The executive office consists of fifteen departments, as shown by the table on the next page. Each department is headed by a secretary. The president must oversee the executive bureaucracy, which includes what are known as line organizations, or the federal agencies that report directly to the president.
The fifteen cabinet departments are line organizations. Political scientists sometimes refer to modern presidents as managerial presidents because they spend so much time overseeing and managing the bureaucracy.
Independent executive agencies are line organizations that do not fall under the control of any one department. Presidents often like new agencies to be independent so that they have more direct control over them.
Congress decides how to fit new independent executive agencies within the existing bureaucracy. The government needs money to function, so generating revenue is crucial.
A number of different federal agencies are revenue agencies: They raise money by collecting taxes and fees. The most notorious revenue agency is the Internal Revenue Service, but it is not the only one.
The Department of the Interior, for example, collects fees from people who use national parks. Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation. New World Encyclopedia. Wealth Management. Real Estate Investing.
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Your Money. Personal Finance. Your Practice. Popular Courses. Economy Economics. Table of Contents Expand. What Is a Bureaucracy? How a Bureaucracy Works. Bureaucracy, Governance, Admin. Criticisms of a Bureaucracy. Example of Bureaucracy. Origins of the Word Bureaucracy. What Is a Bureaucrat? Most Common Characteristics. The Bottom Line. Key Takeaways The word bureaucracy implies a complex structure with multiple layers and procedures. The systems that are put in place under a bureaucracy make decision-making slow.
Bureaucracies can render systems formal and rigid, which is needed when following safety procedures is critical. The term bureaucracy is often criticized and deemed negative because of the implication that procedures are more important than efficiency. Procedural correctness is paramount within a bureaucracy. Article Sources. Investopedia requires writers to use primary sources to support their work.
These include white papers, government data, original reporting, and interviews with industry experts. Postal Service. Once a cabinet department, it was transformed into a government corporation in the early s. Another widely used government corporation is the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, which uses the trade name Amtrak.
Recognizing the need to maintain a passenger rail service despite dwindling profits, the government consolidated the remaining lines and created Amtrak. Had the U. Those who work for the public bureaucracy are nearly always citizens, much like those they serve. As such they typically seek similar long-term goals from their employment, namely to be able to pay their bills and save for retirement.
However, unlike those who seek employment in the private sector, public bureaucrats tend to have an additional motivator, the desire to accomplish something worthwhile on behalf of their country. In general, individuals attracted to public service display higher levels of public service motivation PSM. This is a desire most people possess in varying degrees that drives us to seek fulfillment through doing good and contributing in an altruistic manner. In Caught between the Dog and the Fireplug, or How to Survive Public Service , author Kenneth Ashworth provides practical advice for individuals pursuing a career in civil service.
He goes on to discuss hot topics centering on bureaucratic behaviors, such as 1 having sound etiquette, ethics, and risk aversion when working with press, politicians, and unpleasant people; 2 being a subordinate while also delegating; 3 managing relationships, pressures, and influence; 4 becoming a functional leader; and 5 taking a multidimensional approach to addressing or solving complex problems.
Ashworth says that politicians and civil servants differ in their missions, needs, and motivations, which will eventually reveal differences in their respective characters and, consequently, present a variety of challenges.
He maintains that a good civil servant must realize he or she will need to be in the thick of things to provide preeminent service without actually being seen as merely a bureaucrat. Put differently, a bureaucrat walks a fine line between standing up for elected officials and their respective policies—the dog—and at the same time acting in the best interest of the public—the fireplug.
In what ways is the problem identified by author Kenneth Ashworth a consequence of the merit-based civil service? Bureaucrats must implement and administer a wide range of policies and programs as established by congressional acts or presidential orders. Bureaucrats are government officials subject to legislative regulations and procedural guidelines. Because they play a vital role in modern society, they hold managerial and functional positions in government; they form the core of most administrative agencies.
Although many top administrators are far removed from the masses, many interact with citizens on a regular basis. Given the power bureaucrats have to adopt and enforce public policy, they must follow several legislative regulations and procedural guidelines. A regulation is a rule that permits government to restrict or prohibit certain behaviors among individuals and corporations.
Bureaucratic rulemaking is a complex process that will be covered in more detail in the following section, but the rulemaking process typically creates procedural guidelines , or more formally, standard operating procedures. These are the rules that lower-level bureaucrats must abide by regardless of the situations they face. Elected officials are regularly frustrated when bureaucrats seem not follow the path they intended.
As a result, the bureaucratic process becomes inundated with red tape. This is the name for the procedures and rules that must be followed to get something done. Citizens frequently criticize the seemingly endless networks of red tape they must navigate in order to effectively utilize bureaucratic services, although these devices are really meant to ensure the bureaucracies function as intended.
To understand why some bureaucracies act the way they do, sociologists have developed a handful of models. With the exception of the ideal bureaucracy described by Max Weber, these models see bureaucracies as self-serving.
Harnessing self-serving instincts to make the bureaucracy work the way it was intended is a constant task for elected officials. One of the ways elected officials have tried to grapple with this problem is by designing different types of bureaucracies with different functions. Government bureaucrats perform a wide variety of tasks. We often think of bureaucrats as paper-pushing desk clerks, but bureaucrats fight fires, teach, and monitor how federal candidates raise money, among other activities.
The job of a bureaucrat is to implement government policy, to take the laws and decisions made by elected officials and put them into practice.
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