Introduction

Learning Outcomes: at the end of this presentation students will get concept
of the following:
 Administration Dichotomy
 Professionalized Public Bureaucrats
 Bureaucracy as Power Elite
 Competition Among Elites
 The Inner Check

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 American Politics in a Bureaucracy Age
Lewis Eugene, 1977

In 1960, one third of public employees are professional

Frederick Mosher thinks it was more then three times then private sector

Civil servants not involve in politics

Politic = Dirty word

Author feel public bureaucrats need to involve in politics to create

“Professionalised Public Bureaucrats”
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 Administration Dichotomy

Representative Professionalised
Democracy Bureaucracy

• Domination / partition of policy area

• Policies become unimportant

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 Professional & Experts

Neutral Competence Detached Behaviors

• Change in social order political system

• Improve & change the nature of politics

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 Professionalised Public Bureaucrats

Specialised Knowledge + Professional Norms

• Encourage innovation & resourceful discovery

• Good government policies
• Alternative plans

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Problem
Incommensurability of Professional

Ignored

Politicians Experts
•Political agenda •Policy area
•Insufficient resources •Social needs

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Future

 American & its public agencies become more

professionalised

• Single most powerful conceptual & political entity

• Create political bureaucracy
• Power to choose
• Broad valuative ends for the future

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 Bureaucracy as a Power Elite
 bureaucrats will come to occupy so commanding a position in the policy process as to
become in effect a power elite.
 dominating all government decisions in which they participate.
 Growing reliance upon the skills of bureaucrats in the operation of modern government has
thus been coupled with pervasive distrust of bureaucratic power.
 For conservatives focus on areas of social and economic decision that ought to be left in
private hands.
 From the liberal side, fear of bureaucracy concentrates on the growing power of national
security agencies--- not only the military establishment but also CIA and the FBI.
 It is boundless in its appetite for power may thus coexist with an image of bureaucracy
paralyzed with indecision when confronted with an opportunity to exercise authority.
 It is clear that they have a strategic role in the process by which decisions are made.

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 COMPETITION AMONG ELITES
 bureaucrats operate and share control over decisions with other elites in the political system.
Whatever else it may be, theirs is not an exclusive power.
 they compete for influence of political elites in both the executive and legislative branches
of government.
 Of course, in Western European democracies and elsewhere in the world, the balance of
power between bureaucratic and other elites is tilted much more strongly in favor of
bureaucracy.
Political Elites
 Political elites are those groups that control political power in the society.
 Political elites compete with each other as well as with bureaucrats, and executive agencies
often serve as valuable allies in the struggle for power among politicians.

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 For any administrative agency is to build up sources of public support to which political
leaders in both the executive and legislative branches of government will defer.
 The power of political leaders in a democratic society ultimately depends on their ability to
stay in tune with public opinion.
 Political elite’s influence as resting solely upon the power of numbers, upon the ability of
the politician to reflect and generate public pressures.
 while bureaucratic influence is attributed entirely to the professional skills administrators.
Public and Private Power
 the leaders of nongovernmental organizations also are an elite whose power bureaucrats
cannot safely ignore.
 If a government agency administers laws that restrict the discretion of, for example,
business organizations, these outside organizations will in turn bend every effort to see it
that the powers of such a regulatory agency are confined within narrow limits.
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 The media and bureaucracy
 in some areas of policy, it is representatives of the media of communication who generate
the most substantial outside constraint upon the decisions and activities of government
officials.
 The news media have a powerful role in the development of policy because they both
reflect and on occasion shape public opinion.
 For only news agencies have the capacity to gather and disseminate information that may
challenge the viewpoint of government officials on areas remote from the average
citizen’s power of observation.
 Other institutions interested in controlling bureaucratic behavior and decisions often use
the media of communication to amplify their own criticism of bureaucracy.

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 Judicial control over administration
 the judicial elite’s role in restraining the power of bureaucrats varies from one policy to
another. In many areas of policy, the decisions of executive agencies can be appealed to the
courts.
 But the possibility of being haled before a judge and having their decisions overruled is real
and is a noticeable check upon all executive agencies.
 In recent years, however, there has been a growing tendency for the courts to intervene in
the administrative process and reverse administrative decisions when they appear to infringe
the basic constitutional rights of citizens.
 At all levels of government, one of the most important effects of judicial review of
administrative decisions is to enlarge the role and influence of lawyers in the policy-making
process within bureaucracy.

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 THE INNER CHECK
Executive agencies would still find themselves limited in the scope of their discretion and the
extent of their influence by restraints originating in the internal life of bureaucracy itself.
Competition Among Bureaucracies
 In the united states, the branches of the armed forces have long competed vigorously for
financial support as well as jurisdiction over weapons systems and combat missions.
 One of adversary organization much used in European societies to control bureaucracy is the
office of ombudsman, and administrative agency charged to help citizens obtain remedies for
decisions by executive official that inflict unjustified injury upon them.
Internalized Restraints
perhaps the best king of “inner check” upon bureaucratic power is not interagency rivalry, but
restraints that operate within the personalities of bureaucrats themselves, preventing them from
unlawful or excessive use of the power placed in their keeping.

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 A Representative Bureaucracy

 bureaucracy that follows recruitment practices which ensure that its personnel will have
the same characters as demographic character of the community it serves.
 Bureaucratic employment as a means of promoting equal economic opportunity that
mirrors a society in its social, economic, and cultural composition that will be much
more sensitive to the needs of citizens of that society.
 Much less likely to be arbitrary or abusive when it is exercising power over “its own
kind” of people.
Criticism
 conflict with the modern attachment to the standard of merit in the recruiting public
servants.

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 Enduring Problem of Bureaucracy
 To some extent this anxiety reflects the persistent political mythology in many countries
that credits bureaucracy with a good deal more power than it actually has.
The result in any result may be overloaded at the top with political appointees that little
opportunity is left for meaningful participation in major policy decisions by career civil
servants.

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 conclusion
The necessity of having an extensive network of public controls over bureaucratic behavior
and decision in a democratic society.
Without such controls democracy becomes technocracy as a power over decision comes to rest
in the hands of nonelected experts in bureaucratic organizations.
At the same time bureaucratic organizations are established to achieve specified public goals,
and attainment of such objectives often requires that these organizations be given sufficient
freedom of action to cope with the task.

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