The nature of free choice. It’s unpredictable, chaotic, and its conclusions are sometimes completely unprovoked and uncontrollable. It is something that appears always stained with the mark of human emotion. Inevitably, governments are falling deeper and deeper into the web of bureaucracy being spun up around them but, the question is, should that growing bureaucracy be given that privilege of free choice? If we want to see democracy as we know it continue, the answer is a murky one.
Bureaucratic discretion and accountability regarding those decisions has always been a dubious task given the make-up of the government. Moreover, any consequence toward the bureaucratic institution regarding a fault in decisions made by them is usually light and rarely ever able to be carried out on the actual perpetrator of the bad choice. For a real world example of how bureaucratic discretion can subvert the will of legislative and the executive, imagine a high school teacher who’s worked there for 30 odd years. There is a rule that no student can go to the bathroom during class due to recent incidents. However, when asked, this teacher allows the student to go during class fully aware that there are no repercussions coming his way. The school can’t afford to lose him, he has way too much expertise in his field. Since no executive action will be made against him, the school board has no real power to do anything but accept and trust in his decisions at the time. Therein lies the dangers of the discretion inherent in all modern day bureaucracies.
We as Americans have always been critical of government pushing their way into our lives. However, big government is taking on a new face of control these days. The threat is no longer the tyranny of the executive, it is tyranny of the bureaucracy. Bureaucracy has seeped its way into every facet of life, we see it literally everywhere and every day. The highly organized structures behind most of the services that we enjoy are backed nearly entirely by a bureaucracy of some nature. This proliferation gives them the ability and opportunity on a personal level to regulate and punish people on an individual basis. A power that we don’t talk about lightly.
Yet, just how does the bureaucracy manage to subvert the will of the executive and legislative in a democracy? Who gives them that authority? In actuality, it is a technical necessity for big government. A government adapts to increased responsibility the same way that any large group of people does, by specializing. Our government is faced with numerous pressures being exerted on it at the same time from countless interests, and in an attempt to placate as many as they can, our legislature opts to intentionally write “vague” laws or ordinances. This is not to mention the tremendous amount of bureaucracy inherent in such specialization, such as governmental aids, secretaries, etc. It is from these that both executive and bureaucratic discretion is born. However, the legislature and the general public have the ability to oversee the actions of the executive, the most popular form being the ability to vote them out. The same does not hold true for a bureaucratic organization.
The problem lies with the relative permanence of a bureaucratic organization. Not only are bureaucracies “ruled by nobody”, but they are also overseen by this same “nobody”. Bureaucracies are valuable in our government because they possess expertise in their fields. In a specialized government, expertise is king. That means, even if a bureaucrat makes a decision on his own accord that his “boss” doesn’t like, his “boss” isn’t likely to fire him because of his inherent value due to expertise. Unlike the cliché, career bureaucrats aren’t replaceable.
Bureaucracies are also notoriously difficult to centralize blame within it. This is the “rule of nobody”. Generally, a bad bureaucratic decision can’t be blamed on any one person, even if it was only one person using their discretion that made the bad decision. Warren Bennis said it best, “bureaucracies are beautiful mechanisms for the evasion of responsibility and guilt”. That means that most bureaucrats are two or three times removed from any direct guilt or twang of their moral compass when they use their discretion. Even if the general goal of the bureaucracy is toward moral ends, the departmentalized acts that it uses to get there can easily be considered amoral to some, but accepted by the bureaucracy as right. This insulation from the direct personal responsibility is a very dangerous thing to give discretion to.
We see that bureaucracies command a frightening amount of power in our lives, but, is that a necessity required for modern democracy? Is there any proper way to reconcile the rigorous demands of democracy with the imperatives that bureaucracy brings with it? The biggest problem is that bureaucracies and bureaucrats find themselves commanding political powers that they were not elected to have. Bureaucracies are constantly deciding who gets what, when, and how, things that most people would feel more comfortable giving to elected officials. Bureaucrats are insulated, and as such, don’t have to heed the wishes of the general public. That very fact is a blatant attack on most people’s definition of democracy. Can we limit the administrative discretion though?
