Occupy Wall Street,
Performance Management, Institutionalization, and Bureaucracies: Where's the
Moral-ity?
"[F]ollowing
the logic of counterfactuals, there is no evidence that performance measurement
actually 'causes' improved performance. Nevertheless, agency officials tend to believe
it does."[i] As the National Performance Review concluded
during the Clinton Administration when it recommended adopting and implementing
GPRA[ii]:
"Our government ... has lost its sense of mission; it has lost its ethic
of public service; and, most importantly, it has lost the faith of the American
people."[iii]
Thus, the fashion continues, administrators of programs cannot be trusted to
fulfill program obligations unless they are provided with quantifiable and
measurable controls and incentives not only to implement them, but also to
exceed them beyond stated objectives.[iv]
If
I understand the argument for performance management correctly, Americans lack
a clear and cohesive understanding of the direction their nation is headed in
and therefore require tools to assist them in assessing the conditions of the
path they are on.[v]
In many ways, the argument for program evaluation and performance metrics is
almost like saying that we don't know whether the mountain that we are climbing
will lead us to the peak of the Matterhorn or to the top of K-2. Therefore, (to
mime promoters of organic government), we should take samples of the soil
conditions along the way to make sure that those conditions are just right for
us to achieve that goal (however unspecified or elusive). As Dubnick and
Frederickson note, "[t]he promise of accountability through performance
measurement is the fashion of the day."[vi]
And as a fashion – a fad – program evaluation and performance management
reflect insecurity about the direction we are headed in — and, I contend, may actually
be driving administrators to stray from achieving collective social goals or
fulfilling national aspirations.
Why Program Evaluation
and Program Management?
The complexity of administration
(and the lack of trust that results from agents having to respond to changed
circumstances that often require deviation from original objectives) arises in
great measure because of the complexity of human interaction.[vii] Each action taken, each player
involved, creates a series of new and equally complex interconnections. The
answer to ensuring that this complexity does not derail (at least) legislative
intent lies, according to the National Performance Review, in performance
management tools. Such tools are required because "those who resist change
... fear ... jeopardizing our democratic values [values such as equal
opportunity, justice, diversity, and democracy and] doom us to a government
that continues ... to subvert those very values."[viii]
Thus, legislators and regulators should prefer to include program evaluation
and performance management within implementing legislation so that they can
"determine whether their enactments are having the intended effects."[ix]
Indeed,
at an intuitive level, "governing is 'the conduct of conduct.'"[x]
Even if administrations clearly disagree on ultimate goals (expressed usually
along (or against) supra-political lines), both federal and state bureaucracies
should be charged with the task of carrying out the will of the Legislature
(and in many cases also the will of the Executive and of the Judiciary). Fulfilling
that will, though, comes at a price: It requires a measure of trust in the
bureaucracy actually implementing that will. Trust, after all, "is the key
determinant of cooperation, responsiveness, or consumer protection."[xi]
Yet,
at least "state and local governments have hardly been models of
efficiency, effectiveness, or even honesty; ... [don't share] national
objectives, [and are] dominated by a small, local power elite."[xii]
Thus, "abandon[ing] the obsolete, eliminat[ing] duplication, and end[ing]
special interest privileges" will not necessarily lead to more
"effective, entrepreneurial governments [that would] transform their
cultures by decentralizing authority."[xiii]
It does not follow (and, indeed, is contradictory) that ensuring accountability
would require "detailed guidelines and controls on objects of expenditure
[given that (in the worst case) such measures spawn] red tape and rigidity
without introducing incentives to more outputs."[xiv]
That
said, program evaluation can also be useful to social scientists, since (if
implemented properly) the metrics allow them to track benchmarks over longer
periods of time — thus permitting them to effectively gather data that would
otherwise not be at their disposal and that could assist in further tweaking
programs or modifying affected or related legislation.[xv]
From this angle, program metrics are viewed as tools that could be effective in
driving social and legislative change.
"Unfortunately,
however, often 'lip service' is all that policymakers, administrators,
practitioners, and others are willing to commit to carefully-designed and
conducted evaluation research. Evaluation components are omitted from most
policy reform."[xvi] Such omissions
may, of course, be due to the complexity not only of gathering and storing
quantitative data but of also interpreting any collected results. Because of
intangible and often unknown factors, it may be impossible to establish proper
inter- and intra-program comparables to make proper assessments of outcomes.[xvii]
At the same time, too many metrics will stand in the way of proper
implementation of statutory objectives and may themselves result in unintended consequences.[xviii]
Worse, statutes could be drafted to demand program review based on randomized
comparable studies, leaving some communities without intended services to meet
randomized testing objectives.
