International Linkages and Bureaucratic Politics

By Michael Siciliano &Clayton Wukich

GOLDEN OLDIES

The Best and the Brightest

• The book is written by David Halberstam, a journalist, who chronicles the political events leading up to and during the Vietnam war.

• It takes a critical look at the decisions made in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

• His central question: "What was it about the men, their attitudes, the country, its institutions and above all the era which had allowed this tragedy to take place?” They were the “Best and the Brightest” so how could this have happened?

The Best and the Brightest• The war happened, Halberstam argues, because “they had,

for all their brilliance and hubris and sense of themselves, been unwilling to look and learn from the past."

• He states that they had been swept forward by their belief in the importance of anti-Communism (and the dangers of not paying sufficient homage to it).

• They wanted to be defined as being strong and tough; “but strength and toughness and courage were exterior qualities which would be demonstrated by going to a clean and hopefully antiseptic war with a small nation, rather than the interior more lonely kind of strength and courage of telling the truth to America and perhaps incurring a good deal of domestic political risk."

Notion of Switching Players

• If you switch the players can you change the outcome of the game?

• The interplay between personality and policy, between bureaucracy and ideology.

• New York Times writer, Navasky writes: The “best and the brightest" were not good enough, were victims of history, the bureaucracy, of the cold war--of the fall of China, the rise of McCarthy, the war in Korea.

Bureaucratic Accountability

• Bureaucratic decisions seemed to triumph over common sense ones. Politics triumphs over morality.

• Halberstam views the Government as an arena where generals, cabinet members, and other bureaucrats all partake in the game of bureaucratic politics.

• The primary loyalty of these players is to team and what is good for the team may not be good for the country.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman by Donald C. Rowat in Raphaeli’s “Readings in Comparative PA”

• The Ombudsman is an officer of Parliament whose job is to investigate complaints from citizens about the way they have been treated by government officials.

• All Ombudsman in the Nordic countries are appointed by Parliament, are independent of the executive, and report annually to a special committee of the House. They can investigate behavior ranging from official misbehavior (i.e. tardiness) to serious complaints of illegality.

• Ombudsman decisions in serious cases carry profound influence that can result in amendments to regulation and law.

Rationale for the Ombudsman Office

• The reason for the interest is clear: “there is a need for additional protection against administrative arbitrariness in the modern democratic state” (p. 141).

• The tremendous growth in the range and complexity of government activities has brought with it the need to grant increasing powers of discretion to the executive side of government

• As one of Britain’s great constitutional lawyers A.V. Dicey warned, “Wherever there is discretion, there is room for arbitrariness”. In other words, it is quite possible nowadays for a citizens’ rights to be accidentally crushed by the vast juggernaut of the governments administrative machine. (p. 141)

Criticism of Replicating the Scheme in English Speaking Countries

• Too much administrative publicity

• The office would be overwhelmed by complaints and rendered ineffective

• The office must have a personal touch; something impossible in large countries.

The Need to Control Administration

• Clearly the administrative organs of nations need to be controlled, but not so restricted that it cannot move.

• Rowat states, “What we need is a fence along the administrative road, not a gate across it. The great virtue of the Ombudsman scheme is that its weapons are publicity and persuasion rather than cumbersome controls; it is in the category of the fence rather than the gate (p. 148).”

Harris, "States and Economic Development" in The End of the Third World (1986)

• Explores role of the state in economic development efforts

• Studies the worldwide industrialization effort from the 1930s to 1970s

• Touches on the rise of decentralization and/or privatization in the early-1980s

Role of the state in economic development efforts

• “In the period since the Second World War, sustained economic development has been part and parcel of the drive of the state to develop national power.” (p. 145)

• Government military ambitions influence economic development

• Worldwide industrialization effort– Import controls– State investment (heavy industry)– National planning

Worldwide industrialization effort

• Heterogeneity of states– “The public sector includes very different elements,

products of peculiar histories, as well as items that change with the phases of national economic development and different periods of world history.” (p. 148)

• Homogeneity of development trends– “National autarky was the norm in political

conceptions, and implied import controls, exchange control, large public sectors, and state planning.” (p. 155)

LITERARY MAP

STATE ROLE IN DEVELOPMENT

Comparative Public Management edited by Randall Baker – Chapter 2

• Bayless Manning (1977) coined the term intermestic politics to indicate a new and growing interrelationship between local domestic economies and the international economic factors.

• Intermestic politics has become increasingly important to governors and mayors who find their economies vulnerable to changes in the global economy.

