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CHAPTER 5 Subordinate Expertise and Reliable Organizations It was established in the previous chapter that reorganization can affect the reliability of agency decisions. That is important when we consider that one of the more popular activities of politicians involved in administrative affairs is to reorganize the bureaucracy. Of course, there are a number of reasons why this practice is so prevalent. In some cases, as in the Nixon administration, reorganization is done to achieve greater control over a bureaucracy perceived to be hostile to the political aims of the president (Aberbach and Rockman 1976). In other cases, reorganizations are undertaken to purposely undermine agency performance. For example, political appointees in the Reagan administration constantly reorganized the EPA's enforcement division in order to keep it off balance and prevent it from carrying out any actions against polluting industries (Lester 1989). But far and away, the most commonly cited reason for bureaucratic reorganization is the desire to achieve greater efficiency . This concern for bureaucratic efficiency is the result of two related phenomena in American politics. The first of these is the enormous growth of bureaucracy at all levels of government. At the tum of the century, there were fewer than half a million federal employees; after the New Deal forty years later, there were about two million federal bureaucrats. Today the number of federal employees has grown to approximately three million. Similar growth in the bureaucracy has occurred at state and local levels during the same period. But while the public may desire more government programs, it does not necessarily want more government bureaucrats. When people express anger over the amount of "red tape" in bureaucracy, they are showing displeasure not only with the amount of paperwork the government requires, but also with the army of bureaucrats who slowly process the work through an unnecessarily complex administrative network. Indeed, polls routinely show that two-thirds of Americans believe that the government employs more people than are needed (Goodsell 1985). It is often thought that if bureaucracies could be streamlined, then government would be able to accomplish as much, or more, with only a fraction of the costs. 101 102 Acceptable Risks This desire to reorganize the bureaucracy and make it a more efficient operation has also been fueled by growing concern over the deficit. Public anxiety over the federal budget deficit has risen as this deficit has increased by several orders of magnitude (Wildavsky 1984, Schick 1983). At the same time, the American public has also made it clear that spending cuts are generally preferred to tax increases as a means of reducing the budget deficit (Sears and Citrin 1982; Peterson 1985). Although there is strong public support to lower overall government spending, when asked about cutting into a specific program, many people favor either continuing services at the same level or even increasing program support (Ladd 1979; Citrin 1979; Welch 1985). Even at the state and local level, voters have strongly supported a number of tax revolt initiatives, such as Proposition 13 in California, but have complained whenever public services are scaled back accordingly (Kuttner 1980; Sears and Citrin 1982; DeHaven-Smith 1985). It seems as if the voting public is sending contradictory messages to its elected officials: reduce spending without necessarily decreasing government services. Politicians often find that the easiest way to satisfy these conflicting demands is to pledge to roll back government spending through the creation of a leaner and more efficient bureaucracy. It comes as little surprise, then, that twelve of the sixteen presidents elected in this century have either introduced plans to reorganize the executive branch or established task forces to study bureaucratic reorganization with the express purpose of increasing governmental efficiency (Arnold 1986). With the onset of stagflation in the early 1970s and the meteoric rise of budget deficits in the 1980s, presidents have faced additional pressure to streamline the operations of a growing federal bureaucracy. Consequently, Nixon made various attempts to streamline the government from 1971 to the end of his administration in 1974. Nixon's efforts were motivated both by the desire to increase his political control over the bureaucracy and by the need to increase the efficiency of government operations (Nixon 1970, 1972; Aberbach and Rockman 1976). Carter stated quite clearly that "[M]y administration is determined to reorganize and streamline the executive branch of government ... to improve the efficiency and the sensitivity of the federal government bureaucracy " (Meier 1980). In 1982, Reagan appointed the Grace commission to identify opportunities for increased...

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