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    Peters, Politicians and Bureaucrats in The Politics of

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    apolisboa

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    BUREAUCRACY AND PUBLIC CHOICE edited by Jan-Erik Lane SAGE Modern Polities Series Voluine 15 Sponsored by the European Consortium for Political Research/ECPR. © sace Puriation London Hever Hil = Newbury Park» New Delhi St i bvo Fist poblished 1987 All igh reserved, No part ofthis book may be reproduced of lttized in any form or By any means, electronic ns mechanical, ‘ncuding photocopying, recarding, or by any information storage and fetrieva jer, without permission in writing ftom the Publishers SAGE Publications Lid 28 Boomer Street, London ECIY 8 SAGE Publications Ine South Beverly Deve Beverly Hills, California 90212 SAGE Publications India Pvt Lid SAGE Publicatians C235 Defence Colony DHE West Hillerert Steet New Delhi 110028 Newbury Park, California 9132) British Library Cataloguing in Pblication Data Bureaucracy and publi cnoice—---(Sage modern politics seis v.15). [Bureaucracy 1 Lane, Jame seco JFIatL ISBN o-sose.gas-¢ ISBN 0.603906. Po ay of Congress Catalog Card Number 87-060207 Printed in Great Britain by J. W. Arrowsmith Lid, Bristol Contents THEORETICAL EXPLORATIONS 1, Introduction; the concept of bureaucracy Jan-Erik Lane 2. Economic theory of bureaucracy and public good allocation Gert P. de Bruin 3. Bureaucratic decision-making and the growth of Public expenditure Rune Serensen 4. _Il-structured problems, informal mechanisms and the design of public organizations Donald Chisholm Ul: EMPIRICAL STUDIE! 5. Testing theories: the contribution of bureaumetrics Andrew Dunsire 6, British administrative trends and the public choice revolution Christopher Hood 7. Productivity measurement in buce organizations Richard Murray jeratic 8. Functional and dysfunctional bureaucracies Krister Stahlberg 9. Giving direction to permanent officials: signals from the electorates, the market and from self-expertise Richard Rose II: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES “10. Comparing bureaucracies Edward C. Page + IL. Politicians and bureaucrats in the polities of policy-making 8. Guy Peters 12. Cultural eheory of responsibility Aaron Wildavsky Index Notes on the Contributors 3 64 n 9s 146 210 230 255 283 204 303 i Politicians and bureaucrats in the politics of policy-making B. Guy Peters Introd (One of the most crucial areas of institutionat politics in contemporary industrialized democracies is in the interaction between political ‘executives and career civil servants. These interactons are crucial for the capacity of government to perform its routine tasks, and to make and implement the decisions required of a modern political system. ‘Also they ate important for the functioning of an effective poliicat democracy. Political executives, either efected directly by the people or appointed by those who have been elected, are presumed to hold a mandate to enact and implement the policies they advocated during their electoral campaigns. But those political executives are constantly reporting that they believe themselves to be thwarted in their policy making efforts by the power of an entrenched public bureaucracy." ‘The road blocks actually presented by the bureaucracy are not placed there because of a desite to sabotage one set of political leaders or another for partisan reasons. Rather these blocks arise as large organizations tend {0 proceed from inertia and to persist in their routine unless stopped. In addition, bureaucrats and their organi- zations tend to believe that they understand the policy area in question better than the political executive, who may be in office only a short time.é For whatever reasons, many ministers or cabinet secretaries believe themselves to be inhibited in producing the policies they desire. Ifthe perceptions of these political executives are accurate, there is need for two types of effort, One isan analytic effort to develop a better conceptual understanding of the politics that occur across and within the real and perceptual gulf separating these groups. The second is the problem of designing institutional arrangements which will allow the ‘energizing of bureaucracies by political leaders while still preserving the permanence, expertise and partisan (if not policy) impartiality of the public bureaucracy.’ Two fundamental points should be made before embarking upon the more substantive portions of this chapter. First, the previous paragraphs appear to resurrect and to enshrine the relics of the (hopefully) long-dead dichotomy between politics and administration. ‘Tosomeextent, this appearance is quite correct, but in others itis not. Comparing bureaucracies 257 ‘Onthe one hand, weare recognizing quite explicitly that administration is not merely the execution of policies decided upon by potitical officials; that point is quite central to the entire concern of the paper. Indeed, administrative officials are deeply involved in policy-making and fight for their own positions and for their own conceptions of *good’ policies. But, on the other hand, although they are both engaged in policy-making, political and administrative leaders play very different roles in the policy process. Their permanence, loager time perspective and functional expertise ali provide the career civil servant witha different view of policy and policy-making than that held by the political executive. The political executive is only in ‘town’ for a short period of time and has to accomplish something in that time — if only so he or she can come back at some time in the future — and cannot afford to advocate policies which, although they may be technically superior, take a long time a come to fruition.’ Also, the identification of career civil servant with a single department or agency (especially inthe USA, although thisis truein most other systems after some point in an individual's career) may make the civil servant's perceptions of desirable policies quite different from those held by the politician, Finally, the politics of the career civil servant are organizationally based rather than partisan. The civil servant is engaged in politics to protect or to promote an organization and the values that it embodies rather than to promote a political party or political career. ‘A second preliminary point to be made is that there has been relatively litle theoretical development concerning the relationship of political executives and career civil servanis. This is true for individual nations, apd is especially true of comparative studies of their interactions. There is certainly no shortage of studies of higher civil servants and a large number of political executives; however, itis fair tosay that much less has been done to analyse patterns of interactions between these two sets of actors in the policy-making process. There are, of course, some notable exceptions, such us the work of Robert Putnam and his coflaborators, and Hugh Hecto's work on the United States, but the majority of evidence regarding ministers and their civil servants is anecdotal." And much of this material has come from the writings of retired ministers, ¢.g. Richard Crossman, Barbara Castle, Lord Crowther Hunt, Michael Blumenthal.* This is the principal (ype of evidence available for some of che points made in this chapter. However, there is a need to mesh that evidence within @ broader analyticand comparative framework. This chapter will bea preliminary attempt at such organization and analysis. It will focus to some extent ‘on what is known about civil servants and political executives in the United States, then will fit that pattern into comparative frameworks toaidan understanding of the generic phenomenon with which We are ‘concerned 258 Bureaucracy and public choice Five models of interaction (Our statement that there has been a relative absence of theoretical developments concerning the relationships between senior civil servants and political executives may be thought to be excessively harsh and ill-informed. There have been, in fact, five very basic and, each in its own way, extreme models of the relationship between civil servants and theit nominal political masters. These models have only ‘occasionally been consciously articulated as such, consequently we hhave been forced (0 extract and synthesize in order to present these models in a more explicit form. Moreover, these models are to some degree extreme, and in several instances approach being “Ideal Type’ constructions, which illuminate the real world by abstracting from it and providing a standard against which to compare reality. Few if any systems of executive politics in the real world will fit these models exactly. Moreover, almost any national or subnational system will at cimes display at east one aspect ofall the models, However, itis hoped that by developing these models and explicitly exploring some apparent relationships with other characteristics of executive polities that our understanding of polities within the executive branch can be enhanced, The formal model The first of the models of interaction is the *Formal-Legal” model in which the policy-making role of the civil servant is reduced to saying “Yes, Minister’.* This model has been devefoped less in a formal sense in the USA than in other countries (perhaps especially the UK), but it thas certainly been clearly articulated. The Wilsonian approach to public administration stressed this conception of the civil servant's role."" In addition, numerous statements appearing in the popular media, regarding the inappropriate powers being granted to bureau- ccrats in making policy and the related loss of democratic control, are indicative of the existence of this model in the popular mind. Many of the numerous attempts at reforming the executive branch of govern- ment have been oriented toward improving the control of the President and his appointees over permanent civit servants within the executive branch.” ‘The Formal-Legal model is obviously a caricature of the role of bureaucrats and ministers in making policy; this was probably the case even as Wilson and Weber wrote their conceptions of the respective roles." It ig important, however, as a aormative standard against whieh ¢ compare real patterns of interaction and policy-making, Putnam's conception of the ‘classical bureaucrat’, for example, has, been shown to be a useful standard against which to compare the attitudes of real world bureaucrats na number of counties." And this ‘model also serves as useful fiction, allowing civil servants a great deal Politicians and bureaucrats in the politics of policy-making 259 of functional responsibility while retaining political responsibility io the hands of elected executive officials."* Finay, it is, despite being a caricature to more detached analysts in academe, a model that many real-world executives (especially political executives) carry with them into theit work. This can, of course, present a great deal of difficulty for those political executives, and may be the source of much of their reported frustration in exercising the powers of their office. Village life ‘A second model ofthe relationship between civil servants and political executives might be termed the ‘Vilage Life’ model. Although Heclo and Wildavsky applied this term specifically to the values of British

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