Bureaucracy, a form of hierarchical organization that aspires to neutral competence, is everywhere today, in the private sphere as well as the public sphere. Bureaucratic decision making can be more efficient and expert in many cases than democratic decision making. The central problem of bureaucracy is accountability. The Pendleton Act and the Hatch Act have moved the federal bureaucracy from the patronage-based spoils system of the nineteenth century to a civil service based on merit. Red tape, though cumbersome and irritating, also helps increase accountability by providing a paper trail and eliminating the discretion of lower-level bureaucrats to do their jobs in an idiosyncratic way.

The U.S. bureaucracy has grown from just three cabinet departments at the founding to a gigantic apparatus of fifteen cabinet-level departments and hundreds of independent agencies, independent regulatory boards and commissions, and government corporations. This growth has been in response to the expansion of the nation, the politics of special economic and social clientele groups, and the emergence of new problems that require solutions and regulations. Sometimes agencies identify so thoroughly with the industries they are designed to regulate that we speak of agency capture.

Many observers believe that the bureaucracy should simply administer the laws the political branches have enacted. In reality, the agencies of the bureaucracy make government policy, using bureaucratic discretion to interpret the laws of Congress and to make new regulations, which are then published in the Federal Register, and they play the roles of judge and jury in enforcing those policies.

Bureaucratic culture refers to how agencies operate—their assumptions, values, and habits, including their reliance on a formal and confusing language called bureaucratese. The bureaucratic culture increases employees’ belief in the programs they administer, their commitment to the survival and growth of their agencies, and the tendency to rely on rules and procedures rather than goals, but it can also lead to the kinds of mistakes and conflicts of interest sometimes exposed by whistleblowers.

Agencies work actively for their political survival. They attempt to establish strong support outside the agency, to avoid direct competition with other agencies, and to jealously guard their own policy jurisdictions. Presidential powers are only modestly effective in controlling the bureaucracy. The affected clientele groups working in close cooperation with the agencies and the congressional committees that oversee them form powerful iron triangles and issue networks. Congress exercises control through the process of congressional oversight.

Regardless of what the public may think, the U.S. bureaucracy is actually quite responsive and competent when compared with the bureaucracies of other countries. Citizens can increase this responsiveness by taking advantage of opportunities for gaining access to bureaucratic decision making, such as citizen advisory councils, sunshine laws, the Freedom of Information Act, and the Privacy Act of 1974.