13.3: America's Evolving Bureaucracy

At its founding, America’s national government was much smaller than it is today. The Founders, firm believers in limited government, designed a system in which the national government retained only those powers considered to be indispensable, such as waging wars, coining money, and conducting diplomacy. The national bureaucracy began small: President George Washington’s Cabinet had only three departments—State, Treasury, and War—plus the office of the Attorney General. Almost anything that could be handled by state governments or private individuals and organizations was considered outside the national government’s purview. Americans got little from their national government, but they also expected little from it.

The early American bureaucracy lacked expertise as well as size. Beginning in earnest with the election of President Andrew Jackson in 1828, bureaucratic positions were routinely awarded to the president’s supporters under the spoils system. To recruit campaign volunteers and donors, presidential candidates promised prestigious government jobs (and generous salaries) on the condition that they won the election. This led many positions to be filled by people with no particular abilities that would qualify them to execute their new responsibilities. Even if they managed to pick up some skills on the job, they would likely be replaced within four to eight years by an ally of the next president, probably one with no relevant job experience. Under this system, the bureaucracy was unstable, incompetent, and corrupt, more a tool for campaigning than an effective means of implementing government policy.

The term spoils system comes from the proverb, “To the victor go the spoils.” Traditionally, spoils were plunder or treasure seized in a war or raid. Early U.S. presidents treated the appointed positions they could fill less as tools for effective governance and more as prizes to distribute to loyal backers.

The flaws of the spoils system proved fatal in 1881. Charles Guiteau, an obsessed supporter of President James Garfield who falsely believed himself to have been crucial to Garfield’s victory, demanded to be appointed as a consul (a position akin to an ambassador) in Europe. After being rebuffed repeatedly, Guiteau approached Garfield at a train station and shot him twice in the back, assuming that Vice President Chester A. Arthur would reward him with a patronage job in gratitude for elevating him to the presidency. Following Garfield’s assassination, Congress took action to dismantle the spoils system by passing the Pendleton Act in 1883. The Pendleton Act prevented presidents from firing certain bureaucrats without cause and instituted qualifications-based procedures for filling many positions. These reforms led to the development of a civil service of bureaucrats employed for their merit and expertise, not based on political favoritism.

The American bureaucracy evolved further in the early 20th century with the advent of Progressivism. Though it had already grown by hiring more personnel to deal with the nation’s increased territory and population, it mostly performed the same tasks as before, just over a larger area and for more people. By contrast, Progressives—including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt—advocated an increase in the government’s scope as well as its size, enabling it to engage in activities that were previously the responsibility of state governments or nongovernmental actors.

Charles Guiteau assassinates President James Garfield in 1881, sparking the demise of the spoils system in the United States and the institution of a less politicized civil service.

The Progressives’ political philosophy contrasted starkly with the Founders’ belief in the virtues of limited government. Fearful of concentrating power, the Founders separated it among three branches and rigged the Constitution with a complex set of checks and balances to prevent its misuse. In the eyes of the Progressives, this intentionally inefficient system tied the government’s hands too much, preventing it from dealing with policy problems—the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, two World Wars—which the Founders couldn’t have anticipated. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, a set of programs aimed at combating the Great Depression, constituted an unprecedented level of government involvement in the economy, including jobs programs, wage and price controls, and government-administered pensions in the form of Social Security.

Today, Americans expect their government to do many things that Americans two hundred years ago never would have. The bureaucracy has grown to accommodate those expectations, as evidenced by the increasing size of the president’s Cabinet (shown in Figure 13.3 below). Many of the government’s new responsibilities, such as disaster relief, food and drug safety, and air traffic control, are relatively uncontroversial: most people accept the government’s involvement in these realms. Other new responsibilities, such as welfare programs, national education standards, and publicly-administered health insurance, are topics of frequent and spirited debate.

Figure 13.3: U.S. Cabinet departments by date and precedence, 1789–2025 (Note: Justice, as an expansion of the older Attorney General’s office, takes precedence over Interior and Agriculture.)

What all of the executive branch’s responsibilities have in common is that they are fulfilled primarily by bureaucrats, working behind the scenes and without direct accountability to voters. This shielding from political pressure enables them to develop expertise over long careers without worrying about suddenly being fired for political reasons. It also makes it difficult to remove incompetent or corrupt bureaucrats from office, even when their failures or misdeeds are readily apparent (which isn’t always the case).