What makes american bureaucracy so unique

United States , the Supreme Court found that agency authority seemed limitless. In the U. There are currently fifteen cabinet departments in the federal government. Cabinet departments are major executive offices that are directly accountable to the president.

Occasionally, a department will be eliminated when government officials decide its tasks no longer need direct presidential and congressional oversight, such as happened to the Post Office Department in Each cabinet department has a head called a secretary, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. These secretaries report directly to the president, and they oversee a huge network of offices and agencies that make up the department.

Within these large bureaucratic networks are a number of undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, deputy secretaries, and many others.

The Department of Justice is the one department that is structured somewhat differently. Rather than a secretary and undersecretaries, it has an attorney general, an associate attorney general, and a host of different bureau and division heads. Individual cabinet departments are composed of numerous levels of bureaucracy.

These levels descend from the department head in a mostly hierarchical pattern and consist of essential staff, smaller offices, and bureaus.

Their tiered, hierarchical structure allows large bureaucracies to address many different issues by deploying dedicated and specialized officers. For example, below the secretary of state are a number of undersecretaries. These include undersecretaries for political affairs, for management, for economic growth, energy, and the environment, and many others. Each controls a number of bureaus and offices. For example, below the undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs are three bureaus: educational and cultural affairs, public affairs, and international information programs.

Frequently, these bureaus have even more specialized departments under them. Under the bureau of educational and cultural affairs are the spokesperson for the Department of State and his or her staff, the Office of the Historian, and the United States Diplomacy Center. The multiple levels of the Department of State each work in a focused capacity to help the entire department fulfill its larger goals. Department of State. Like cabinet departments, independent executive agencies report directly to the president, with heads appointed by the president.

Unlike the larger cabinet departments, however, independent agencies are assigned far more focused tasks. These agencies are considered independent because they are not subject to the regulatory authority of any specific department. They perform vital functions and are a major part of the bureaucratic landscape of the United States—providing information or services.

Some prominent independent agencies are the Central Intelligence Agency CIA , which collects and manages intelligence vital to national interests and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA , charged with developing technological innovation for the purposes of space exploration.

Credit: NASA. The independent regulatory agency emerged in the late nineteenth century as a product of the push to control the benefits and costs of industrialization. The first regulatory agency was the Interstate Commerce Commission ICC , charged with regulating that most identifiable and prominent symbol of nineteenth-century industrialism, the railroad.

Agencies formed by the federal government to administer a quasi-business enterprise are called government corporation s. They exist because the services they provide are partly subject to market forces and tend to generate enough profit to be self-sustaining, but they also fulfill a vital service the government has an interest in maintaining.

Unlike a private corporation, a government corporation does not have stockholders. Instead, it has a board of directors and managers. Unlike private businesses, which pay taxes to the federal government on their profits, government corporations are exempt from taxes. The most widely used government corporation is the U. Postal Service. Once a cabinet department, it was transformed into a government corporation in the early s.

Another widely used government corporation is the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, which uses the trade name Amtrak. Recognizing the need to maintain a passenger rail service despite dwindling profits, the government consolidated the remaining lines and created Amtrak. Had the U. Credit: Library of Congress. Bureaucrats must implement and administer a wide range of policies and programs as established by congressional acts or presidential orders. Bureaucrats are government officials subject to legislative regulations and procedural guidelines.

Because they play a vital role in modern society, they hold managerial and functional positions in government; they form the core of most administrative agencies. Although many top administrators are far removed from the masses, many interact with citizens on a regular basis. Given the power bureaucrats have to adopt and enforce public policy, they must follow several legislative regulations and procedural guidelines. A regulation is a rule that permits government to restrict or prohibit certain behaviors among individuals and corporations.

Bureaucratic rulemaking is a complex process that will be covered in more detail in the following section, but the rulemaking process typically creates procedural guidelines , or more formally, standard operating procedures. These are the rules that lower-level bureaucrats must abide by regardless of the situations they face.

What is its power? How does the public view it? What essential functions do bureaucratic agencies and departments perform? How are individual departments and agencies organized? What types of departments and agencies exist? How do their functions and political environments differ? What goals and motivations do bureaucrats have? To the extent that bureaucrats and bureaucracies are agents, how is this problematic? What strategies exist to reduce the size and scope of the federal executive?