The "Bureaucracy Problem"

James Q Wilson 315

55

THE RISE OF THE

BUREAUCRATIC STATE

James

Q.

Wilson

During its firsr

ISO

ye,lrs, the American republic WClS nor rhoughr [() have "hure,lLI-cracy," and thus it would h,we heen meaninglcss to refer ro the "prololems" of a "hu-re<lucrCltic st,1(e" There were, of course, ,lppoil)ted civilian officials: Though only about 3,000 at the end of the Federalist period, rhere were ,lhout 95,000 by rhe time Grover Clevel,md ;1.';sumed office in 1881, ,md nearly h'llf a million loy 1925. Some ,lspects of these numerous officiClls were regarJed as prololems-notahly, the st<1ndmd hy which they were apfloinred and the politiGllloyalties (() which rhey were hcld-hut rhese were thought to be marters of proper chardeter ,llld good management The grear rolitical ,mJ constitutional srruggles were nor over the power of rbe adminis-trative app;lr,ltus, hut over the power of the I)resicienr, of Congress, and of (he stares.

depart-316 The Bureaucracy

wholly subordinate to the President or whether instead they should form some sort

of council that would advise the Presidenrand perhaps share in his authority. In the

end, the Founders left it up to Congress to decide the matter.

There was no dispute in Congress thm there shoul;l he executive departments,

headed by single appointed officials, dnd, of course, the Constitution specified that these would he appointed by the President with the advice and conscnt of the Sen-ate. The llnly issue was how such officials might he removed. After prolonged de

-bate and hy the narrowest of m<Jjmities, Cllngress agreed that the President should have the sole right of remov,d, thus confirming that the infant administrative

sys-tem would he wholly suhordinate -in law dt least- to the Presi(it:m. Had not

Vice-President Juhn Adams, presiding over a Senate equally divided on the issue, cast the deciding vote in f,lVor of presidenti,lI removal, the administrmivc departments

might conceivahly have hecome leg,ll dependencies of the legislature, with incalcu

-lahle consequences for the development of Lhe emhryonic government.

The "Bureaucracy Problem"

The origin,li dep<Jrtments were small and hml limited duties. The State Depart

-ment, the first to he created, had hut nine empluyees in addirion to rhe Secretary.

The War Department did not reach 80 civilian employees until 1801; it com

-manded only a few thousand soldiers. Only the Treasury Department had substan

-tial powers- i t collected taxes, managed the puhlic deht, ran the n(1tional hank,

conducted land surveys, and purchased military supplies. Because of this, Congress gave the closest scrutiny to its structure and its 'lCtiviries.

The numher of administrative <lgencies and employees grew slowly but steadily

during the 19th and early 20th centuries and then increased explosively on the

occasion of World War I, the Depression, and World War

IJ

.

It is difficult to say

at what point in this process the administrative system became a distinct locus of power or eln independent source of political initiatives and problems. What is clear is that the emphasis on the sheer size of the administrative establishment -conventional in many treatments of the subject- is misleading.

The government can spend vast sums llf money- wisely or unwisely-without creating that set of conditions we ordinarily associate with the hllreatlcr:-lric S\,HC.

For example, there could be massive transfer payments made under government

auspices from person to person or from state to state, all managed hy a compar

a-tively small staff of officials and a few large computers. In 1971, the federal govern-ment paid out $54 billion under various social insurance progn1ms, yet th~ Social

Security Administration employs only 73,000 persons, many of whot11 perform purely routine johs.

And though it may be harder to believe, the government could in principle

employ an army of civilian personnel widlOut giving rise to those organizational

patterns that we call hureaucmtic. Suppose, for instance, that we as <1 nation should decide to have in the public schools at least one teacher for every two students.

This would require a vast increase in the numher of teachers and schoolrooms, hut

almost all of the persons added would be performing more or less identical tasks.

J~mcs Q. Wilson 317

and they could he organized into very small units (e.g., neighhorhooJ schouts).

