The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush by Judith E. Michaels Page B
Authors: Judith E. Michaels
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in more-or-less creative tension with the institution of democracy in this country. While career executives might be seen to represent the former, political executives who serve at the pleasure of the democratically elected president represent the latter. It is the interaction of the career professionals with the democratic controls of the political appointees that keeps the political dynamic alive.
There is a careful sense of interplay and interdependence between these two institutions of bureaucracy and democracy as represented by their practitioners, the career and political executives. Bureaucracy thrives on the democratic values of openness, fairness, and achievement. Neutral competence is its highest standard. Democracy depends on the public service ethic and administrative expertise to bring to fruition its commitment to the common good through exercise of responsive competence.
Bureaucracy and democracy are two of the great political forces of the modern age. That [their] growth has been parallel seems paradoxical, as they appear wholly opposed in spirit; the former requires hierarchy, order, and technical expertise, the latter equality, freedom, and participation. While these conflicts should not be minimized, neither should they obscure the common heritage and continuing interdependence of these forces. Both bureaucracy and democracy, as Max Weber, the great German sociologist, observed, rest on the Enlightenment impulse to law and reason, on the rejection of traditional, ascriptively based systems of authority. And more to the point, neither force can survive and prosper without the other. Just as true bureaucracy thrives on the democratic values of achievement, fairness, and unfettered information, so is bureaucracy a fundamental requisite of modern democratic government. Absent the administrative capacity to give them substance, public policies in pursuit of the public good, as articulated by elected representatives, can be no more than feeble and sterile avowals of intent. (Huddleston 1987, 79)
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However, neither bureaucracy nor democracy operates in a political vacuum; they both relate to and influence one another with sometimes adverse effects. Depoliticization and debureaucratization take place simultaneously in the government as a result of this reciprocal relationship and both constitute a danger to the higher federal service.
Depoliticization, or movement away from the president's policy agenda, happens when appointees seek to get deeply involved in the daily workings of their agency and to micromanage the work of the career people they supervise. The more involved they become, the more they take on the perspective of their agency and the less responsive they become to the president who appointed them.
Debureaucratization happens when the White House responds to political executives' distancing by trying to exert more control over the top career levels. The result is that the careerists then tend to identify more with the policies and purposes of the executive and to move away from the career standard of neutral competence.
This scenario has political and career executives taking on each other's characteristics and passing one another in the wrong directions. While its degree of accuracy may be a point of debate, the theory does raise important questions because the ability of the two groups to associate with one another with integrity and to work cooperatively relates directly to the quality of government the citizens receive.
The political agenda of the president and his appointees emerges as a key factor in the roles-and-relationships issue, as can be seen in the ferocity of the policy conflicts that occasionally surface between political and career executives. However, despite the rhetoric of the Reagan administration and with some glaring exceptions from that era (e.g., EPA, DOE, FDA, Interior, Labor), political appointees are not generally independent policy actors within the bureaucratic
There is a careful sense of interplay and interdependence between these two institutions of bureaucracy and democracy as represented by their practitioners, the career and political executives. Bureaucracy thrives on the democratic values of openness, fairness, and achievement. Neutral competence is its highest standard. Democracy depends on the public service ethic and administrative expertise to bring to fruition its commitment to the common good through exercise of responsive competence.
Bureaucracy and democracy are two of the great political forces of the modern age. That [their] growth has been parallel seems paradoxical, as they appear wholly opposed in spirit; the former requires hierarchy, order, and technical expertise, the latter equality, freedom, and participation. While these conflicts should not be minimized, neither should they obscure the common heritage and continuing interdependence of these forces. Both bureaucracy and democracy, as Max Weber, the great German sociologist, observed, rest on the Enlightenment impulse to law and reason, on the rejection of traditional, ascriptively based systems of authority. And more to the point, neither force can survive and prosper without the other. Just as true bureaucracy thrives on the democratic values of achievement, fairness, and unfettered information, so is bureaucracy a fundamental requisite of modern democratic government. Absent the administrative capacity to give them substance, public policies in pursuit of the public good, as articulated by elected representatives, can be no more than feeble and sterile avowals of intent. (Huddleston 1987, 79)
Page 58
However, neither bureaucracy nor democracy operates in a political vacuum; they both relate to and influence one another with sometimes adverse effects. Depoliticization and debureaucratization take place simultaneously in the government as a result of this reciprocal relationship and both constitute a danger to the higher federal service.
Depoliticization, or movement away from the president's policy agenda, happens when appointees seek to get deeply involved in the daily workings of their agency and to micromanage the work of the career people they supervise. The more involved they become, the more they take on the perspective of their agency and the less responsive they become to the president who appointed them.
Debureaucratization happens when the White House responds to political executives' distancing by trying to exert more control over the top career levels. The result is that the careerists then tend to identify more with the policies and purposes of the executive and to move away from the career standard of neutral competence.
This scenario has political and career executives taking on each other's characteristics and passing one another in the wrong directions. While its degree of accuracy may be a point of debate, the theory does raise important questions because the ability of the two groups to associate with one another with integrity and to work cooperatively relates directly to the quality of government the citizens receive.
The political agenda of the president and his appointees emerges as a key factor in the roles-and-relationships issue, as can be seen in the ferocity of the policy conflicts that occasionally surface between political and career executives. However, despite the rhetoric of the Reagan administration and with some glaring exceptions from that era (e.g., EPA, DOE, FDA, Interior, Labor), political appointees are not generally independent policy actors within the bureaucratic
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