While
program evaluation to meet social science objectives may prove successful during
the formal structuring of statutory frameworks (dealing primarily with process
implementing regulations), in other cases, short-term negative effects (also in
political capital -- as politicians insisting on randomized pre-implementation
trials could be viewed insensitive to constituent needs) could outweigh
long-term benefits.[xix] In similar
vein, you could find few judges willing to tie judicial decisions (that are
based ideally on notions of equity and fairness and principles of justiciability
and precedent) to performance metrics.
Outside
complex cases, such as school busing where a particular uniform national
objective may be deemed desirable, judges would likely, however, find measuring
the success or failure of their rulings distracting.[xx]
In their minds, constituent remedies preferably lie in their filing claims to address
any injustice or unintended consequence arising from or related to their
determination. Thus, preferred remedies would include education and training to
demonstrate good faith in compliance and as antidotes to claimed or real
discrimination or illegal conduct, litigation related to compliance with
consent degrees, or punitive damages incorporated into settlements to secure
deterrent effects.[xxi]
Developing Collective
Norms Beyond the Metrics
Accountability,
in itself, is a "vague" term[xxii]:
It is rather difficult to assess with certainty[xxiii]
in advance (or even in hindsight) "what accounts are to be rendered to
whom, or how a community will know that its own administrators are doing a
better job."[xxiv]
Furthermore, "[t]he Left remains concerned about the loss of public
accountability, by which society as a whole has to consider what sorts of human
needs will be accepted as a collective responsibility ... [and the] Right
prefer public accountability by which individuals who have needs can decide how
their needs might best be met ..."[xxv]
Thus, "perfectly ordinary
circumstances[] present serious obstacles to implementation,"[xxvi]
which itself cannot take place unless the ability exists to "forge
subsequent links in the causal chain ... to obtain ... desired results."[xxvii]
But, if accountability is "a form of governance that depends on the
dynamic social interactions and mechanisms created within a moral community,"[xxviii]
then we have to ask ourselves what is the "moral community" from
which we are asking an accounting?
I
think that the answer lies in how the United States engages in (allows and then
co-opts) Civic Protest. The most recent national expression of that protest is
found in the Occupy Wall Street movement.[xxix] Occupy Wall Street is described as a bottom-up organization.[xxx]
The movement began as a protest call from an editor at Adbusters in response to
the debt ceiling debate, was picked up by left-wing "radicals," and
spread by word of mouth. I remember from Facebook postings that the protest was
originally meant to last for only a few days. Then a friend (and others) began
petitioning for water and food, members were arrested trying to cross the
Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, 2011 (Day 15), and the movement took off.[xxxi]
Not only in the United States but around the world.[xxxii]
With
that in mind, I haven't been to an Occupy Wall Street sit in. I haven't slept
overnight at one of their tent camps. All I can say about Occupy Wall Street
comes from stories on the internet, from television broadcasts, in the
newspapers, and word-of-mouth passed on by friends on Facebook. I've watched
with some interest how they communicate in chain-transmitted shouted commands,
how they voice their opinions at communal gatherings, how they have established
libraries, communal shrines, meal service, and other activities.[xxxiii]
By the end of November 2011, the camps had formally organized and expanded and
the movement has spread across the world. Indeed, the daily press coverage is
dedicated to reports on their activities.[xxxiv]
Occupy
Wall Street (and it's preceding counterpart - The Tea Party) is, in a sense, an
expression of a collective will: Of a desire to engage the political process
through the semiotics of demonstrative conduct. The movement's protests are
encouraging because they show public engagement and the churning of a discourse
on how the nation (and nations) should be fashioned. In contrast, apathy
equates to the suppression of participative democracy and reflects an
authoritarian state.[xxxv]
Still, administrative and bureaucratic intolerance expressed through demands
that the rule of law be followed (so that the public square can be, for
example, cleaned -- in itself a semiotically pregnant demand) do remind of the
claim that bureaucratic arrangements can supply the bedrock on which
authoritarian regimes stand.[xxxvi]
Thus,
if we are to accept that apathy is an expression of submission to authority,
then protest (in itself) would be the measure for dissatisfaction with public
and government policy. While "vague" or maybe
"uncomfortable" to those seeking to rigorously and formulaically
implement legislative intent through measurable program metrics, the collective
demonstrative voice would seem to be a better, albeit chaotic, measure of
administrative success.