Though there would be significant overhead costs, most citizens would not be aware of any increase in the "hureaucratic" aspects of education-indeed, owing (0 the much greater time each teacher would have to devote tn each pupil and his or her parents, the citizenry might well conclude that there actually had heen a s

ub-stantial reducrion in the amount of "hure'lucracy."

To the reader predisposed to believe that we have a "bureaucracy prohlem," these hypothetical cases may seem farfetched. Max Weber, afrer all, warned us that in capitalist and socialist societies alike, hureaucracy was likely to acquire an "ove

r-towering" power position. Conservatives have always feared bureaucracy, save per

-haps the police. Humane soci,llists have frequently heen embarrassed by their inability to reconcile <1 desire for public control of the economy with the suspicion that a public bureaucracy may he (1S immune ro democraric control ;.lS a priv<ne one.

Liherals have equivocated, either dismissing any concern for bureaucracy as reac -tionary quihbling about social progress or embracing that concern when obviously

non reactionary persons (welfare recipients, for example) express a view wward the Dep;\rtment of Health and Human Services indistinguishahle from the view husi

-nessmen take of the Internal Revenue Service.

Political Authority

There arc at least three ways in which political power may he gathered undesirahly

into bureaucratic h'lllds: by the growth of an ,1dminisrrative apparatus so large as to

he immune fmlll popular control, by pl,]cing p(lWer over a governmentHl hureaucracy of any size in private rather than public hands, or hy vesting discretionmy authority in the hands of <1 public agency so that the exercise of that powcr is not responsive ro tbe public good. These arc not the only problems thelt arise because (If hureaucr,ltic

organization. From the point of view of their memhers, bureaucracies are sometimes

uncaring, ponderous, or unfair; from the point of view of their political superiors,

they are sometimes unimaginative or inefficient; from the point (If view of their clients, Lhey are sometimes slow or unjllst. No single account can possibly treat all

that is prohlematic in bureaucracy; even the parr I discuss here -the extent to which politiC<ll authority has been transferred undesirahly to an unaccllllnr,)ble ;' ldminisrra-tive realm- is itsclf too large for a single essay. But it is, if not the most important prohlem, then surely the one rhat would most have trouhled our Revolutionary lead -ers, especially those that went on to produce the Constitution. It was, after all, the

question of power that chiefly concerned them, hoth in redefining our relationship with England and in finding a new basis for p(llitical (Iuthority in the Clllonies.

To some, following in the tradition of [Max] Wcher, bureaucracy is the in

-evitable consequence and perhaps necessary concomitant of modernity. A money

economy, the division of labor, and the evolution of legal-rational norms to justify

organizational authority require the efficient adaptation of means wends and <1

318 The Bureaucrilcy

private organizations-political parties, trade unions, voluntary associations-will

have an add itional reason to become bureaucratic as well.

By viewing bureducracy as an inevitable (or, 8S some would put it, "functional")

aspect of society, we find ourselves attracted to theories that explain the growth of bureaucracy in terms of some inner dynamic to which all agencies respond and which makes all barely governable and scarcely tolerable. Bureaucracies grow, we are told, because of Parkinson's Law: Work and personnel expand to consume the available resources. Bureaucracies behave, we believe, in accord with various other

maxims, such as the Peter Principle: In hierarchical organizations, personnel are

promoted up to that point at which theif incompetence becomes manifest-hence,

all important positions arc held by incompetents. More elegant, if not essentially

different, theories have been propounded by scholars. The tendency of all bureaus to expand is explained by William A. Niskanen by the assumption, derived from

the theory of the finn, that "bureaucrats maximize the total budget of their bureau

during their renure"- hence, "all bureaus are too large." What keeps them from

being not merely wo large but all-consuming is that fact that a bureau must deliver to some degree on its promised output, and if it consistently underdelivers, its bud

-get will be cut by unhappy legislators. But since measuring the Output of a bureau is

often difficult-indeed, even conceptualizing rhe output of the State Department is

mind-boggling-the bureau has a great deal of freedom within which to seek the

largest possible budget.

