⇒ The Federal Bureaucracy is the unelected, administrative body in the Executive Branch. It is the back bone of the US Government.

⇒ It is arranged into departments, agencies and commissions.

⇒ The main function of the Federal Bureaucracy, is to carry out the policy and work on the finer details of the bills passed by Congress

⇒ The bureaucracy has 2.7 million employees, has a $13.8 billion payroll, and is divided into roughly 900 departments. Of all the employees in Washing DC, 11% of the them will work for the Federal Bureaucracy.

⇒ 1. Clientelism - Agencies tend to serve the interests of those they are supposed to oversee, protecting them at the expense of the broader public interest

⇒ 2. Imperialism - Agencies invariably seek to expand their power and responsibilities at the expense of other agencies and programmes, notwithstanding the issue of how public needs are best met

⇒ 3. Parochialism - bureaucracies tend to focus narrowly on their own goals rather than the 'big picture' of government or the national interest as a whole

⇒ 4. Incrementalism - Most bureaucratic agencies are not renowned for creative or imaginative operations, instead acting slowly and cautiously, generally resisting major changes

⇒ 5. Arbitrariness - in applying abstract rules to concrete cases, agencies often ignore the concerns or specific merits of those affected by the rules

⇒ 6. Waste - given their size and routinised procedures and them not being driven by the profit motive, bureaucracies tend to use resources less efficiently than private sector organisations

⇒ Three reasons to doubt whether bureaucratic obstructionism, when it occurs, derives from overt partisan or ideological motivations

• 1. Representativeness - Most political scientists concur that bureaucrats political views tend on the whole to mirror the broad American public (Americans currently are fairly evenly divided in party loyalties, but partisanship is becoming more pronounced)
• 2. Respect for domestic values - if their elected leaders are republicans or democrats, they'll follow accordingly. Federal bureaucrats tend to vest both their own neutrality and domestic values more broadly with great significance
• 3. Professionalism - many federal bureaucrats are well-educate specialists in technical and managerial positions who take their responsibilities seriously, rather than partisans. Whether the incumbent is democrat or republican, most bureaucrats readily receive advice and guidance from elected officials and act in ways consistent with their professional training

⇒ Also see our notes on:

• Executive Power
• Cabinet
• EXOP and Congress
• Other Checks