Defining an American
Collective
Providing
everyone in our American society with the opportunity to participate, and have
a voice, is a complex endeavor in itself. At some level, it seems there is a
visceral American reaction against protecting the poor and the sick from
suffering, old-age, illness, accident, and unemployment.[xxxvii]
Just the fights over a national health care system and over a stimulus these
past three years, should give anyone pause that our American values really are
equal opportunity, justice, diversity, and democracy. As Central European writers
of the 1970s recognized, ensuring opportunity, justice, diversity, and (in
particular) equality (or, at least, equal rights) requires rules -- and their
effective administration.[xxxviii]
Max
Weber did not consider the role of a bureaucrat to be the purveyor of moral
authority. Rather, to Weber, the bureaucrat's position is "in the nature
of a duty. ... [It] is considered an acceptance of a specific obligation of
faithful management in return for a secure existence."[xxxix]
Merton equally dehumanizes the bureaucrat by tagging his "personality
pattern" as "nucleated" around a "norm of
impersonality" that is woven into an "organized network of social
expectations."[xl]
Yet, over time, bureaucrats have come to be expected to cooperate toward
achieving "supra-organizational goals and commitments" and to
transcend "vested interests, regional ties, and professional biases."[xli]
In
contrast, writers like Downs and Barzelay and Armajani believe that for
bureaucracies to do useful social work, they must shed themselves of an
"obsolete focus on rules, centralization, and enforcement."[xlii]
Rather, they should turn their attention to a "winning adherence to
norms" built around the pillars of "missions,"
"services," "customers," and "outcomes."[xliii]
Indeed, Barzelay and Armajani would prefer bureaucrats to assume the roles of
judges. They argue that "[a]rguments premised on rules should be
challenged and the issue reframed in terms of achieving the best possible
outcome, taking into account the intention behind the rules, the complexity and
ambiguity of the situation, and the ability to secure support from those who
would enforce the norms."[xliv] Nevertheless,
they seem to suggest that bureaucrats and administrators should not engage in
defining collective norms.[xlv] Rather, contradicting
their central thesis, they would seem to agree that the definition of
collective norms should be left to legislators, executive leaders, and
(possibly) judges and that the implementation of those norms by bureaucrats
should be measured by performance metrics and program evaluation outcomes.[xlvi]
The
rules[xlvii]
and regulations governing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public works,
transportation, or national security, all need bureaucratic structures to
enable them to work.[xlviii]
Placing services in private hands and without the direct bureaucratic controls
that executive departments supply de
facto and de jure, allows for the
dissipation of public goods. Here, I agree with the Kennedy School's Moore when
he claims that "the valuation of important public goods ... ought to be
debated regularly [in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches] not
only to ensure their just and efficient production, but also to maintain a
sense of both interdependence and political competence in dealing with the fact
of our interdependence."[xlix]
Control systems are naturally required as defense mechanisms against waste and
fraud, but they should not come at the price of administrative flexibility and
at the cost of losing our national vision.[l]
Conclusion
It
is odd to me that bureaucracy is viewed in the United States as a collosus
entity focused on efficiency but bereft of morality. Even odder is the
fetishized focus on pre-World War II "Austrian Economics" -- theories
that were developed in the middle of a Civil War, which remained unresolved
until after the National Socialist conquest had been extinguished by the
Allies. I was taught, at least, that Austrians and Germans learned their
lessons from the Second World War that in order to secure equality and
fairness, a bureaucracy must be infused with morality and moral thinking. Yet,
in the United States, rarely does one speak in public of a bureaucrat's moral
obligations.
In
the end, "The erosion of the civil service and the widespread practice of
contracting out have almost certainly weakened the promises of accountability
through bureaucratic control and accountability through civil service merit
procedures, codes of ethics, oaths of office, annual audits, and other
ethics-enhancing mechanisms."[li] What would
be needed to counteract this hollowing out would be some kind of "Good
Samaritan" clause in statues requiring administrative implementation ~ a
clause that would clearly delineate the moral basis for issuing the legislation
and that would provide aspirational guidance to those seeking to secure program
compliance.
