The Pros And Cons Of Government Control Over Bureaucracy

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.

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?

What I read about reducing the cost of the national bureaucracy was Under the Hood: The Cost of Bureaucracy by Allison Gofman. The major points of her article are that there are many different agencies, departments, and groups of people who deal with the same things throughout the government. With having many different groups of people dealing with the same issues, there isn't one federal bureaucracy. Instead, its a bunch of different groups with their own interests and own opinions on one topic. The article also states that "public bureaucracies are not designed for efficiency" and I can see why. The bureaucracies just want to have power and influence over decisions that their agency gets to make at later dates.

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.

The text describes a bureaucracy as a large, complex organization composed of appointed officials. The departments and agencies of the US government make up the federal bureaucracy. The federal bureaucracy has 15 federal cabinet departments with about 2 million full-time employees. (Wilson et al, 290)

The bureaucracy is not designed to be centrally controlled by presidents, or by anyone else. Yet controlling it is essential to presidential leadership.

Bureaucrat is a dirty word to some people in modern society, so how can a bureaucracy be a good thing? Many Public Administration theorist, argue that bureaucracy is essential to the growth and expansion of the United States. Most of the criticism of the bureaucracy within the government is based on myth versus reality. Federal agencies play a critical and a valuable role within society and are indispensable to the operations of the federal government. Bureaucracy can be simply defined as the system in which decision are made by Public Administrators rather than elected officials (legislator) within the government. However, when the average citizen of just says the single word bureaucracy thoughts and images of evoked over how negative

The word “bureaucracy” has a negative connotation to many people. The fact is that our current system of government would not be able to survive without bureaucracies. The bureaucracy has become the “fourth branch” of the government, it has quasi-legislative and judicial powers and in it’s own field its authority is rarely challenged. The presence of these large, inefficient structures is necessary if the American people want to continue receiving the benefits that they expect.

Americans depend on government bureaucracies to accomplish most of what we expect from government, and we are oftentimes critical of a bureaucracy’s handling of its responsibilities. Bureaucracy is essential for carrying out the tasks of government. As government bureaucracies grew in the twentieth century, new management techniques sought to promote greater efficiency. The reorganization of the government to create the Department of Homeland Security and the Bush administration’s simultaneous push to contract out jobs to private employers raises the question as to whether the government or the private sector can best manage our national security. Ironically, the criticism of the bureaucracy may be a product

The word bureaucracy derived from “bureau” and “cracy”. The word “bureau” means office or desk and “cracy”means power or rule. Thus bureaucracy means desk government.

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