By Jennifer Nicoll Victor, Ph.D., George Mason University
It is important to understand how complex systems work and how they’re organized, if we’re to navigate them. In that spirit, in order to truly understand how the American government works, we have to understand how it’s put together.
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organized system of people arranged into hierarchical units, following agreed-upon rules, and performing a set of tasks in a coordinated manner.
All bureaucracies have three main features. First, they include a division of labor among its participants that allows them to develop specialized skills. Second, bureaucracies are hierarchical, meaning there is a ranking of people and offices that form an organizational structure such that there is a single boss or supervisor and various levels of subordinates with decreasing autonomy and power at the lower ranks.
And, finally, all bureaucracies have formal rules. These rules often include a rather impersonal, goal-oriented career system that tends to be neither efficient nor customer-friendly.
This is a transcript from the video series Understanding the US Government. Watch it now, Wondrium.
The US Bureaucracy
The United States federal government’s bureaucracy is part of the executive branch. It consists of 15 cabinet departments, scores of regulatory agencies, and even more independent agencies. All told, the US bureaucracy includes more than 2.1 million civilian employees.
One possible reason for the US having such a large bureaucracy is that as society became more and more complex, and the demands placed on government to serve society became more intense, the bureaucracy grew in response. A second, but not exclusive, explanation for the expansion of the federal bureaucracy has to do with corruption that plagued the US government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During that time period, many political offices operated on a spoils system.
Spoils System
The spoils system was a system of filling government jobs such that whichever candidate won office, that candidate would fill the jobs controlled by that office with his political loyalists.
Later, the spoils system ended and, in its place, the government developed a professional civil service, where employees were selected based on skills, qualifications, and merit rather than political loyalty.
The federal bureaucracy has now become an indispensable feature of government, surpassing in size and scope any other branch of government.
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The Executive Branch of the Government
The executive branch is organized into a series of five buckets, all under the president’s leadership.
The first bucket is the White House. This includes the White House staff, including the president’s chief of staff, various advisors, speech writers, press secretary, and so forth.
The second bucket is the Executive Office of the President, or the EOP. While the White House Staff works in the West Wing of the White House, the EOP is mostly contained in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House.
The offices in the Executive Office of the President at the EEOB include the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, the National Security Council, and the Office of Management and Budget. The EOP include a series of other offices, such as the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
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The Cabinet Departments
The third bucket of the executive branch contains the 15 cabinet-level departments.
These include the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defence, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs.
Except for the Justice Department, which is headed by the attorney general of the United States, each of these departments is headed by a cabinet secretary.
Each of these departments has a specific jurisdiction and function, and each department includes a series of agencies contained within the departments.
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Independent Agencies
Independent agencies—the fourth bucket—are called ‘independent’ because they are typically not a part of the president’s cabinet, although they are headed by people appointed by the president.
These agencies are intended to be somewhat isolated from the ups and downs of politics that can affect the cabinet agencies. They tend to be a bit smaller in scope compared to cabinet departments and agencies, and they come in two types: regulatory and non-regulatory.
A regulatory agency is involved with creating and enforcing regulations in a particular sector. Some examples include the Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, which regulates the safety of consumer products; the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, which enforces environmental regulations; and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, which enforces laws meant to prevent discrimination in the workplace.
A non-regulatory agency does not have the same level of authority or oversight, as these agencies are not involved with creating or enforcing any regulations. Some examples are: the Export-Import Bank of the United States; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The Government Corporations
The fifth bucket is a category of the US government that does not fit neatly into any of the other buckets. It includes government corporations.
These are entities that are neither entirely public, nor are they entirely private. They represent various forms of hybrid organizations that are significantly supported by government in some manner. Government corporations include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which produces public television and radio content; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, which insures bank deposits; the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, which provides insurance for farmers producing crops; and AMTRAK.
Common Questions about the Federal Bureaucracy in the United States
First, all bureaucracies include a division of labor among its participants that allows them to develop specialized skills. Second, all bureaucracies are hierarchical. Finally, all bureaucracies have formal rules.
The spoils system was a system of filling government jobs such that whichever candidate won office, that candidate would fill the jobs controlled by that office with his political loyalists.
The executive branch is organized into five buckets: the White House, the Executive Office of the President, the cabinet departments, independent agencies, and government corporations.