Baker Chapter 2• State and Local involvement in international trade and

FDI– Financing programs to assist small and medium businesses

to engage in exporting their products– Array of tools used to bolster FDI into individuals state and

local economies• What about the efficacy of these programs– Studies indicate that the crucial factors for FDI are labor,

energy, and transportation costs along with market size, market accessibility, and quality of workforce

– Kentucky offered a state incentive package totaling 324 million; which equated to a per job cost of 108,000 dollars

Wallis (1989) Chapter 2“The Political Environment”

• Development issues are implicitly political issues• Political factors restricting development

1. Development not historically linked with central government guidance2. Political decisions do not ensure public compliance3. Politicians historically were either ignorant or reluctant to face internal and external problems4. Politicians historically were inexperienced in management5. Politicians not committed to general welfare6. State faced deep internal political divisions

Wallis (1989) Chapter 6“Public Enterprises”

• Def: public enterprise organization –"State intervention and ownership in economic institutions" in various "commercial, industrial, financial and agricultural concerns" (p. 101)

• Critical challenge: find the balance between political control and management autonomy (p. 106)

Wallis (Chapter 6) cont.

• Four types of public enterprise organization1. Departmental enterprise2. Public corporation3. State companies4. Operating contracts

Baker Chapter 17• “In response to severe budget deficits and declining

competitiveness of industries in many parts of the world, a heated debate has raged over what role, if any, governments should play in improving the international competitiveness of their nation’s industries” (paged 249).

• President’s Clinton, Bush, and Reagan in the US and PMs Major and Thatcher have tried different approaches to their respective economic and industrial problems and have enjoyed very little success in changing the tide.

• Germany, Japan, and Korea, on the other hand, have been much more successful in competing in a global economy.

Baker Chapter 17 cont…• To understand how government decisions on industrial

policy are developed one must understand the interactions between government, bureaucracies, and business interest groups.

• The structure and operation of these interactions are culture-bound and tied to a country’s institutions and history.

• Japan, as a more traditional and closed society with a close working relationship between government and industry has developed organized industrial policies that strongly benefit business

• The US conversely, has a more open society with looser ties between government and industry and has less cohesive industrial policies.

Peters (1988)Chapter 3 "Organizations as the Building Blocks of Government"

• Public administration is essentially "a collection of organizations" (p. 61)

• Focus on organizational change• Explores the succession of one type of

organization over another• Def: succession - "act by which a previous policy,

program, or organization is replaced by a 'new' one directed at the same problem and/or clientele" (Hogwood and Peters, 1983: 17-18)

Peters (1988) cont.

• Different types of organizational life/change (p. 83)1. Initiations2. Maintenance3. Termination4. Succession

BUREAUCRATIC DYSFUNCTION AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Barzelay (1992) Chapter 6

• Explores diagnosing staff/line troubles• Outlines strategies for problem solving• Solution: define problems as failures of

accountability• “Troubles along the staff/line frontier are more

likely to derive from malleable organizational cultures, constraints, incentives, and routines than from seemingly immutable factors such as human nature or individual personality traits" (p. 91)

Diagnosing and Solving Staff/Line Problems

• Problems1. Weak accountability2. Misplaced accountability3. Misguided accountability

• Solutions1. Strengthen accountability2. Redirect accountability3. Expand accountability

Hummel – The Bureaucratic Experience (1994)

• Bureaucracies are made to operate as thinking machines, much like a computer

• To work in a bureaucracy one must learn to reason by analogy – to understand how cases adhere to the program model

• Not following the rules or program model is viewed as wrong

• Logic versus sensibility• Example from chapter page 191: “I was working with two helpers laying

out a ditch for a plumbing line. It was a hot day, and one of the guys was a little guy, about 150 pounds, and the ground was hard. So I set him to doing something else and I helped dig the ditch. I got written up for that: inappropriate supervision.”

Hummel cont.• When sensibility is ignored it has disastrous

results:– Teton Dam collapse– Space Shuttle

• Hummel sees the major problem with the separation of thinking and doing.

• Immanuel Kant was the first to be critical of a split between the function of being in touch with reality and the function of analyzing what we are in touch with: the split between knowing and thinking.

Hummel cont.

• On program evaluation:– The scientist and management focus on logic and

models reduces them to technicians who become preoccupied with technique.

– Concern for the appropriateness of the model they use or its impact on the reality they study recedes into the background.

– Programs and policies are predesigned blueprints that are bureaucratically administered and accountable primarily for rule following. This says nothing about the outcome of the program itself.