto

Amendments, attached to appropriations bills, that forbid an agency to spend any of the money appropriated on activities specified by Congress.

limitation riders

Method by which Congress keeps is bureaucratic agents in line, in this case requiring executive agencies—even the president—to report on programs.

mandatory reports

The type of oversight in which Congress directly monitors agencies to ensure they are implementing laws faithfully, doing this visibly so bureaucrats will notice that they are being watched and stay in line.

police patrols

Excessive paperwork leading to bureaucratic delay. The term originated in the seventeenth century, when English legal and governmental documents were bound with red-colored tape.

red tape

The practice of citizens serving in public office for a limited term and then returning to private life.

rotation in office

A system in which newly elected officeholders award government jobs to political supporters and members of the same political party. The term originated in the saying “to the victor go the spoils.”

spoils system