Sources Of Control Over The Bureaucracy

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.

At first Congress reestablished three departments that are known as the Department of Treasury, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Department of War. As read in chapter seven the President of the United States is allowed to appoint Supreme Court Justices, heads of departments, and other senior executive branch officials, as long as the Senate gave their consent. Throughout the history of the United States Congress has been creating executive branch agencies, and these agencies needed leaders that the Presidents would appoint. In the years 1889 and 1903 clientele agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Commerce were created. Over time Bureaucracy had become bigger and stronger, and now no one truly is able to control the

Most of the specifications for the executive branch in the Constitution, other than how he is to be elected, have to deal with the interactions between Congress and the President. The president can (fill in the blank) but only if (this part) of Congress approves. The powers of the president have been interpreted widely so that he has more power than I believe the Framers intended. They wanted him to be able to check Congress with veto power and be the head of the military. However, I think that presidents nowadays have too much power. They are active in trying force their policy agenda through Congress, manage foreign relations, and act as the administrative head of the entire nation. The textbook lays it out well in, "The vast size of the executive branch and the number and complexity of decisions that must be made each day pose a challenge for the White House.” (316) In order to deal with the stresses put on the executive branch, there are thousands of employees that work to give the president the information that he needs to make decisions. He has advisors, cabinet members, legislative liaisons; the list goes on and on, but he is the person who actually gets to make all of the choices. The President is limited in some ways and given more power in other ways by the structure laid out for him in the Constitution, and evolved to be what it is now.

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

In his book, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies do and why they do it, James Q. Wilson’s main objective is to better define the behavior of governmental bureaucracy, believing traditional organizational and economic theory does not adequately explain their actions. Wilson believes that government agencies are doomed to be perceived as inefficient entities by the public. He gives examples of commonly held perceptions of bureaucracies and reveals how these are mostly misconceptions. He points to the environment of bureaucracy, where rules and procedures, dictate goals, along with context, constraints, values, and norms.

That includes appointees, administrative agencies, and governor. The President has a cabinet, which people appointed by the President, that include a Vice-President and 15 other executive departments. The President cannot create legislation or encroach upon the legislative branch. The legislative branch must approve many of the President appointees (Theodore Lowi).

s the head of the federal executive, the President is in charge of the vast federal bureaucracy. With the power to appoint department and agency leadership, dismiss Cabinet officials, issue executive orders, and control the budgeting process, the President can exercise considerable control over the federal bureaucracy. At the same time, the sheer size of the bureaucracy itself often undermines the ability of the President to influence and control it. By exercising bureaucratic discretion, agencies may mitigate the problems caused by the size of the bureaucracy.

To sum things up – when it comes to the bureaucracy, some of the controls that the president has the authority to use are: appoint and remove agency heads, reorganize the bureaucracy, make changes in budget proposals, reduce an agency's budget, ignore initiatives from the bureaucracy, and issue executive orders. Nonetheless, even with all of the powers and controls that the president possesses, taking into account the sheer magnitude and breadth of the bureaucracy, having complete control over it is not even feasible. In addition, even though the president is delegated the responsibility of managing the bureaucracy, when throwing the influences of Congress,

The federal bureaucracy is the group of government organizations that implement policy. The federal bureaucrats belong, for the most part, to the group of government agencies led by the president’s cabinet (the collection of appointed officials tasked with leading various federal government departments such as the State Department, Department of Homeland Security etc.) (Geer et al.). These department heads, known as cabinet secretaries, are appointed by each new president. The federal bureaucracy is responsible for writing regulations that implement the laws. In this, the federal bureaucracy’s importance cannot be understated. Congress passes laws, the president signs them, but it is the responsibility of the bureaucracy to actually implement them in the most effective, unburdening way.

For the common American citizen a major concern, as suggested by a recent Gallup poll, centers around the idea that the President, as Chief Executive of the nation, has too much power and influence in the shaping of the United States (Americans' Belief). In particular, there exist a strong belief that the bureaucracy is directly managed by presidential preference (Roff). In contrast, it is a rarely suggested opinion that the President does not have enough power, control, or influence over the bureaucracy. With these two opinions in mind, to what extent does the President have control of the bureaucracy?

committed serious crimes, such as treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. So, if a

Wood and Waterman’s 1991 article on the Bureaucracy attempted to change the view on Congressional and Executive control over the many different bureaucratic agencies. There have been many different views on who controls who and to what degree that control reaches, as well as different reasoning’s for the same view. Their question was what were the “causal mechanisms” that determined to what extent congress and the presidency controlled bureaucracies, and how effective were these mechanisms? After looking at years of data and research on the subject and seeing the differing opinions on both congressional control and presidential control they began to see that first and foremost, most studies were on one or the other. Very few looked at both Congress and the Executive and how they influenced the bureaucratic agencies. Another thing that they noticed was that there are a lot of limitations when it comes to analyzing the President, because by 1991, there had only been 41 Presidents. This makes finding data on the influence of the Presidency as a whole difficult, especially when all you have is data that could have more to do with individual Presidents than it does the influence of the position in general. It also, especially when you are looking for quantitative data, is restrictive to whatever time frame you want to look at for the data. Wood and Waterman noticed that almost all of the studies that were performed, the data they used was based on terms, which could be 2-4 years

Presidents, in my opinion, do not have the explicit authority to control administrative agencies and their ability to promulgate law however; I do believe they do have the ability to pressure these agencies to some extent in a favorable direction. The President’s power, for lack of a better term, is granted by the constitution, authority delegated by the Congress or expressly provided by statute. The president does have authority to appoint specific agency heads. Article II, Section 2 also provides the President with authority to appoint officers of the U.S. “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” This language demonstrates the drafter’s specific intent to place checks and balances on presidential power that is consistent with the

Holzer and Schwester (2016) defines bureaucracy as the structure within which virtually all government organizations operate (29). The purpose of the bureau is to ensure that goods and services can be produced or provided in the most efficient manner possible. Bureaucrats are responsible for implement policies established by congressional acts or presidential decisions (American Politics Today). Bureau engages in a variety of activities which ranges from regulating individual and corporations to buying everything the government needs (American Politics Today).

Abstract: The theory of bureaucracy was proposed and published by Marx Weber (1947). Although there are some studies on this perspective were discussed before him, those theories did not form as systematic theory. After Weber, the issue of bureaucracy becomes a hot topic in the field of social organization. Almost all well-known scholars such as Martin and Henri have published their views on it. Bureaucracy adapted as the traditional organizational model during industrial society, essentially, bureaucracy could exist rational. This essay firstly will review the principle of bureaucracy in organization based on organizational design perspective. Secondly, it will analyze the strengths and weakness of