Such theories, botb the popular (mel the scholmly, assign little importance to the

narure of the tasks an agency performs, the constitutional framework in which it is

embedded, or the preferences and attitudes of citizens and legislators. Our approach

will be quite differem: Differem agencies will be examined in historical perspective to discover the kinds of problems-if any, to which theif operations give rise, and how

those problems were affected- perhaps determined-by the tasks which they were assigned, the political system in which they operated, and the preferences they were

required to consult. What follows will

be

far from a systematic treatment of such ma

t-ters, and even farther from a rigorous testing of any rheory of bureaucratization. Our

knowledge of agency history and behavior is roo sketchy to permit that.

Bureaucracy and Size

During the first half of the 19th cenrury, the growth in the size of the federal bu-reaucracy can be explained, not by the assumption of new tasks by the governmem

or by the imperialistic designs of the managers of existing tasks, but by the addition

to existing bureaus of personn.el performing essentially routine, repetitive tasks for which the public demand was great and unavoidable. The principal problem facing a bureaucracy thus enlarged was how best to coordinate its activities toward given

and noncontroversial ends.

The increase in the size of the executive branch of the federal government at this time was almost entirely the result of the increase in the size of the Post Office.

From 1816 to l861, federal civilian employment in the executive branch increased

_."._.~1 ... ~:~L ... r ... I..J IL_~ ... !1 01'7 .... .--.. 'It:.. I-..""},\ t...", .... Qt:.. ... '"-... ,"""'~ ",(t-t....; .. ,vr,.-..I"t-h "'0C" rh.r.-rOclltt"

James Q. Wilson 319

of additions to the postal service. The POSt Office Department was expanding as

population and commerce expanded. By 1869 there were 27,000 post offices sca t-tered around the nation; by 1901, nearly 77,000. In New York alone, by 1894 there

were nearly 3,000 postal employees, the same number required to run the entire

federal government at the beginning of that century.

The Military Establishment

Not all large bmeallcracies grow in response to demands for service. The Depart

-ment of Defense, since 1941 the largesr employer of federal civilian officials, has b e-come, as the governmental keystone of the "military-industrial complex," the very

archetype of an administrative entity that is thought to be so vast and so well

-entrenched thar it C,111 Virtually ignore the political branches of government, growing

and even acting on the basis of its own inner imperatives .. .

A "Military-Industrial Complex"?

The argument for the existence of an autonomous, bureaucratically led military-industrial complex is sup[lorted primarily by events since 1950. Not only has the United States dS:iumed during this period worldwide commitments that necessitate

a larger military establishment, but the advent of new, high-technology weapons

has created a vast industrial machine with an interest in sustaining a high level of military expenditures, especially on weapons research, development, and acquisi-tion. This machine, so the argument goes, is allied with the Pentagon in ways that dominate the political officials nominally in charge of the armed forces. There

is some truth in all this. We have become a world military force, though that

deci-sion W,15 millie by elected officials in 1949-1950 and not dictated by a (then non

ex-istent) military-industrial complex. High-cost, high-technology weapons have

become important and a number of industrial concerns will prosper or perish de-pending on how contracts for those weapons are let. The development and pur-chase of weapons is sometimes made in a wasteful, even irrational, m(1l"lner. And the allocation of funds among the several armed services is often dictated as much

by inter-service rivalry as by strategic or political decisions.

Bureaucracy and Clientelism

After l861, the growth in the federal administrative system could no longer be ex

-plained primanly by an expansion of the postal service and other traditional

bu-reaus. Though these continued to expand, new departments were added that

ref1ected a new (or at least greater) emphasis on the enlargement of the scope of

government. Between 1861 and 1901, over 200,000 civilian employees were added

320 The Bureaucracy

of course, staffed (1 lmger military "nd naval establishment stimulated by the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. By 1901 there were over 44,000 civilian de

-fense employees, mostly workers in government-owned arsenals and sh ipyards. But

even those could account for less than one fourth of the increase in employment

during the preceding 40 years.