Bibliography
., Non classé. "Occupy Best Buy." In, LeMonde.fr (2011).
Published electronically 11/24/2011. http://clesnes.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/11/24/occupy-best-buy/.
Sewell, Abby, and Kate Linthicum. "Occupy L.A.
Protesters to Seek Court Order to Block Eviction." In, L.A.
NOW: Southern California -- This Just In (2011). Published electronically
11/28/2011. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/occupy-la-court-order-eviction.html.
Thiessen, Marc A. "The Supercommittee's 13th
Member: Occupy Wall Street." In,
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(2011). Published electronically 11/28/2011. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-supercommittees-13th-member-occupy-wall-street/2011/11/28/gIQAIC9C5N_story.html?hpid=z3.
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Endnotes
[i]
Dubnick, Melvin J., and
H. George Frederickson. "Accountable Agents: Federal Performance
Measurement and Third-Party Government." Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory 20, in The State of Agents: A Special
Issue (2009): 152.
[ii]
"GPRA obligates federal agencies to develop and implement multi-year
strategic plans that include a mission statement, goals and objectives for
major agency activities, a description of how those goals and objectives will
be achieved, external factors that could significantly affect achievement of
those goals and objectives, and a description of the program evaluation method
that will be used to evaluate achievement of those goals and objectives. The
Act also requires each agency, as part of its annual budget submission, to
prepare, and submit to the Office of Management and Budget, a performance plan.
The annual performance paln is to include performance goals for the upcoming
fiscal year, describe the indicators that will be used to measure their
achievement, and explain how they will be achieved. The annual performance plan
is to be consistent with the strategic plan. The overall objective is for 'the
Federal Government [to] plan [to] present a single cohesive picture of the
annual performance goals for the fiscal year.' In addition, the act requires
agencies to publish a report after each fiscal year comparing the agency's
performance goals for that fiscal year with what was actually achieved, evaluating
successes in achieving goals, and explaining, when applicable, why the
performance goals were not achieved."
Dernbach,
John C. "Symposium: Environmental Sustainability: Navigating the U.S.
Transition to Sustainability: Matching National Governance Challenges with
Appropriate Legal Tools." Tulsa Law Review 44 (2008): 93, 105-106.
[iii]
The National Performance
Review. "From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better
and Costs Less." Chap. 53 In Classics of Public Administration,
edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde. Wadsworth Cengage Learning,
541-48. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 547.
[iv]
Rivlin, Alice M.
"Systematic Thinking for Social Action." Chap. 32 In Classics of
Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 306-16. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 309-310.
[v]
Rivlin, Alice M.
"Systematic Thinking for Social Action." Chap. 32 In Classics of
Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 306-16. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 308-309.
[vi]
Dubnick, Melvin J., and
H. George Frederickson. "Accountable Agents: Federal Performance
Measurement and Third-Party Government." Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory 20, in The State of Agents: A Special
Issue (2009): 146.
[vii]
Pressman, Jeffrey L.,
and Aaron Wildavsky. "Implementation." Chap. 33 In Classics of
Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
317-20. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 318.
[viii]
The National Performance
Review. "From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better
and Costs Less." Chap. 53 In Classics of Public Administration,
edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde. Wadsworth Cengage Learning,
541-48. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 546.
[ix]
Weithorn, Lois A.
"Protecting Children from Exposure to Domestic Violence: The Use and Abuse
of Child Maltreatment." Hastings Law Journal 53 (2001): 11-12.
According to Weithorn, "[a]necdotal, retrospective, and subjective
judgment, in the absence of carefully-planned empirical evaluation, is
notoriously unreliable in determining whether policy outcomes are consistent
with program goals and expectations." Id.
at 145.
[x]
Kipnis, Andrew B.
"Audit Cultures: Neoliberal Governmentality, Socialist Legacy, or
Technologies of Governing?". American Ethnologist 35, no. 2 (2008):
277.
[xi]
Dubnick, Melvin J., and
H. George Frederickson. "Accountable Agents: Federal Performance
Measurement and Third-Party Government." Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory 20, in The State of Agents: A Special
Issue (2009): 147.
[xii]
Rivlin, Alice M.
"Systematic Thinking for Social Action." Chap. 32 In Classics of
Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 306-16. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 309.
