Leadership of Public Bureaucracies: The Administrator as Conservator

The Administrator as Conservator

Larry D. Terry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780765609595
• eBook ISBN: 9781317363491
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The revolution in public management has led many reformers to call for public managers to reinvent themselves as public entrepreneurs. Larry D. Terry opposes this view, and presents a normative theory of administrative leadership that integrates legal, sociological, and constitutional theory.

1
Bureaucratic Leadership in a Democratic Republic

AS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY begins, the United States is confronted with a host of complex problems that touch every segment of society. The nation’s urban communities are in crisis as homelessness, crime, and severe poverty continue to take their toll. Once again, our public education system is under attack. The embarrassing discovery that millions of adults are illiterate has stoked the fires of education reformers who believe that massive changes are needed for the United States to compete successfully in a rapidly changing, increasingly interdependent world. The number of Americans who lack adequate health care because of prolonged unemployment or underemployment has become a national disgrace as U.S. corporations continue to move their operations abroad. Although labor officials and the general public have expressed outrage over the loss of well-paying jobs and the displacement of thousands of blue-collar and white-collar workers, they seem virtually helpless in dissuading corporations from pursuing this “competitive” cost-saving strategy.

The nature and scope of these and countless other problems and the perception that public and private institutions are ineffective in solving them have sparked a renewed interest in leadership. Americans from Wall Street to Main Street are expressing dissatisfaction with the performance of leaders in government, business, and labor. In fact, it seems that the United States is in the midst of a leadership reform movement. From all indications, this movement is gaining momentum and has turned into a referendum on the quality of leadership in this country. A consensus is emerging that more effective leadership is needed to rescue the United States from the valleys of decline. There is a perception that if only leaders were up to the challenges, our complex problems would somehow disappear.

The Neglect of Bureaucratic Leadership

In all this talk about more effective leadership, the topic of bureaucratic leadership is conspicuously absent. By bureaucratic leadership, I mean institutional leadership in the administration of public bureaucracies within the executive branch of all levels of government.¹ More specifically, bureaucratic leadership is an active process that emanates from the executive branch and entails the exercise of power, authority, and strategic discretion in pursuit of the public interest.

The lack of scholarly interest in bureaucratic leadership seems odd given the prominent role of public bureaucracies in our democratic society. Even scholars in the fields of public administration and political science have focused little attention on leadership in public bureaucracies.² The question immediately comes to mind: Why has there been so little scholarly interest in the role and function of bureaucratic leaders? Jameson Doig and Erwin Hargrove (1987) offer several reasons. First, scholars (particularly political scientists) have emphasized the influence of interest groups in the public policy process. Second, a great deal of negative attention has been devoted to studying the consequences of “bureaucratic routine and institutional processes” (2). Third, political scientists and others in their quest to understand leaders have not experienced much success in discovering “regularities in the messy data of political life” (2). Fourth, influential scholars, most notably Herbert Kaufman (1981a), have perpetuated the belief that powerful forces beyond the control of individual leaders guide public bureaucracies. Career executives are viewed as making little difference in how their agencies perform.

Although Doig and Hargrove’s explanations seem reasonable enough, other reasons merit serious consideration. The neglect of bureaucratic leadership may arise from a combination of related factors, including Americans’ deeply rooted fear of bureaucracy, the myopia created by Progressive Era reforms and scientific management, and the unintended consequences of scholarly attempts to reconcile bureaucracy with democracy.

The Fear of Bureaucratic Power

The rise and expansion of public bureaucracies, especially at the national level, have generated a great deal of hostility toward public bureaucracies and career civil servants. Although such growth has been in response to a complex mixture of socioeconomic and political conditions, many view the expansion of public bureaucracies as a threat to democracy (see Crenson and Rourke 1987; Nelson 1982; Skowronek 1982). Public bureaucracies have been aggressively attacked by segments of the general public, the news media, the academic and business community, the judiciary, and the political establishment (see Meier 2000; West 1995). These attacks have contributed to a legitimacy crisis for public bureaucracies. James O. Freedman (1978) goes straight to the heart of the matter when he says that “the growth of the administrative process has raised troubling questions concerning its implications for the character of American democracy, the nature of American justice and the quality of American life” (260).

Although critics offer different arguments to substantiate their attacks, the fear of bureaucratic power is a common theme. Public bureaucracies are perceived as wielding too much power. Critics charge that career civil servants have accumulated vast amounts of power and thus are no longer responsive and accountable to elected political authorities. This so-called unaccountable power is regarded as incongruent with the values of the American democratic system.

