Executive Politics: The Dilemmas of the President Professor Jonathan Day The Presidency (POLS 318)
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Transcript of Executive Politics: The Dilemmas of the President Professor Jonathan Day The Presidency (POLS 318)
Outline
1. Overview2. What is the Bureaucracy?3. Dilemmas for the President4. Paper Assignment5. Next Week
What is the Bureaucracy?
Bureaucracy is the combined organizational structure, procedures, protocols, and set of regulations in place to manage activity, usually in large organizations
The Size of the Bureaucracy
2.67 million civilian federal employees, 1.4 million active duty military personnel. Federal Budget is approximately 2.98 trillion dollars.
15 million people receive salaries from the federal
government when you take into account grants, contracts, and state/local employees working on government funding
Dilemma #1 – Staffing the Bureaucracy
The president must staff the bureaucracy, but he has to consider the following:
Loyalty – how loyal the person influences whether the wishes of the president gets accomplished
Expertise – the more skills a person has the more likely
they will be able to get the job done
Clean Record – no tax problems, legal problems, or other problems
Dilemma #2 – Size of the Bureaucracy
The larger the country gets, the larger the bureaucracy that is needed.
The problem:The larger the bureaucracy, the harder it is to
control. The smaller the bureaucracy, the less they are
able to do.
Dilemma #3 – Organizing the Bureaucracy
There are two main ways that you can organize the bureaucracy
Centralized – bring agencies into departments
Decentralized – have many different independent agencies
The problem: The more decentralized, the harder it is for agencies to
communicate with each other.
The more centralized, the harder it is for the president to communicate to the agency.
Dilemma #4 – Clarity in Communication
The president must send clear instructions for them to be followed.
The problem:The president does not have the time to make
every request clearly known. Bureaucratic officials have to take into account
the president’s requests with the current regulations.
Dilemma #5 – Consistency in Communication
The president has to be consistent in there communication to bureaucratic officials.
The problem:The president has competing interests and so it is difficult to
remain consistent on every requestExample: The Immigration of Naturalization Service was
supposed to keep out illegal immigrants, but allow necessary agricultural workers; screen foreigners seeking to enter, but facilitate entry of foreign tourists, expel illegal aliens, but do not break up families, impose hardships, or violate civil rights, or deprive employers of low-paid workers
Dilemma #6 – Transmission of Information
The president requests certain actions to be done by agencies or bureaucratic officials.
The problem:The bureaucratic officials ignore the
information or do not know how to transmit the information