The goal of a good democracy is to find that perfect balance between the demands that the people place on it and the right level of bureaucracy needed to handle those demands. The first step to limiting the administrative discretion of bureaucracies is to limit the proliferation of bureaucracies. While the elimination of bureaucracy is a tedious and arduous task for the government to undertake, a democratic institution should always approach bureaucracies with the same critical eye that the American people approach their own government with.
There is, however, a need for bureaucracy in democracy. The complete elimination of such is an impractical dream, and probably would result in the cataclysmic collapse of a democracy. Bureaucracies are the specialized arms of the government that are needed to accomplish highly technical and complex social tasks that every democracy presents. Thus, just as too much bureaucracy thwarts democracy, so does too little. Again, a balance must be achieved between bureaucratic discretion in democratic institutions. Just like Weber said, “bureaucrats confronting political leaders are like experts confronting dilettantes.” The two are inseparable.
The ability for politicos to oversee bureaucrats effectively is also key to achieving a goal of limited administrative discretion. While this may appear contradictory on the surface, this can be done through the further independence of bureaucracy from politics. The cause of bad administrative discretion is generally associated with its use to gain political favor or power in some fashion. Creating a model of government that cuts politics and bureaucracy away from each other as much as is humanly possible would eliminate a great temptation for bad administrative discretion. For example, democratic norms would still exist in the political realm, but instead of the pseudo-oversight of political values on bureaucracies, bureaucrats rather would follow a set of “scientifically driven principles of administration”, and such things should be absolute given any type of government. By insulating bureaucracies from the government, we cease most incentive for administrative discretion. At that point, their only concern is efficiency and effectiveness.
Yet, even this limitation can be cast to doubt. Just looking at the world today we can see how hopelessly tangled bureaucracy and government have become. The real world application of this idea is uncertain at best. Moreover, limiting discretion to efficiency and effectiveness still encompasses a wide range of decisions that clearly have the power to regulate and punish individuals amorally. Going back to the first example of the teacher and the student, if the teacher was merely a machine bent of efficiency and effectiveness, then there is no chance that he would let the student go to the bathroom. The student can’t hold it though, and consequently wets himself, garnering the humiliation from the rest of the class. Once again, many people would blame the bureaucrat for a bad call. Yet, those same people would have also blamed the bureaucrat if he had let the student go to the bathroom, citing that he was overstepping his boundaries. If that’s the case, then what was the right choice?
The link between a good democracy and a good bureaucracy is a blurry one. Bureaucracy is needed for democracy to survive, but, everywhere we look we see how antagonistic the nature of bureaucracy is to the nature of democracy. However, we have become more and more ready to blame bureaucracy for the shortcomings of morality and democratic failings than ever before in history. The truth is, perhaps, that bureaucracy is not really at fault. We see it as a dangerous weapon, a destructive tool just waiting to fall into the wrong hands, but, it is the duty of democracy to teach us how to use such a tool as a method for progress rather than an act of tyranny.
Clearly, democracy is indeed thwarted by too much amoral discretion. Administrative discretion is human, it’s a fact of life. Bureaucracy is here to stay simply because it is the most effective, efficient arm of the government to care for the individual. Ironically, the fear of bureaucracy comes from its power to regulate and punish on the individual level, yet, it is also the bureaucracy’s sole power to care and reward on the individual level as well. In fact, it can be argued, and has been successfully before, that democracy thrives with bureaucracy. Democratic governments just don’t have the capacity to see the individual the way bureaucracies do. In that sense, bureaucracies are the ultimate form of democracy as they can tend to each individual need as they come up. To do so, discretion is needed. For a perfect world, moral and good discretion are needed. The role of a good democracy and bureaucracy is to ensure that good and moral discretion is provided. For democracy as we know it to continue, bureaucracy is going to have to be there to help it through the decades to come
