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13: The Bureaucracy

  • Page ID
    204123
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    Close your eyes and envision the American government. What do you see? If you are like most Americans, the faces that come to mind will be those of the most prominent actors in national politics: the president and vice president, the Speaker of the House and other congressional leaders, perhaps a Supreme Court justice or two if judicial matters are in the news. Or you might conjure up generic images of government in action: the president signing bills into law or making speeches, members of Congress arguing in the House or Senate chamber. Or you might picture the government’s distinctive architecture: the U.S. Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court building.

    Photograph of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia
    The world’s second largest office building is the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense.

    Although the subjects of these visions are frequently mentioned on the news and thought about by average Americans, they represent only a small fraction of the people who make up the national government of the United States. The overwhelming majority of the government — roughly four million people, more than one out of every 100 Americans — mostly operates anonymously and out of the public eye, either in the U.S. military or as civilians in the many departments and agencies within the government’s executive branch. (Figure 13.1 below shows fluctuations in the American government’s civilian workforce since 1940). Though not as prominent as the elected and appointed officials whose names and faces are far more recognizable, they perform many tasks which are essential for carrying out government policy.

    Line chart showing millions of U.S. federal employees from 1940 to 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
    Figure 13.1: Millions of U.S. federal civilian employees, 1940–2023 (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

    The large bureaucratic organization that manages the many tasks required of America’s government is a testament to the power of collective action. It can issue millions of Social Security checks, warn citizens of an approaching tornado, launch a satellite into orbit, and kill a terrorist halfway around the world all in the same day. But it is also an unwieldy leviathan, inefficient and impersonal and unresponsive, a byzantine maze of rules and regulations and red tape that frequently thwarts politicians’ best intentions without even trying. And yet, in spite of this complexity, many of the most enduring problems of America’s bureaucracy — the things Americans hate the most about their government — can be explained by a few basic principles of human interaction that characterize all bureaucracies.


    This page titled 13: The Bureaucracy is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Benjamin R. Kantack (Tekakwitha Press) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

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