Executive Politics: The Dilemmas of the President Professor Jonathan Day The Presidency (POLS 318)

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

Paper Assignment

Handout

Next Class

Read Chapter 6, “Executive Politics” in Politics of the Presidency