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“Imperialism” in Bureaucracy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Matthew Holden Jr
Matthew Holden Jr*
Affiliation:
Wayne State University
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Extract

If an important part of the political scientist's mission is to anticipate and explain “the critical problems that generate turbulence” in that part of the world which attracts his attention, then, in the study of administration, bureaucratic “imperialism” must be of compelling interest. If systematic data directly assembled for the purpose are lacking, and if there are some signal problems of theory which have been little investigated, there is still enough evidence from studies of other political problems that it seems worthwhile to set out some trial-run ideas in the hope that they will elicit further discussion.

Bureaucractic imperialism seems pre-eminently a matter of inter-agency conflict in which two or more agencies try to assert permanent control over the same jurisdiction, or in which one agency actually seeks to take over another agency as well as the jurisdiction of that agency. We are thus primarily concerned with the politics of allocation and shall, except incidentally, bypass some other interesting aspects of inter-agency politics such as cooperation between agencies sharing missions, competition for favorable “one-time-only” decisions which do not involve jurisdictional reallocation, or the critical problems of the “holding company” administrative organization and its internal politics. For the moment, our concern with the politics of allocation leads to a focus on what would appear to be the likely behaviors of those decisionmakers who have both inclination and opportunity to look after the institutional well-being of agencies.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , December 1966 , pp. 943 - 951
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1966

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References

1 Albert B. Martin, Personal Communication.

2 Cf., Tullock, Gordon, The Politics of Bureaucracy (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1965), pp. 134–136Google Scholar; and Gold, Bela, Wartime Economic Planning in Agriculture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), pp. 530–535Google Scholar.

3 Cf., Selznick, Philip, Leadership in Administration (Evanston: Row, Peterson and Company, 1957), p. 11Google Scholar.

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9 Long, Norton E., The Polity (edited by Press, Charles) (Chicago: Rand, McNally and Company, 1960)Google Scholar, Chapter 4, remains the best statement on this point; alao Kaufman, Herbert, “Organization Theory and Political Theory,” this Review, 58 (03, 1964), p. 12 and note 9 at the same pageGoogle Scholar.

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15 The statute is H.B. No. 24 of the 57th Legislature, First-Called Session, codified as Article 7621d, Vernon's Annotated Civil Statutes. It is reprinted in: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Natural Resources and Power, Hearings on Water Pollution Control and Abatement (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965), Part 6, p. 3579et seq.Google Scholar

16 This recitation of the facts is based upon Board briefs filed in litigation. Since it is of considerable importance and apparently nowhere rebutted, we assume its accuracy.

17 Opinion No. WW-1465, October 31, 1962, as reprinted in House Committee on Government Operations, op. cit., pp. 3586 et seq.

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20 On levels of uncertainty, see Holden, Matthew Jr., “Committee Politics under Primitive Uncertainty,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 9 (08 1965), 236–237CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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23 This seems to me the conclusion supportable by Somers, op. cit., on economic administration during World War II.

24 See, for example, Goldner, Leslie, “Air Pollution Control in the Metropolitan Boston Area: A Case Study in Public-Policy. Formulation,” in Wolozin, Harold (ed.), The Economics of Air Pollution (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.), 1966, p. 137, n. 11Google Scholar.

25 In this respect, the idea that there is “ordinarily little or no limit to the amount of inaction an organization can ‘undertake’ [because] inaction does not absorb resources” seems in error. See March, James G. and Simon, Herbert A., Organizations (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1958), p. 175Google Scholar.

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31 For a case demonstration, see Rourke, Francis E., “The Politics of Administrative Organization,” Journal of Politics, 19 (08 1957) 461–478CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 For a sympathetic reconsideration by an economist-systems analyst, see McKean, Roland N., “The Unseen Hand in Government,” American Economic Review, 60 (06 1965), 496–506Google Scholar; and McKean, , “Limitations, Risks, and Problems,” in Novick, David G. (ed.), Program Budgeting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 295–296Google Scholar.

33 The practical irrelevance of regio-centric approaches is evident when one reviews discussions of the problems of the President—indubitably the public figure most like a king. Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1960)Google Scholar; and, Sorenson, Theodore, Decision-Making in the White House (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

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