There are four different kinds of U.S. Bureaucracies:

• departments
• independent agencies
• independent regulatory commissions
• government corporations

1. Cabinet Departments
   • There are fifteen Executive Branch departments, the heads of which are all members of the President's Cabinet.
   • Departments are headed by secretaries and staffed with assistant secretaries, deputy secretaries, and directors of major units.

     "Birthdates" of Executive Branch Departments
     State	1789
     Treasury	1789
     Defense (originally War & Navy)	1789
     Interior	1849
     Agriculture	1862
     Justice (Attorney General est. 1789)	1870
     Commerce	1903
     Labor	1913
     Health & Human Services	1953
     Housing & Urban Development	1965
     Transportation	1966
     Energy	1977
     Education	1979
     Veterans Affairs	1989
     Homeland Security	2002

2. Independent Agencies
   • They are not attached to an Executive Branch department, but remain accountable to the Congress and the President.
   • The heads of these agenceis are appointed by the president.
   • These agencies are generally smaller than departments, but many departments were agencies begore being elevated to department status.
   • Some agencies directly serve the general public, while others provide services only to the Executive Branch.
   • Examples of independent agencies include:
     • Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
     • Social Security Administration
     • Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
     • Office of Personnel Management
     • General Accounting Office
     • Government Services Administration
    
3. Independent Regulatory Commissions
   • These commissions are independent of all three branches of government.
   • Their independence rests largely on the inability of the President or the Congress to remove their appointed heads unless they are guilty of gross inefficiency, neglecting their duties or violating the law.
   • They make rules for business and industries that affect the public interest.
   • They are often under intense pressures from the groups they regulate and their lobbyists.
   • They were the subject of regulatory reform in the Republican Congress in the mid-1990s and their powers were reduced because critics complained that they overregulated the economy.
   • These boards and commissions include:
     • Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees the stock markets.
     • Federal Reserve Board
     • Consumer Product Safety Commission
     • Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
     • National Labor Relations Board
    
4. Government Corporations
   • The most independent of the bureaucracies.
   • These operate much more freely of federal government regulations and oversight, but remain limited in important ways because of their public nature.
   • One of the most important differences between government corporations and other departments and agencies is that government corporations are encouraged, even expected, to earn money.
   • These organizations include
     • U.S. Postal Service
     • Corporation for Public Broadcasting
     • AMTRAK
     • Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

1. In 2005, the national government employed 2.7 million people. Nearly all of these were Executive Branch employees.
    
2. Only 64,000 of the nearly three million worked for the Legislative and Judicial Branches.
    
3. By far the largest Executive Department is the Department of Defense with about 670,000 employees.
   • In addition to civilian employees, the national government also employs 1.1 million active duty military personnel.
    
4. The next largest department is the Department of Veterans Affairs with nearly 236,000 employees.
    
5. The Department of Treasury employs 114,000.
    
6. The Department of Justice emplos 105,000.
    
7. The Department of Agriculture employs 104,000.
    
8. Other agancies include the U.S. Postal Service with more than 770,000 employees; the Social Security Administration with 66,000 people; NASA with nearly 20,000; and the Environmental Protection Agency with 18,000.
    
9. State, county, city and special district governments across the nation employ an additional 17 million people. More than half of these are employed in elementary, secondary and higher education.
    
10. Other significant levels of employment at the state and local level are for police and fire protection (nearly 1.5 million), health care (more than 1.5 million), and justice and corrections (about one million).

1. Origins
   • Government jobs became a spoils system under President Andrew Jackson.
   • The spoils system led to inefficiency and corruption in government.
   • Calls for reform started in the 1850s.
   • The assassination of President Garfield by a disappointed office seeker led to the Pendleton Act of 1883, establishing the present civil service system based on competitive examinations and merit.
    
2. The Civil Service System Today
   • Applicants for federal jobs are evaluated on the basis of their experience and training.
   • Government jobs are attractive because they offer many benefits.
   • Government workers, unlike most private sector workers, have job security and are difficult to fire.
   • The Hatch Act of 1939 was intended to prevent political parties from using federal workers to aid in election campaigns. In recent years, critics have argued for and against this law, with workers now permitted some involvement in politics.

