The weaponization of efficiency: How administrative sabotage undermines democratic governance

“ If, in the economy, we speak of the physical infrastructures for development, so in our political life, we must lay the administrative infrastructure for effective government. Of this infrastructure, no element is more important than the bureaucracy. ”

“ Political fortunes of parties will ebb and flow; top policy men in administrations will come and go; new laws will be passed and old ones amended or repealed. But those who give continuity to administration, those who contribut the basic skill and efficiency to the daily work of government, and those on whom the new as well as the old administration is dependent for smooth functioning of the complicated machinery of modern government are the core of the civil service. ”

“ I speak for administrative efficiency, for lightened tax burdens, for sound commercial practices, for adequate credit facilities, for sympathetic concern for all agricultural problems, for the omission of unnecessary interference of Government with business, for an end to Government's experiment in business, and for more efficient business in Government administration. With all of this must attend a mindfulness of the human side of all activities, so that social, industrial, and economic justice will be squared with the purposes of a righteous people. ”

“ Our tenth guidepost is the need for raising efficiency in public administration.
The implementation of sound and well-planned projects often bogs down owing to inefficiency in public administration. We must, therefore, continue to buttress our administrative units, especially those directly concerned with economic development.
We have completed the wage and position classification survey and a project on the improvement of budgeting, accounting, and auditing procedures in the Government. We should now apply the results of these studies to effect economy and efficiency. ”

“ In all departments, dedication to these basic precepts of security and efficiency, integrity, and economy can and will produce an administration deserving of the trust the people have placed in it.
Our people have demanded nothing less than good, efficient government. They shall get nothing less.
VII.
Vitally important are the water and minerals, public lands and standing timber, forage and wild-life of this country. A fast-growing population will have vast future needs in these resources. ”

“ There is more involved here than realigning the wheels and smoothing the gears of administrative machinery. The Congress rightfully-expects the Executive to take the initiative in discovering and removing outmoded functions and eliminating duplication.
One agency, for example, whose head has promised early and vigorous action to provide greater efficiency is the Post Office. One of the oldest institutions of our Federal Government, its service should be of the best. Its employees should merit and receive the high regard and esteem of the citizens of the Nation. ”

“ The object aimed at is the maximum of efficiency consistent with the amount of expenditure which the taxpayer or his representatives will tolerate. Can any practical amount of efficiency of administration be obtained without professional training and knowledge? Can it be obtained without direct personal responsibility? Can direct personal responsibility be reasonably expected without professional control? ”

“ The election can delegate power only for a limited period. At the end of the limited period another executive will be chosen—possibly a man representing a wholly different political policy. Such a man will want his immediate advisers to share his political point of view; and it is always possible that in electing him the voters will make a mistake and choose an incompetent and irresponsible person. An incompetent or disloyal executive could undoubtedly under such a system do much to disorganize the public service; but what will you have? There can be no efficiency without responsibility. ”

“ As a result, we find that the prospects and powers of the bureaucracy become more important than even the purposes for which it exists. It is a commonplace of politics that a state exists for the people comprising it, and that the servants of the state are the servants of the people. ”

“ Hence, political exposures in themselves serve as a powerful instrument for disintegrating the system we oppose, the means for diverting from the enemy his casual or temporary allies, the means for spreading enmity and distrust among those who permanently share power with the autocracy. ”

“ It is apt to become numbed and bureaucratic. Permanent officials tend to follow precedent, and, indeed, the force of precedent furnishes the basis of their power, but the tendency to be too rigid in their rules is the curse of all their tribe. They shrink from innovation, rarely making a new precedent themselves. This is particularly true in the lesser offices, giving rise, at times, to complaint; and the political chief has to insist upon the need of making exceptions in hard cases, without allowing the hard cases themselves to make bad law. ”

“ No one comes or stays in the government offices but idlers, incapables, or fools. Thus the mediocrity of French administration has slowly come about. Bureaucracy, made up entirely of petty minds, stands as an obstacle to the prosperity of the nation; delays for seven years, by its machinery, the project of a canal which would have stimulated the production of a province; is afraid of everything, prolongs procrastination, and perpetuates the abuses which in turn perpetuate and consolidate itself. Bureaucracy holds all things and the administration itself in leading strings ”

“ Now irresponsibility is demoralising to any administration, however democratic be the principles upon which its officials are selected. A bureaucracy, ruling without proper external control, becomes a prey to the demons of red tape, routine, officialdom and place-hunting; it tends to stifle individual initiative and the sense of moral responsibility, since it forgets the real object of its existence—the good government of the country—in its passion for self-preservation and its desire to secure the smooth-working of the machine; it becomes inhuman, intensely conservative and corrupt. ”

“ A political and social bureaucracy develops which feeds at the public trough. Then comes a bitter struggle to get both feet in the trough and keep them there side by side with an equally determined effort to exclude outsiders and other intruders. An army of volunteers and novices is converted into a military establishment which becomes a state within the state, extending its control until it makes policy, selects top leaderships and carries on its internal feuds and wars of succession dividing the defense forces and using them for partisan purposes. ”

“ As things are to-day, we must recognize that State activity in social services is in many branches ahead of the understanding of the ordinary man. It has, through the nature of our political machinery, developed in a specialized manner, which throws a heavy burden upon legislators and administrators whether voluntary or official. There is a consequent confusion, lack of co-ordination, and overlapping of effort which leads to waste, not merely of money, but of what is, in the long run, more important—human enthusiasm, effort and efficiency. ”

