The Bureaucratic Dilemma

1. The primary dilemma of bureaucracy is an extension of the dilemma of popular governance --

striking the right balance between providing order and protecting liberty.

2. When a government bureaucracy exercises authority, the liberty of the people is necessarily
diminished.

3. Explain the conflict between authority and accountability faced by bureaucracies.

If efficiency were the only objective of administration, bureaucracies would be given extensive
power and discretion. However, in a political system in which the powers of government are
derived from the people, the government must be accountable to the people for how it
exercises those powers. On the one hand, then, managerial, and administrative effectiveness
demands that bureaucracies and bureaucrats be armed with the tools, authority and flexibility
they need to accomplish the tasks they are assigned. However, popular governance demands
that bureaucracies and bureaucrats be held accountable for their actions.

4. On one level, the bureaucratic dilemma is straightforward. It centers on striking a workable

balance between liberty and order, between bureaucratic authority and bureaucratic
accountability.

5. Among the most perplexing problems of bureaucracy and administration is that, in most
instances, there is broad agreement between policy leaders and citizens on what the "ends" or
final objectives of public policies and programs ought to be. There tends to be significant
disagreement, however, about the "means" by which those ends ought to be pursued.

6. Programs are constantly evaluated and modified, but they are rarely eliminated or completely
restructured.

7. Part of the problem is that when departments, agencies and programs are created, they are
created in response to a public need or demand.

8. Once in place, people come to count on the services they provide and eliminating them or
reducing them drastically becomes politically unpopular.

9. Instead of removing or rebuilding agencies or programs with defects, the Congress and the
President are more likely to create new programs to serve the needs that are unmet by the
existing ones.

10. The net result is that there is extensive overlap and duplication.

11. In addition to the creation of redundant programs, the departments and agencies already in
existence have become "thicker" and new programs with new administrative needs have been
created.

12. Explain the growth cycle of agencies as they added new programs and administrative needs.
 a. While a typical Department Secretary was assisted by two Under Secretaries, nine or ten
Assistant Secretaries, another ten Deputy Assistant and Associate Deputy Assistant
Secretaries and a handful of administrators in 1960, the number of assistants had more
than doubled by 1992 to include a Chief of Staff, two Deputy Secretaries, four Deputy
Under Secretaries, twice as many Assistant Secretaries, five Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretaries, and forty additional Deputy Assistant, Associate Deputy Assistant, and
Deputy Associate Deputy Assistant Secretaries plus twenty Assistant and Deputy
Inspector Generals and more than double the number of administrators

13. While efforts are frequently made to make the bureaucracy more responsive and accountable,
bureaucracies are, by their very nature, undemocratic and unresponsive.

14. Why are bureaucracies by nature undemocratic and unresponsive?

Efficient administration, not accountability and responsiveness, is the purpose of bureaucracy.

15. Representative institutions, such as the Congress, are designed to listen to and respond to the
people the bureaucracy is not.

16. What are policies and decisions within bureaucracies based on?

a. They are made authoritatively and unilaterally by bureaucratic leaders.

17. What motivation is different between private and public bureaucracies?

a. Perhaps most significantly, however, is the ability of private managers and business
owners to keep the profits they earn.
b. Public bureaucracies (with the exception of some government corporations) are not
motivated by the pursuit and earning of profit.