[xiii]
The National Performance
Review. "From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better
and Costs Less." Chap. 53 In Classics of Public Administration,
edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde. Wadsworth Cengage Learning,
541-48. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 545.
[xiv]
Rivlin, Alice M.
"Systematic Thinking for Social Action." Chap. 32 In Classics of
Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 306-16. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 309.
[xv]
Weithorn, Lois A.
"Protecting Children from Exposure to Domestic Violence: The Use and Abuse
of Child Maltreatment." Hastings Law Journal 53 (2001): 101.
Program evaluation has its origins in the Office of Economic Opportunity's
desire to keep a social scientist's tab on the implementing effects of the
Great Society's policies. See
Williams, Douglass E., and Richard H. Sander. "Symposium: Poverty Law and
Policy: The Prospects for 'Putting America to Work' in the Inner City.". Georgetown
Law Journal 81 (1993): 2003, 2062-2067. The authors continue:
"Clearly, we have not yet reached a level of political maturity at which
careful experimentation is an ingrained part of policy development. Indeed,
strong institutional pressures push policy in the opposite direction: the task
of generating congressional support often seduces policy proponents into thinly
spreading spending nationwide, rather than concentrating it enough to have
measurable effects; and when test sites are chose, they are often selected with
a view to placating key congressional allies rather than according to intrinsic
scientific merit." Id. at
2066-2067.
[xvi]
Weithorn, Lois A.
"Protecting Children from Exposure to Domestic Violence: The Use and Abuse
of Child Maltreatment." Hastings Law Journal 53 (2001): 144.
[xx]
Thorson, John E., Ramsey
L. Kropf, Andrea Gerlak, and Dar Crammond. "Dividing Western Waters: A
Century of Adjudicating Rivers and Streams, Part Ii." University of
Denver Water Law Review 9 (2006): 299, 434-444.
[xxi]
For a general discussion of such remedies in the EEOC context, see Bisom-Rapp, Susan. "An Ounce of Prevention Is a Poor Substitute
for a Pound of Cure: Confronting the Developing Jurisprudence of Education and
Prevention in Employment Discrimination Law." Berkeley Journal of
Employment and Labor Law 22 (2001): 1, 25-29.
[xxii]
"Accountability as traditionally defined (1) is a social relationship
between at least two parties (2) in which the demand or obligation for
account-giving is accepted and expected by both parties. Account-giving is,
therefore, 'after the fact' of an accountable matter. Accountability in modern
terms also (3) includes organizational and/or political mechanism designed to
'bring' or 'cause' individuals or agencies to account 'before the fact' by
causing them to act accountably." Dubnick, Melvin J., and H. George Frederickson. "Accountable
Agents: Federal Performance Measurement and Third-Party Government." Journal
of Public Administration Research and Theory 20, in The State of Agents:
A Special Issue (2009): 144.
[xxiii]
Some have attempted to create utility formulas to assess the value of auditing
program implementation. Bertelli, in assessing the effectiveness of auditing
quasi-governmental organizations (quangos) in the United Kingdom, developed
this formula: "The government's problem is to choose a level of auditing
requirements for the quango that maximizes its utility by minimizing cheating
at the least cost, or formally:
"The first term on the right-hand side
of equation [1] represents the government's utility if it cannot detect the cheating (the auditing mechanisms are not
perfect, and the government knows this); the second term is the government's
utility if it catches the quango's
cheating (which is simply the government's utility u(x;b) evaluated in the absence of cheating, x = 0); and the third represents the cost of audit activity to the
government. Thus, the government's objective is to maximize the benefits from
catching public bodies (which depend on the probability of catching) when
cheating, minus the costs of auditing." Bertelli, Anthony M. "Governing the Quango: An Auditing and
Cheating Model of Quasi-Governmental Authorities." Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory 16 (2005): 246.
[xxiv]
Rivlin, Alice M.
"Systematic Thinking for Social Action." Chap. 32 In Classics of
Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 306-16. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 311.
[xxv]
Moore, Mark H.
"Symposium: Public Values in an Era of Privatization: Introduction." Harvard
Law Review 116 (2003): 1212, 1212-1213.
[xxvi]
Pressman, Jeffrey L.,
and Aaron Wildavsky. "Implementation." Chap. 33 In Classics of
Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
317-20. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 317.
