Government Corporations

The most independent of bureaucracies are government corporations. They operate 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 the U.S. Postal Service, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AMTRAK, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Incrementalism

Efforts to find the right balance between bureaucratic authority and accountability and to create programs that are both efficient and responsive to the needs of the people are complicated by the fact that public policies and programs are made incrementally. Instead of reviewing and redesigning every government function from the ground up every year, the Congress and the president make minor adjustments, expanding some, shrinking some, and leaving others alone. Programs are constantly evaluated and modified, but they are rarely eliminated or completely restructured.

Part of the problem is that when departments, agencies, and programs are created, they are created in response to a public need or demand. Once in place, people come to count on the services they provide, and eliminating them or reducing them drastically becomes politically unpopular. Instead of removing or rebuilding agencies or programs with defects, the Congress and the president are more likely to create new programs to serve the needs that are unmet by the existing ones. The net result is that there is extensive overlap and duplication. Even in the relatively small sphere of juvenile crime prevention and youth development policy, there are more than one hundred federal programs currently in existence. Moreover, as new programs are created, more bureaucracy is required to administer them and the departments and agencies begin to “thicken.”

In addition to the creation of redundant programs, the departments and agencies already in existence have become “thicker” and new programs with new administrative needs have been created. In 1960, a typical department secretary was assisted by two under secretaries, nine or ten assistant secretaries, another ten deputy assistant and associate deputy assistant secretaries, and a handful of administrators. The number of assistants had more than doubled by 1992 to include a chief of staff, two deputy secretaries, four deputy under secretaries, twice as many assistant secretaries, five principal deputy assistant secretaries, and forty additional deputy assistant, associate deputy assistant, and deputy associate deputy assistant secretaries plus twenty assistant and deputy inspector generals and more than double the number of administrators. Keeping track of administrators has even become a significant undertaking by itself. The Office of Personnel Management, the national government’s human resource department, employs nearly four thousand people.¹⁴

^14.See Paul Light. Thickening Government: Federal Hierarchy and the Diffusion of Hierarchy. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1995), 12.