The fear of governmental power is inextricably interwoven into the fabric of our society. As noted by Samuel P. Huntington (1981), the “opposition to power, and suspicion of government as the most dangerous embodiment of power are central themes in American political thought” (33; quoted in Kellerman 1984, 66; see also J.Q. Wilson 1975). Critics of bureaucracy quickly point out that the enormous power exercised by bureaucrats in the so-called fourth branch of government is incompatible with the constitutional design envisioned by the founders. They suggest that the founders did not anticipate nor would they approve of a powerful, largely autonomous political institution controlled by nonelected and non-politically appointed public officials. The founders were deeply concerned, so the argument goes, about the possibility of substantial power residing in one person or political institution. This explains their rejection of the notion of the president as “leader” as well as their preoccupation with the need to check the exercise of political power.³

Kenneth J. Meier (2000), a scholar who has devoted considerable attention to the issue of bureaucratic power, raises many of the aforementioned concerns. According to Meier, the bureaucracy has been transformed into a political institution. This transformation is the result of several factors, including the nature of American politics, which forced the legislative branch to share its policy-making powers with career public servants; the fragmentation of political power among governmental institutions; the task demands and organizational requirements of modem public policy; and the nature of the bureaucratic function that gives administrative officials considerable discretion in implementing public policy (see Meier, chap. 3). Meier contends that because the bureaucracy is indeed a fourth branch of government, its enormous power should be controlled and checked in a way similar to that of the other branches of government.

Meier is not alone in his concern about bureaucratic power. The ominous specter of a powerful, imperial bureaucracy controlled by a cadre of unaccountable technocrats has heightened the concerns of many other Americans as well. The fear of bureaucracy has become so pervasive that Herbert Kaufman (1981b) describes the situation as a “raging pandemic” (1). Antibureaucratic forces have responded to such fears by devising strategies to strip public bureaucracies of their power. These strategies include, among others, extensive politicization of bureaucracy; constant reorganization; extensive use of deregulation and budget, program, and personnel cuts to reduce the size of government; the exclusion of career executives from policy discussions and formal processes; and expansion of the size of both executive and legislative staffs to reduce the expertise gap between these branches of government and public bureaucracies (see Farazmand 1989; Lane and Wolf 1990; F.E. Rourke 1987). These strategies are guided by the assumption that severely reducing and tightly controlling the discretion and authority of administrative officials can curtail bureaucratic power.

Supporters of public bureaucracies contend that the aforementioned power-stripping strategies have caused serious long-term damage and have undermined the capacity of administrative institutions of government to serve the public good (e.g., Adams 1984; Rosen 1983, 1986; Piotrowski and Rosenbloom, forthcoming; Wildavsky 1988; Wolf 1987). Supporters argue that such strategies not only have weakened public institutions but also have relegated the notion of bureaucratic leadership to a meaningless status. Critics respond that the concept of bureaucratic leadership is a contradiction in terms and thus deserves the dubious status of oxymoron. Why should anyone be concerned about bureaucratic leaders if there is no need for them? After all, the weakening of public bureaucracies is intended to limit the power, authority, and strategic discretion of career executives. Moreover, because the founders were reluctant to use the term “leader” when referring to the president, an elected political official, it stands to reason that the notion of bureaucratic leadership would have little intellectual currency.

The Progressive Legacy

In addition to the fear of bureaucratic power, the Progressive legacy has contributed significantly to the neglect of bureaucratic leadership. Laurence O’Toole (1984) argues that American public administration is deeply rooted in the reform tradition. “American public administration,” writes O’Toole, “has retained an orthodoxy—an orthodoxy of reform—in its continuing series of attempts to reconcile the tensions which democracy and bureaucracy pose for each other” (143). O’Toole and other scholars attribute the reformist character of public administration to the Progressive Era, that seemingly optimistic period that gave birth to the self-conscious public administration movement (see Karl 1987; Stever 1988; Stivers 2000).

The Progressive Era stands as a paradox when examined from the perspective of bureaucratic leadership. Although this era had a positive influence on the development of American public administration, it also created a myopic outlook on the development of bureaucratic leadership theory. Progressive Era political reforms, especially those designed to make administration of public bureaucracies more “efficient” and “businesslike,” were largely antibureaucratic leadership in nature.

After the Civil War, the United States invested a substantial portion of its physical and intellectual resources in industrial and technological development. Although this investment yielded high returns in the form of material development, it was not without costs. In the eyes of many Progressive reformers, America’s addiction to material development had a devastating effect on the nation’s morality as well as on its natural resources.⁴ This reckless pursuit of materialism was considered dangerous; it placed the country on the brink of moral bankruptcy. The Progressives believed that immediate action was needed to save America and that the state should assume a primary role in this rescue operation.

