What Motivates Bureaucrats?

Politics and Administration During the Reagan Years

Marissa Martino Golden

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2000
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231505048
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Every once in a while somebody has to get the bureaucracy by the neck and shake it loose and say, 'Stop doing what you're doing.'" —Ronald Reagan

How did senior career civil servants react to Ronald Reagan's attempt to redirect policy and increase presidential control over the bureaucracy? What issues molded their reactions? What motivates civil servants in general? How should they be managed and how do they affect federal policies? To answer these questions, Marissa Martino Golden offers us a glimpse into the world of our federal agencies.

What Motivates Bureaucrats? tells the story of a group of upper-level career civil servants in the Reagan administration at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, the Food and Nutrition Service, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The book reveals that most career civil servants were usually responsive to executive direction—even with a president attempting to turn agency policy 180 degrees from its past orientation.

By delving deeply into the particular details of Reagan's intervention into the affairs of upper-level career civil servants, Golden also fulfills her broader mission of improving our understanding of bureaucratic behavior in general, explaining why the bureaucracy is controllable and highlighting the limits of that control.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Bureaucratic Responsiveness and the Administrative Presidency
• 2. A Framework for Analysis
• 3. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: Car Nuts and Caution
• 4. The Food and Nutrition Service: Limited Opportunity, Limited Resistance
• 5. The Civil Rights Division: Lawyers Who Love to Argue
• 6. The Environmental Protection Agency: A Tale of Two Reagan Administrations
• 7. Lessons from the Reagan Years
• APPENDIX A: Sample Interview Schedule
• APPENDIX B: Sample Federal Employee Questionnaire
• References
• Index