What was striking ahout the period after 1861 was that the government hegan

to give formal, hureaucratic recognition to the emergence of distinctive interest in a diversifying economy. As Richard L. Schott has written, "whereas earlier federal

departments had heen formed around specialized governmental functions (foreign

affairs, war, finance, and the like), the new departments of this period-Agriculture. Lahor, and Commerce-were devoted to the interests and aspirations of particular

economic groups."

The original purpose behind these clientele-oriented departments was neither to suhsidize nor to regulate, hut to promote, chiefly by gathering and puhlishing sta

-tistics and (especi<llly in the case of agriculture) hy rese'lrch . . . .

Public Power and Private Interests

. The New Deal was perhaps the high water mark of at least the theory of hu

-reaucratic clientclism. Not only did various sectors of society, notably agriculture,

hegin receiving massive suhsidies. hut the government proposed, through the N

a-tional Industry Recovery Act (NIRA) to cloak with puhlic power il vast numher of

industrial groupings and trade associations so that they might control production

and prices in ways that would end the Depression. The NIRA's Blue Eagle fell

he-fore the Supreme Court-the wholesale delegation of puhlic power to private int er-ests was declared unconstitutional. But the piecemeal delegation was not, as the continued growth of specialized promotional agencies attests. The Civil

Aeronau-tics Board, for example, erroneou~ly thought to he exclusively a regubtory agency,

was formed in 1938 "to promote" as well as regulate civil aviation and it has done

so hy restricting entry and maintaining ahove-market rate fares.

Agriculture, of course, provides the leading case of clientelism. Theodore J. Lowi

finds "at least 10 separate, autonomous, local self-governing systems" located in or closely associated with the Department of Agriculture that control to some signifi -cant degree the flow of hill ions of dollars in expenditures and loans. Local commit-tee~ of farmers, private farm organizations, agency heads, and committee chairmen in

Congress dominate policymaking in this area-nor, perhaps, to the exclusion of the

concerns of other ruhlics, hut certainly in ways not powerfully constrained hy them.

"Cooperative

Federalism"

The growing edge of client-oriented bureaucracy can he found, however, not in

government relations with private groups, hut in the relations among governmen

-tal units

. .

. In dollar volume, the chief clients of federal domestic expenditures are ,

James Q. Wilson 321

The degree to which such grants, and the federal agencies that administer

them, constrain or even direct state and local bureaucracies is a matter of dispute.

No general answer can be given-federal support of welfare programs has left con'

siderable discretion in the hands of the states over the size of henefits and some dis-cretion over eligibility rules, whereas federal support of highway construction

carries with it specific requiremems as to design, safety, and (since 1968) e

nviron-mental and social imp<lCt.

A few generalizations are possible, however. The first is that the states and not

the cities have heen from the first, and remain today, the princip<ll client group for grants-in-aid. It was not until the Housing Act of 1937 that money W<lS given in

any substantial amount directly to local governments and though many ildditional

programs of this kind were later added, as Idte as 1970 less than 12 percent of <III federal aid went directly to cities and towns. The second general observation is that

the

196

0s

mark a major watershed in the way in which the purposes of federal aid

are determined. Before that time. most grants were for purposes initially defined hy

states-to huild highw,lYs and airports, to fund unemployment insurance programs,

<lnd the like. Beginning in the 1960s, the fedeml governmenr, at the initiative of the President and his advisors, increasingly Cilme to define the purposes of these

grants-not nece~satily over the ohjection of the states, but ofEen without ilny ini

-tiative from them. Federal money WilS to be spent on poverty, ecology, planning,

<md other "national" goals for which, until the laws were passed, there were few, if

any, well-organized and influential consrituencies. Whereas federal money was

once spent in response to the clclims of distinct and orgilnized clients, puhlic or pri

-vate, in the contemporary period federill money has increaSingly heen spenr in ways that have created such clients.

