PS 410/510: Bureaucracy And Democracy

Tuesdays, 2:00 PM – 4:50 PM

Prof. Keith Smith

Office: 820 PLC

Office Hours: 10 AM – 12 PM, MW, and by appointment

keith@uoregon.edu

It is easy to bash the bureaucracy. Anyone can do it. Bureaucracies are too big. They are too slow. They waste too much money. They have too many rules to follow, and even if you can figure out what you are supposed to do, you may not get the result you want. The people who work in them are lazy, rude, and incompetent. Ask someone about public bureaucracies, and the complaints get downright vitriolic.

Yet bureaucracies are ubiquitous in modern society. Public bureaucracies touch almost every aspect of our lives, from where roads go to what we learn in school to how we get paid to how much we pay for cable to how wars are fought. Indeed, we could go so far as to argue that modern society would not be possible without bureaucracy.

If bureaucracies are so important, why do we hate them so much? Is it really that they do not work? Or do we have unrealistic expectations about them? Are bureaucracies really uncontrollable? Or are we using the wrong methods to control them?

This class examines the place of public bureaucracies in a democratic system. We will examine what bureaucracies are, why they exist in democracies, what they do, and the mutual influence that they have with elected officials and the public.

Course Books. There are three required texts for this course:

· Charles T. Goodsell, The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic, 4th Edition (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press).

· Kenneth J. Meier and John Bohte, Politics and the Bureaucracy: Policymaking in the Fourth Branch of Government, 5th Edition (Belmont, CA: Thompson-Wadsworth).

· William T. Gormley, Jr., and Steven J. Balla, Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press).

In addition several readings will be posted to the course Blackboard site.

Course Requirements. The course grade will be determined by the following elements:

· Reaction/summary papers: 25%

· Take home final exam: 25%

· Critical analysis: 30%

· Participation: 20%

Reaction/summary papers: Each student will be required, over the course of the quarter, to circulate three papers that summarize and respond to the readings for that week. These papers should be 2-3 pages long and must be circulated at least 24-hours before the class.

Final Exam: I will post the exams on the course Blackboard site. You will have 48-hours in which to answer the course questions and submit the exam to me. We will negotiate the actual dates of the exams.

Critical analysis: This paper will examine one of the bureaucratic units within the University of Oregon (or some other governmental unit) in light of the concepts we develop in this class. I will give you more details in class, but undergraduates will write an 8- to 10-page paper and graduate students will write a 15- to 20-page paper.

Participation: We will meet once a week to discuss the readings and any questions that you might have. I will come to each meeting with a set of questions and ideas to explore during our time together. I will not lecture during this period. You are expected to come prepared to each meeting, having completed the reading (including the reaction papers) and thought of critical questions about the material.

Late policy: All assignments must be submitted at the beginning of class on the due date. Any work submitted after the class begins but before I get to my office the next day will be docked 1/3 of a grade (e.g., dropping a B+ to a B). An additional 1/3 grade will be deducted (e.g., dropping the B to a B-) for each day the assignment is late; Saturdays and Sundays count. No extensions or make-ups will be granted except in the case of a documented emergency. Prof. Smith must approve all extensions.

Academic Honesty. You should be familiar with the University’s policies on academic conduct, which can be found at: <http://www.uoregon.edu/~stl/programs/student_judi_affairs/academic-dishonesty.htm>. All work submitted in this course must be your own and produced exclusively for this course. The use of sources (ideas, quotations, paraphrases) must be properly acknowledged and documented (for help in avoiding plagiarism, see http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/plagiarism/students/). For the consequences of academic dishonesty, refer to the Schedule of Classes published quarterly. Violations will be taken seriously, will be result in notification of Student Judicial Affairs, and are noted on student disciplinary records.

Draft Class Schedule. (The readings will likely be a little different in the final version of the syllabus.)

Week 1: What we think we know about bureaucracies (and why that may be wrong)

· Meier and Boht, Ch. 1

· Goodsell, Ch. 1 & 2

Week 2: The structure of American bureaucracy

· Weber, “On Bureaucracy”

· Meier and Boht, Ch. 2

· Gormley and Balla, Ch. 5

Week 3: Bureaucracies and public policy

· Gormley and Balla, Ch. 1

· Meier and Boht, 3

Week 4: How bureaucracies think (and yes they do think)

· Gormley and Balla, Ch. 2

· Allison, “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis”

· Video: Fog of War (selections)

Week 5: What we want the bureaucracy to be (and why that may be unreasonable)

· Kaufman, “Emerging Conflicts in the Doctrines of Public Administration”

· Meier and Boht, Ch. 4

· Goodsell, Ch. 3 & 4

Week 6: Who controls the bureaucracy? (The view from above)

· Wilson, “Politics and Administration”

· Gormley and Balla, Ch. 3

· Meier and Boht, Ch. 5

· Worsham, Eisner, and Ringquist, “Assessing the Assumptions: A Critical Analysis of Agency Theory”

Week 7: The politics of bureaucratic design

· Moe, “The Politics of Bureaucratic Structure”

· Other readings to be determined

Week 8: Who controls the bureaucracy? (The view from below)

· Gormley and Balla, Ch. 4

· Meier and Boht, Ch. 6

Week 9: What about those bureaucrats?

· Goodsell, Ch. 5

· Aberbach and Rockman, “Who are the federal executives?”

Week 10: Reforming the bureaucracy?

· Gormley and Balla, Ch. 7

· Meier and Boht, Ch. 7

· Goodsell, Ch. 7

There will be a take home final.