Chapter 14

Bureaucracy Essay

The role of the democracy is imperative in providing the public with services, which often times, they take for granted; these services include UPS, the U.S. Weather Service, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDC). (txt p. 547) Americans have a love-hate relationship with the bureaucracy without knowing the consequences of having or not having it. The bureaucracy is always in need of a reformation and there are 3 key strategies used in order to do so: termination, devolution, and privatization and there is a debate as to which strategies are most effective, and which ones are not so effective.

Termination is a strategy used to drastically decrease the bureaucracy through eliminating programs, however this is a strategy that is rarely effective because citizens become so attached to these programs, especially favored programs. To just cut them out would leave no room for citizens to speak up about it and try to save the programs that they favor. Because of this, most political figures have leaned more toward incrementally decreasing programs by reducing the program’s budgets.

Devolution is yet another way to control the bureaucracy. The process of devolution involves delegating certain policies and programs to smaller state and local governments. One main issue with this is that state and local governments do not have as much power as the federal government, and are even more limited to things such as taxing capabilities. Despite this drawback, devolution can actually be very effective because it allows for flexibility within the government services, and can even be used to create programs specifically to meet the needs of the citizens.

Lastly, there is a strategy known as privatization, which involves moving a public government service to a private sector that is still paid for by the government. The purpose of this strategy is to reduce the cost of the government, as private companies can typically provide services with less costs to taxpayers. This does not always work out, however, as some private forms may provide services but less efficient than the government would, which, in turn, would end up costing more than the government. While these strategies were created specifically for the purpose of reforming the bureaucracies, there certainly are drawbacks to them.

Termination, devolution, and privatization are 3 strategies used to reform the bureaucracy in order to make the system more effective for the American people. While there are pros and cons to each aspect, devolution seems to be the most effective and realistic out of the three, mainly due to the fact that programs would not necessarily have to be cut, but policies would be delegated to smaller local and states governments. The system of government will never be a perfect system, but there are always steps we can take to make it better.