And once rewarded or created, they are rarely penalized or aholished ..

Self-Perpetuating Agencies

If the Founding Fathers were ro return to examine bllreaucrmic clientelism, they

would, I suspec't, be deeply discouraged. James Madison clearly foresaw thilt Ameri-can society would he "broken into many parts, interests and classes of citizens" and

that this "multiplicity of interest" would help ensure ;]gainst "the tyranny of the

ma-jority," especially in a federal regime with separate branches of government. Posi,

tive action would require a "coalition of a majority"; in the process of forming this

coalition, the rights

of

all would he protected, not merely by self-interested

har-gains, hut because in a free society such a coalition "could seldom take place on any

other principles than those of justice and the gener<ll good." To those who wrongly

helieved that Madison thought of men ilS acting only out of hasc motives, the

phrase is instructive: Persuading men who disagree to compromise their differences

can rarely be achieved solely hy the parceling out of rc\ative advantage; the helief is

also required that what is heing agreed to is right, proper, and defensible before puh

-lic opi.nion.

322 The I:lure~ucr~cy

gener,ll swndards of Justicc or [() cllncertillns of thc ruolic weal. This is certClinly

the «-he with most of the New De;lllcgislation-l1nt<lhly slich progr<lms ,IS Soci,tI Security-and with most Grcat Society legisl<ltion-notahly Mcdicilrc ,md aid to educ<ltion; it W,lS 81so conspicuously the case with respect to rost-Grcat Society lcgisl8tion pen<lin ing [() consumer ,lnd environmental concerns. St,nc occupation(ll licensing l<lwS were supported hy majoritics instc,ld in, Cllllllng other things, the co n-trihution of thcse statutes [() ruolic s,lfety ;tnd health.

Rut when ,1 progr,lm supplies particul,n henefits to ,In existing or newly creatcd interest, ruhiic or rriv,lte, it creatcs a sct of politiGtI rei<nionshirs that make cxcep-tion;dly difficult further alter,Hioll of th,H program hy co,ditions of the m'ljority. What was crc<ned in rhc 1I<1Ine of thc common good is sust,lined in thc n;)me of the rmticular intercst. Rure;wcratic clientelisll1 hecomes sclf-rerretuating, in the ,10

-sence of some crisis or scmdal, heGllIse <1 sinu:1c interest grollr to which the progr,lm m,Hters ,greatly is highly 1ll0tiv;1[cd and wcll-situated to w,lrd off the criticisms of other groups th,lt h,lVc ,I hmad Out wcak interest ill the policy.

III short, ,1 regime of separcHed rowcrs m,lkcs it difficult to overcome ohjectill\1s ;llld cmltr;)ry imerests sufficiently to permit the en,lctment llf ,I new progr,lln or the cre,nion of a new agcncy. Unless the legislation cm he 1ll;lde [(l pass either with little

notice or ,It ,I time of crisis or extmordinmy IllrlJorities-and sometimes even then-the initiation of new progr,lllls requires puhlic interest arguments. Rut the "line regime works to protcct clgencic;, once creclted, fmm unwelcome ch,lllge hec<luse ~1 m,ljl'r ch'lllge is, in

effect,

new legislation that must overcomc the s,lme hurdk,,, ,IS the nrigin<ll LIW, hut this rimc with one

()f

the hurdles-tile wishes of rhe ,Igency ,md its client-raised much higher. As ,I result, the Madisonian system Illakes it rci,ltivciV e,lSY for the deicgatilln of public power to privme groups to go unch,llienged Zlnd, therefore, for facrion(ll intere~ts that have ,lCquired ,I surrortive puhlic hure;llicracy 1'0 rule without sliomittin,g their interests to the effective scrutiny and modification of orher interests.

o---James Q. Wilson ---- The Rise of the Bureaucratic State

1. What is the "bureaucracy problem?"

2. What are ways in which political power "may be gathered undesirably into

bureaucratic hands?"