“ The concentration of administrative authority at one point has proved impracticable, first because of the great amount of red tape involved in the handling of the endless detail, and second because of the resulting destruction of initiative and enterprise. Such a centralization of social function would be just as cumbersome as a like centralization of all bodily functions in the higher brain centres. ”

“ One of the greatest problems which present themselves to the statesmen of this day is a thorough reform of our public service calculated to root out corruption and inefficiency which now degrade and disgrace many if not most of its branches. The main source of that demoralization and inefficiency is by no means to be found in the power of arbitrary removal as heretofore exercised by the Executive, but it is to be found in the prevailing system of appointments at random, from political and personal favoritism, upon the principle that “to the victors belong the spoils.” ”

“ Efficiency cannot be expected in any department of government or business whose chief is ignorant of the details of its operations. And yet so demoralizing has been the effect of the manhood suffrage political tradition, so accustomed are not merely the politicians but the public to the vicious practice of distributing these most important offices as rewards for political work, that the proposal to require them to be filled by men of experience and training in the work of their respective offices would probably be met with derisive laughter in every governmental department. ”

“ Simply by the existence of the spoils system, which allows that which belongs to the public, especially the public offices, to be diverted from public to private use. Without that system, political bossism, in the form at least in which we know it, would not be possible. With that system and all its demoralizing influences kept alive in our politics, bossism will not only continue to exist in spite of occasional reverses, but it will propagate itself from State to State and bring forth results which, if predicted now, would severely tax popular credulity. ”

“ The efficient members of the class of professional politicians are never more than temporarily shelved. If defeated at one election they are chosen at another. If they fail to get one office, room is made for them somewhere else, and so they are made to form a class of permanent office-holders, and the power and efficiency of the political oligarchy are steadily maintained.
“The City machine makes friends with saloon keepers, with gamblers and other criminal classes, or with large financial institutions, seeking to obtain control of the vast sums expended for public improvements. ”

“ I know that heads of departments who cared more for party politics than for the good of the service used that discretion recklessly for political or personal ends without much regard to the public good. I know that heads of departments who cared more for the public good than for party politics must have had in them the stuff that martyrs are made of, in order to resist, in the exercise of their discretionary appointing-power, that political pressure which sought to extort from them appointments obnoxious to their sense of duty, and that such martyrs never have been plenty. ”

“ These are the Departments which manage the public service in all the branches that involve the moral and political character and the efficiency of the Administration at home. An unreliable man at the head of any one of them can do much mischief with out your becoming aware of it in time to prevent the consequences. ”

“ Full employment results from conscious choice or chance (while lacking knowledge) . Unemployment results from conscious choice or wrong co-ordination (where a Pareto optimising change is blocked only by lack of knowledge - and a lack of knowledge not by the economists but by the incompetent or insensitive policy makers) .
The analysis shows mathematically that democratic goals indeed can be blocked by special interests or neglect, for example within the bureaucracy. A policy conclusion is to improve informational (planning) procedures. ”

“ If the thing that would be useful to the people promises to be profitable also to the high officials of the bureaucracy, it can be brought about in twenty-four hours; but if it be a measure of administrative economy, a scheme to secure impartial justice, or humanitarian reform, it may languish in obscurity for twenty-four years. ”

“ Then the gentlemen go on to tell how they will compel the administrative officials to confer with their isolated "reviewing body," and thus secure a proper co-ordination that has failed for a century. Automatic mechanism in government can never take the place of simplicity and responsibility. Such schemes are futile. The men who can make mechanisms can break them. What we must have is a government that compels efficiency and honesty, not one which attempts to produce such results through theoretical contrivances. ”

“ In government, the organization has recently taken the form of mechanism for efficiency. We want government and all kinds of organization to be efficient and effective, but administrative efficiency may easily proceed at the expense of personality. Much of our public organization for efficiency is essentially monarchic in its tendency. It is likely to eliminate the most precious resource in human society, which is the freedom of expression of the competent individual. ”

“ The final test of government is not executive efficiency. Every movement, every circumstance that takes starting-power and incentive away from the people, even though it makes for exacter administration, is to be challenged. ”

“ But where everything is done through the bureaucracy, nothing to which the bureaucracy is really adverse can be done at all. The constitution of such countries is an organisation of the experience and practical ability of the nation, into a disciplined body for the purpose of governing the rest; and the more perfect that organisation is in itself, the more successful in drawing to itself and educating for itself the persons of greatest capacity from all ranks of the community, the more complete is the bondage of all, the members of the bureaucracy included. ”

“ The present age is opposed to such development; and the more the state manipulates the man, the more completely will individuality and originality be destroyed. The state requires a tax-paying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colourless, spiritless, moving unanimously and humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight, high road between two walls. That is the ideal of every bureaucracy ”

“ In others, such as Germany, popular control is very inadequately provided for. But the tendency is clear; and nowhere clearer than in this country. Here at any rate we may hopefully look forward to a continual extension both of the activity and of the intelligence of public officials; while at the same time, by an appropriate development of the representative machinery, we may guard ourselves against the danger of an irresponsible bureaucracy. The problem of reconciling administrative efficiency with popular control is no doubt a difficult one ”

“ In an era in which governmental controls invade every sphere of human activity, from economic to cultural and political, administrative responsibility is essential to the maintenance of the democratic system. Administration which is responsible is lacking in the elements of bad faith, arbitrariness, or capriciousness. It constitutes a reasoned effort, in good faith, to approximate the legislative intent.
Congress is one important source of oversight of administration. ”