ADMINISTRATORS AND THE POLICY PROCESS
The classical view of constitutional democracy does not have much to say about bureaucracy and public administration. Congress and other legislative bodies, we are told, follow the wishes of the citizenry and make the laws, while the president, governor, mayor, and other executives, under the watchful eye of the courts, implement laws. To the extent they are recognized at all, public administrators are understood to be somewhere in the background, working under the direct control of the executive to carry out the technical details of legislation. Elected officials make policy; administrators simply administer it.
This is not a very accurate description of the actual relationship between politics and administration in the United Statesâor anywhere, for that matter. It seriously understates the role of public administrators in the governmental process. Administrators do not just carry out policy; they make policy. Indeed, few areas of life are untouched by administrative decisions. From highway safety and the regulation of oil drilling to the processing of Social Security checks and student loans, public administrators make choices that have significant effects on all of us.
The term that we use to describe the latitude or freedom that administrators have to act on their own is administrative discretion. How is it that administrators have come to exercise such discretion? The U.S. Constitution and equivalent documents in other countries, after all, create no such role for them. The main reason is the complexity of modern government. It is no longer possible (and perhaps no longer desirable) for legislators and other elected officials to issue precise and detailed instructions to administrators about many questions of public policy. Even if they were so inclined, they have neither the time nor the expertise to do so. Consequently, they rely on administrators. Although legislatures still try to set the broad goals of public policy (e.g., âair transportation should be as safe as possibleâ), they often leave it to professional administrators to make the rules that give the policy meaning (e.g., âairlines must install seats and carpeting made only of noncombustible materialsâ).
Policy decisions are seldom self-implementing. Administrators are the ones who actually have to get their hands dirty and put decisions into effect. They have to identify and clean up toxic waste dumps, plan soil conservation projects, manage job training schemes, and fly reconnaissance aircraft. Even given clear goals and even absent formal delegations of authority, administrators cannot do these jobs without exercising considerable discretion. No statuteâno matter how detailedâno rule bookâno matter how thickâcan anticipate all contingencies and program all administrative actions.
Administrators not only exercise discretion in implementing existing laws, but they also play a key role in the development of new laws and policies. Bureaucracies are the eyes and ears of government. It is often the bureaucracy that first becomes aware of problems in need of governmental attention. The administrator who defines a problem and structures the information on which a decision is made has a subtle, though powerful, impact on the decision itself. For example, an employee in a department of transportation that notices that police are issuing a high number of speeding tickets in a particular location couldâor could notâidentify this to his or her superiors as a problem. If it is considered a problem, it could be defined as an issue of law enforcement (speed trap?), safety (need stop lights, speed bumps, roundabouts, or road redesign to slow traffic), or traffic flow (speed limit is too low). Although politicians in an open society have multiple sources of informationâ the press, interest groups, and individual citizensâpublic administrators occupy a strategic position.
The point of this analysis is very simple: Administrators are key actors in American government. Directly and indirectly, formally and informally, they make decisions and take actions that fundamentally shape the character and direction of public policy. The essence of public administration is problem solving. This implies that we, as students of public administration, need to pay close attention to the processes of administrative policy formulation and implementation. Administrators use specific techniques that, ideally, ensure that decision making proceeds in orderly and rational ways. The exercises in Part I introduce some of these techniques.
FURTHER READING
An excellent text and reference for policy analysis is David L. Weimer and Aidan R. Vining, Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2010). Useful overviews of the role of public administrators in the political process are Emmette S. Redford, Democracy in the Administrative State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969); Kenneth J. Meier and Lawrence OâToole, Bureaucracy in a Democratic State: A Governance Perspective (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); and John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 2002). For a classic analysis of the roots and implications of administrative power, see Norton E. Long, âPower and Administration,â Public Administration Review 9 (Autumn 1949), pp. 8â27. Mark H. Moore, Creating Public Value (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), draws on case studies to discuss administrative discretion and the role administrators can and do play in policy making. Paul A. Sabatier offers a broadly theoretical overview of policy making in Theories of the Policy Process, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2007).