Although Progressives were extremely critical of what they perceived as the moral deterioration of American institutions, they were by no means revolutionaries. Many reformers had a great deal of respect for institutions, especially governmental institutions, and favored reforms that would produce orderly social change. Because the Progressive movement relied heavily on a positive conception of liberalism in which the state played a primary role in achieving social progress, it became painfully clear to many reformers that the movement’s long-term success hinged on eliminating the political corruption that permeated every level of government. This realization prompted reformers to direct their energies to changing the political system.

Progressive political reform began at the municipal government level and spread rapidly to the state and national levels. Reformers sought sweeping changes in the processes by which political officials were selected as well as in the structure of government itself. The latter reforms are of special interest in this discussion because of their direct bearing on bureaucratic leadership.

Reformers intent on modifying the structure of government embraced efficiency as a normative criterion forjudging the “goodness” of government. They believed that “good government,” one free of graft and corruption, and “efficient government” were so closely linked that a distinction between the two was difficult to discern. It was generally presumed that a more efficient government would eliminate opportunities for dishonesty (see Karl 1963, especially chap. 1).

Progressive reformers were not always consistent in their use or application of the term “efficiency.” When political reformers spoke of efficiency, however, they usually meant commercial efficiency, or the output-input ratio of dollars. More specifically, governmental efficiency meant providing public services with a minimum amount of waste, duplication, and expenditure of tax dollars. Political reformers were obsessed with the idea of commercial efficiency. This obsession was directly linked to their love for the business enterprise model, which should come as no surprise because many reformers were businesspersons. Businesspeople-reformers were fond of comparing government with a business corporation. At least as far back as 1868, the National Association of Manufacturers affirmed in a resolution that it was “indispensable that public affairs be conducted on business principles” (as quoted in Nelson 1982, 120). Thus, reformers sought to apply the business enterprise model to government. In many respects, this logic made sense. It was difficult to argue with the unprecedented success that businesses experienced during the post-Civil War years. If business principles and practices enhanced efficiency and, in turn, the profitability of private enterprises, why could they not work in government? Businesspersons-reformers were convinced that government ought to be run as an efficient business enterprise. As Samuel P. Hays (1964) has shown, the business enterprise model became the guiding light of political reformers:

The guide to alternative action lay in the model of the business enterprise. In describing new conditions which they wished to create, reformers drew on the analogy of the “efficient business enterprise,” criticizing current practices with the argument that “no business could conduct its affairs that way and remain in business,” and calling upon business practices as the guides to improvement. (168)

The business enterprise model advocated by political reformers contained three basic elements. First, the model placed a heavy emphasis on the application of scientific methods as a means of achieving commercial efficiency. This deep abiding faith in science was a reflection of the times.

Reformers … turned to science to accomplish their reconstructive task…. This new scientific spirit permeated every discipline related to the art of government.… Historians, economists, political scientists and lawyers all assumed that if they could successfully use neutral and objective scientific methods to ascertain the facts, their knowledge of the facts would guide them to proper solutions of the problems the nation faced. (Nelson 1982, 82-84)

Second, the model promoted the use of experts who possessed skills, knowledge, and technical training in the application of scientific methods. The idea of scientific experts was appealing to political reformers because of its widespread acceptance in private industry. Such acceptance was largely because of the success of Frederick W. Taylor’s (1911) system of scientific management. Reformers adopted Taylor’s argument that the scientific expert was the key to efficiency because the expert possessed technical know-how essential for the discovery and application of the scientific laws of work.

Third, the business enterprise model relied on the concept of a strong executive who exerted control over the enterprise by centralizing the decision-making process. Reformers assumed that a strong executive could provide direction to government activities and thus eliminate corruption, waste, and inefficiency (Haber 1964, especially chap. 6).

The Influence of Scientific Management

The Progressives’ love affair with the business enterprise model obscured the vision of bureaucratic leadership. The business enterprise model contained strong antibureaucratic leadership biases. As mentioned earlier, the business enterprise model incorporated Taylor’s philosophy of scientific management, which was inherently antiexecutive leadership in nature. Often overlooked is that Taylor distrusted management as much as he distrusted the workers. Taylor was explicit about his desire to perfect a factory that operated efficiently without guidance ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface to First Edition
• Preface to Second Edition
• 1. Bureaucratic Leadership in a Democratic Republic
• 2. A Model of Administrative Conservatorship
• 3. Conserving Mission
• 4. Conserving Values
• 5. Conserving Support
• 6.The Administrator as Conservator
• Bibliography
• Index