American Government: Reflection Paper

Introduction

The idea of bureaucracy was coined and explained by influential early twentieth-century German sociologist, Max Weber. For Weber, an ideal bureaucratic system of government is a hierarchical one where power flows from the top. There is a clear division of labor so that people perform specialized jobs. Also, there are well-established rules guiding the performance of duties in the government. Filing government positions ought to be merit-based (Dror, 2017). The United States government is run bureaucratically as the main policies are prepared and implemented by the bureaucrats.

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Bureaucracy is the real government. Weber argued that bureaucracy is a "government with a small desk" (Dror, 2017). This implies that the bureaucrats are those people sitting in offices and play the critical role in policymaking. They are the ones to draft the policy and outline how it is going to be implemented. These bureaucrats understand much more about these policies than the president and the Congress. In fact, the president provides a policy guideline, but the people who prepare it are the bureaucrats. Similarly, the Congress passes laws from which the bureaucrats prepare policies to guide government action. Even for the president to be effective in running a state, he or she has to have a perfect power of persuasion to lobby bureaucrats to have his goals aligned to development. All these mean that the bureaucrats are the government themselves.

The federal bureaucracy is structured into the presidency and the Congress while the judiciary acts as the third arm of the government. From both the president and the Congress, a hierarchy of offices and bureaus are lined up including the executive office, cabinet departments, independent executive agencies and independent regulatory commissions. The cabinet departments (15 in number) are headed by a cabinet secretary appointed by the president and in charge of a specific policy area. Independent executive agencies work under the president but are independent in performing a given function. For example, central intelligence agency performs a security function to aid the president's role in national and international security (Niskanen, 2017). Independent regulatory commissions perform regulatory functions in specific areas. Also, there are government corporations that fall under the mandate of the Congress. These are government owned businesses that serve a public need and do not necessarily make a profit. The judiciary is another independent bureaucratic office that serves the purpose of maintaining law adherence by the members of the society.

Nonetheless, the judiciary, acting independently, can be influential in curbing bureaucracy power. The judiciary can act through judicial review to influence bureaucracy especially when a policy choice, administrative decision or agency's program is challenged in court. The judiciary then undertakes a judicial review on the policy and issues a court's decision which may require reform on the policy, reject the policy and issue an injunction to its implementation or uphold the policy (Wilson, DiIulio, Bose & Levendusky, 2018). In consideration of policies through review, the judiciary may be keen at ensuring compliance with various laws especially those that prevent ethnicity, racial and religious discrimination. In this sense, the judiciary may limit bureaucratic powers that serve personal or group interests in a discriminative manner by issuing an injunction to the implementation of the resulting policy.

In understanding bureaucracy as the real government, a good point to reflect on is the iron triangle concept. An iron triangle often referred to as a sub-government, is an alliance of people from three groups and is working towards a given government's job of governing the people (McFarland, 2018). The three groups are interest groups, Congress and the agencies of the executive. The members of the triangle are distinct and independent; however, their collaboration in policymaking seals any hope of independence. In reality, members of the triangle know each other, and they move within the groups to lobby towards policymaking. For example, in defense, an iron triangle may be evident when the military supplies want to sell some weapon systems to generate money, and they lobby with the Defense Department which can then lobby with the Congress Armed Service Committee to pass a new system of defense to allow for policy work. Also, an agency such as the American Association for Retired people can work together with the Congress Committee on Aging as well as the Social Security Administration to influence the formation of a social security policy.

Conclusion

Overall, this unit has seen me gain some knowledge of the inner workings of government. In my opinion, now I think the inner workings of the government which ultimately determine the policy outcomes are performed by experts in their specific fields. In this view, bureaucracy is a good idea as it does not allow politicians to fumble wit policy issues, instead, guides them to seek expert guides in determining their worth and applicability. This is the only way that the citizens can enjoy good policy outcomes. However, there is a danger that the experts may be manipulated by the groups making up the iron triangle. In such a case, the inner government workings may be impaired to serving interests of the groups.

References

Dror, Y. (2017). Public policy making reexamined. Routledge.

McFarland, A. S. (2018). Interest groups and the policymaking process: Sources of countervailing power in America. In The politics of interests (pp. 58-79). Routledge.

Niskanen, J. (2017). Bureaucracy and representative government. Routledge.

Wilson, J. Q., DiIulio Jr, J. J., Bose, M., & Levendusky, M. S. (2018). American government: Institutions and policies. Cengage Learning.