[xxviii]
Dubnick, Melvin J., and
H. George Frederickson. "Accountable Agents: Federal Performance
Measurement and Third-Party Government." Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory 20, in The State of Agents: A Special
Issue (2009): 146.
[xxix]
In some sense, the Wall Street protestors are fulfilling Mary Follett's dream
for a participative democracy. In The New
State, she writes: "We are no longer to put business and political
affairs in the hands of one set of men and then appoint another set as
watch-dogs over them, with the people at best a sort of chorus in the
background, at the worst practically non-existent. But we are so to democratize
our industrial and our political methods that all will have a share in policy
and in responsibility." Follett,
Mary Parker. The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular
Government. University Park,
PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998: 339.
[xxx]
Yardley, William.
"The Branding of the Occupy Movement." In, nytimes.com (2011). Published electronically
11/27/2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/business/media/the-branding-of-the-occupy-movement.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all.
[xxxi]
A search on google.com for "Occupy Wall Street Brooklyn Bridge"
returned 6,060,000 hits.
[xxxii]
Occupy Wall Street/Tokyo: http://angrygaijin.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/345/;
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/tag/occupy-wall-street/; Frankfurt:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,791918,00.html; and even
Delhi: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-Delhi/165488160208729
[xxxiii]
Chin, Robert K.
"Occupy Wall Street Community Space." 2011 (accessed online
11/28/2011 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJkKFKpsBxE)
[xxxiv]
For example: Mucha,
Peter. "Occupiers Defy Deadline, Quiet Reigns at Dilworth." Philly.com
(2011); Sewell, Abby, and Kate
Linthicum. "Occupy L.A. Protesters to Seek Court Order to Block Eviction."
In, L.A. NOW: Southern
California -- This Just In (2011). Published electronically 11/28/2011. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/occupy-la-court-order-eviction.html.; Thiessen, Marc A. "The Supercommittee's
13th Member: Occupy Wall Street." In, The Washington Post: Post Opinions (2011). Published
electronically 11/28/2011. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-supercommittees-13th-member-occupy-wall-street/2011/11/28/gIQAIC9C5N_story.html?hpid=z3. And even in tongue-in-cheek Goscinny and Uderzo
looks at the U.S.: ., Non classé. "Occupy Best Buy." In, LeMonde.fr (2011). Published
electronically 11/24/2011. http://clesnes.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/11/24/occupy-best-buy/. ("Un nouveau signe du mouvement de
protestation anti-capitaliste qui déferle sur toute l'Amérique? Non. Les gens
campen pour être les premiers à l'ouverture du magasin, vendredi. Best Buy
propose des TV haute définition pour 200 dollars.")
[xxxv]
As Dahrendorf wrote in the 1970s about the collective choice facing
bureaucratic governments in post-War Germany: "Mangelndes politisches Interesse aber ist
historisch eine Begleiterscheinung autoritärer Herrschaft. Gewiß waren es in
der Vergangenheit die autoritären Herren, die die Vielen daran hinderten, sich
für Politik zu interessieren, während es heute die Indifferenz der Vielen sein
könnte, die autoritäre Herren schafft und stützt." Dahrendorf, Ralf. Konflikt Und Freiheit: Auf
Dem Weg Zur Dienstklassengesellschaft. München: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1972: 164.
[xxxvi]
For a description of the process through which authoritarian control is
implemented, see Bergès, Louis. Résister À La Conscription,
1789 - 1814: Le Cas Des Départements Aquitains [in French] [Resisting the
draft, 1789-1814: The case of the Departments in the Aquitaine.]. Paris: Comité des travaux historiques
et scientifiques, 2002: 349 (describing the transformation of the revolutionary
government of France in 1792 into a dictatorship because of external pressures
caused by Prussian incursions and the need to defend national boundaries):
"Avant d'organiser une répression brutale envers les désobéissants, la
législation de la République puis de l'Empire a installé un carcan
administratif très strict visant à réduire les possibilités de se soustraire à
l'exécution des lois sur le recrutement militaire. Dès le Directoire, la
liberté de circuler a été soumise à des contraintes administratives."
[xxxviii]
Cf. Dahrendorf, Ralf. Konflikt Und Freiheit: Auf Dem Weg Zur
Dienstklassengesellschaft.
München: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1972: 101.
