Fourth Branch Of Government: The American Administrative Agencies

Although bureaucracy’s have a significant amount of power over the United States most important decisions and laws they cannot always execute or perform certain actions. Two particular forces who oversee and control bureaucratic agencies are congress and the president who is part of the executive branch. Both congress and the president are constantly competing for agency control (Lecture 7 10/24/16). They both have their own individual and unique sets of strategies they use such as using congressional control, appropriations process, privatization, executive order and management of agency budget in order to seize complete command. The main goal of these two means of control are to ultimately limit the discretion of bureaucrats and to also if possible shrink the size and number of bureaucracies.

There is a plethora of criticisms about the effectiveness of the Bureaucracy. Even during the 19th century, as Wilson writes, the Post Office “was an organization marred by inefficiency and corruption”. With an appointment standard such as the “spoils system”, where individuals or groups are granted high level positions based on political favors alone, corruption is almost a certainty. The political aspect of the Bureaucracy was prevalent in the military for over 100 years, as Wilson states “the size and deployment of the military establishment in this country was governed entirely by decisions made by political leaders on political grounds”. Political favors and factors plague our government, including the Bureaucracy. A by-product of these political favors and corruptions are stagnancy and mediocrity. An example of this, as

The executive branch of the Unites States government consists of the President, Vice President, Executive Office of the President (EOP), and the Cabinet (Citation). The President is the highest official of the Executive branch. The powers of the President are wide-ranging and highly substantial but were also drafted in the constitution to be limited by the other two branches of government. The remaining branches of government are the Legislative branch and the Judicial branch. There functions of all the branches are interrelated and the restraints on the amount of power each reserves are also coordinated. This correlation involves the system of checks and balances which was implemented by the framers of the Constitution. The President, as

However, only about three percent of all federal employees are appointed by the president. Consequently, since the majority of bureaucrats are hired using the merit based system they are not as compelled to be loyal to the president’s will. Under the merit based system, employees cannot be fired simply because they have different political beliefs or don’t adhere to the president’s policy preferences. Thus, although the president has a lot of power, when it comes to the bureaucracy, it can be likened to having just a few cattle herders for thousands of cattle. Not all of the cattle are going to want to go in the same direction and will consequently have a tendency to split or wander off in their own direction despite the desire and drive of the herders.

Objective of this paper is to discuss where the following agencies lie in the administrative structure of the federal government:

The Executive Branch is the branch of government that enacts and enforces the law. The head of the Executive Branch is the President of the United States. The President of the United States has seven roles that he must fill as President. These roles are the Chief of State, Chief Executive, Commander-in-Chief, Legislative leader, Chief of Party, Guardian of economy and Chief Diplomat. In these roles, the President awards metals to college scholarship winners, makes a patriotic speech on the Fourth of July and enforces the law. Furthermore, the President chooses officials, writes the speeches for Ambassadors who are traveling to foreign countries, creates foreign policies, controls the Armed Forces, Finally, the President influences Congress in

James Madison said in the Federalist Paper #47 that “(L)iberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct”(Doc B). To put it simply, in order to have a fair government, one person or group of people cannot have the power to create, execute, and interpret the laws. Instead, all of those powers should be separate, not under only one branch’s control. Madison’s ideas were put into practice when three branches of the Central Government were established in the Constitution. Each branch has its own separate powers, which helps prevent one branch from becoming tyrannical over another.

Political authority over the bureaucracy is not in one set of hands, but shared among several institutions

This allows for the bureaucracy to make laws through rule-making, which is delegation of authority. The bureaucracy delegates authority to the department or agency that will be responsible for its implementation. The bureaucracy in the United States is partly made up civil service agencies, that regardless of who has been elected to an office, the bureaucracy continues, despite the decisions made in the political process. Because of the framework of bureaucracy, it has been considered politically neutral.

Judiciary’s have the authority to determine if the bureaucrats act within the law, requiring changes in its policy to fully comply with the

All of us like miners in Centralia No. 5, rely throughout our lives on the immovable juggernaut of impersonal administrative systems” (Stillman 30). It seems that most people as a whole have absent mindedly become too dependent on something as abstract and complicated as public administration. It seems to be public administration and its official’s responsibility to handle any concern in the community as well as make everything flow smoothly.

The true democracy that this chapter was written in does not exist on the American playing field today. This very rarely happens within agencies. The author is trying to get the point across that the public must participate, but he states it as if they actually do. Real world situations get more of the point across and lead the reader to understand in better context than the "VH1 vote or die" cheesiness that the author inflicts in chapter 5.

The four institutions include: Congress, Executive, Judiciary, and the Bureaucracy. All four pieces of the institutions work together make sure the country can function. With each individual institution with their unique functions checking and balancing over one another they all keep the country steady.

Rulemaking is a quasi-legislative function that sets standards for future application (Ferguson, 2006). According to Vago (2015) administrative rulemaking is the single most important function carried out by a government agency. He states that it is the establishment of prospective rules. Rulemaking is the process for formulating policy for the future by promulgating, amending, or repealing a rule that provides

The American people have come to expect that the government should take care of them. They expect the government to provide social security, regulation of food and medicines, protect consumers, and a whole bunch of other concerns and interests. The government can not provide these things without bureaucracies. People tend to consider bureaucracies as huge overgrown parts of the government, but this is rarely the case with most bureaucracies short on necessary training, funding, supplies and equipment – to carry out the huge task of serving the American people. The government is providing the most it can for Americans with the least amount of spending. The people govern in a democratic government, and if the