1. Nearly 10% of executive branch employees are appointed by the president, including many choice jobs. This allows the president to place loyal supporters in key offices.
    
2. These political appointees are outside civil service and are first and foremost the president's political supporters.
    
3. Political appointees are not experts in the work of their agancies, and when the president leaves office many of them return to private sector jobs.
    
4. Many political appointees hold their positions for short tenures, making it hard for them to learn about their jobs. As a result, much of the real power over daily operations remains in the hands of career officials.

1. Policy is the actions and decisions taken or not taken by the government.
    
2. Federal bureaucrats carry out policy decisions made by the president and Congress.
    
3. The bureaucracy often determines what the law means by the rules and regulations it issues.
   • In 1995 Congress set paperwork reduction goals for future years.
    
4. Bureaucrats aid in shaping policy by helping Congress draft its new laws or by providing ideas for legislation.
    
5. Workers in federal agencies shape policy by their decisions about the application of rules and regulations and by hearing disputes.
    
6. Bureaucrats also supply advice and information to top decision makers, influencing whether an agency supports or opposes certain policies.

1. The growth of the bureaucracy mirrors the growth of the nation's population and rapid changes in technology.
    
2. The Cold War and international crises since World War II spurred the growth of the bureaucracy.
    
3. The New Deal doubled the size of the federal government.
    
4. Citizens special-interest groups demanded various services and programs.
    
5. Once created, government agencies almost never die.

1. Congress can influence decision-making in federal agencies.
   • Congress' main power over the bureaucracy is its control of agencies' budgets.
    
2. Citizens may challenge agencies' actions in courts.

1. Federal agencies have client groups that try to influence decisions.
    
2. The close cooperation between congressional committees, client groups, and a federal agency or department is referred to as the iron triangle.

1. The primary dilemma of bureaucracy is striking the right balance between providing order and protecting liberty.

   When a bureaucracy is given authority, it is given that authority to establish order, usually in the form of peace, safety, and economic security or stability.
    

   • When a government bureaucracy exercises authority, the liberty of the people is necessarily diminished.
      
   • But how much should liberty be diminished and for what purposes or objectives?

    
2. A second and related dilemma faced by bureaucracy is the conflict between authority and accountability.

   If efficiency were the only objective of administration, bureaucracies would be given extensive power and discretion. However, in a political system in which the powers of government are derived from the people, the government must be accountable to the people for how it exercises those powers.
    

   • Managerial and administrative effectiveness demands that bureaucracies and bureaucrats be armed with the tools, authority and flexibility they need to accomplish the tasks they are assigned.
      
   • Popular governance demands that bureaucracies and bureaucrats be held accountable for their actions.

    
   These objectives are not always compatible. Time spent responding to congressional inquiries and investigations or holding public hearings satisfy the demands of accountability, but they directly diminish the capacity of bureaucracies to accomplish their allotted responsibilities.

    
3. On one level, the bureaucratic dilemma is straightforward. It centers on striking a workable balance between liberty and order, between bureaucratic authority and bureaucratic accountability.

   However, striking that balance is complicated by several factors.

While efforts are frequently made to reform bureaucracy by making it more responsive and accountable, bureaucracies are, by their very nature, undemocratic and unresponsive. Efficient administration, not accountability and responsiveness, is the purpose of bureaucracy.

Representative institutions, such as the Congress, are designed to listen to and respond to the people - the bureaucracy is not. Moreover, policies and decisions within bureaucracies are not based on public opinion. Nor are they based on votes cast by bureaucracy employees. They are made authoritatively and unilaterally by bureaucratic leaders.

At least in this way, bureaucracies are like private corporations. The employees do not set organizational policies and they often have little discretion when they implement them. It is difficult, at best, to be responsive when an organization's mission and guidelines do not encourage responsiveness.