"Wirksame soziale Teilnahmechancen bedeuten, daß der
Einzelne gegen Armut und Not geschützt werden muß. Schutz gegen Not - Alter und
Krankheit, Unfall und Arbeitslosigkeit - verlangt in jeder modernen
Gesellschaft die Errichtung umständlicher Organisationen zur Erhebung und
Verteilung von Geldern, also vielfältiger Institutionen der Sozialversicherung.
Wie immer diese im einzelnen aufgebaut sein mögen, sie brauchen Regeln und eine
Bürokratie, die diese Regeln verwaltet. Zugleich beschränkt jede einzelne
dieser Regeln und mehr noch deren Verwaltung den Raum für individuelle
Engscheidungen: derer, die zwangsversichert sind, obwohl sie lieber andere Wege
gehen würden; der Ärzte, die zu bloßen Agenten der Sozialversicherungsanstalt
erniedrigt und dadurch den Patienten und ihren Ansprüchen entfremdet werden;
der Altersrentner, die durch die Regeln benachteiligt werden, und der anderen,
die ebenso unberechtigt bevorzugt werden; ganz zu schweigen von den vielen,
vielen Stunden des Wartens, Bettelns und Ärgers hinter und vor den Türen der
Ämter. Nicht die bösen Absichten einzelner Beamten, sondern das Prinzip der
Organisation selbst macht den Einzelnen, zu dessen Nutzen die Organisation
geschaffen worden ist, zum Objekt unkontrollierter und möglicherweise
unkontrollierbarer Instanzen."
[xxxix]
Weber, Max.
"Bureaucracy." Chap. 6 In Classics of Public Administration,
edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde. Wadsworth Cengage Learning,
44-49. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 45-46.
[xl]
Merton, Robert K.
"Bureaucratic Structure and Personality." Chap. 12 In Classics of
Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 100-08. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 104-105.
[xli]
Bennis, Warren.
"Organizations of the Future." Chap. 24 In Classics of Public
Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde. 218-28.
Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 227.
[xlii]
Barzelay, Michael, and
Babak J. Armajani. "Breaking through Bureaucracy." Chap. 52 In Classics
of Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
519-40. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 527.
[xliii]
Barzelay, Michael, and
Babak J. Armajani. "Breaking through Bureaucracy." Chap. 52 In Classics
of Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
519-40. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 527-528.
[xliv]
Barzelay, Michael, and
Babak J. Armajani. "Breaking through Bureaucracy." Chap. 52 In Classics
of Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde.
519-40. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 529.
[xlv]
In discussing a norm-based accountability for public administration that
includes a consideration of private interests, Moore suggests that "We
have to create a kind of accountability that articulates what is collectively
desired."Moore, Mark
H. "Symposium: Public Values in an Era of Privatization:
Introduction." Harvard Law Review 116 (2003): 1212, 1225. That
accountability is found through governance structures, customer relations, or
communal public ownership all of which depend on "1) the ability to form a
coherent collective aspiration that reflects many voices and ambitions...; 2)
the ability to measure activity and results in ways that assure us that goals
we collectively agreed upon were reached; and 3) the capacity to provide
incentives for those who are doing the inventing, the managing, and the working
... to work hard and to remain creative and adaptable." Id. at 1226-1227.
[xlvi]
Contrast, for example: Bingham, Lisa Blomgren. "Designing
Justice: Legal Institutions and Other Systems for Managing Conflict." Ohio
State Journal on Dispute Resolution 24 (2008): 1. (discussing the
implementation of a "dispute system design" as a contemporary
institutional alternative to traditional dispute resolution management -- with
the aim of providing better measurable responses to normative social needs.
Bingham proposes a 15 point metric to "identify who is eligible" to
use particular dispute resolution programs. Id.
at 14-15.
[xlvii]
According to Kerwin:
"Rules
are products of the bureaucratic institutions to which we entrust the
implementation, management, and administration of our law and public policy. We
usually view bureaucracies as inferior in status to the 'constitutional'
branches of government ... We do so because the authority of these agencies is
derivative, patterned after and drawn from the three main branches. In one
important respect, however, agencies are the equal of these institutions. The
rules issued by departments, agencies, or commissions are law; they carry the
same weight as congressional legislation, presidential executive orders, and
judicial decisions. An important and controversial feature of our system of
government is that bureaucratic institutions are vested with all three
government powers established in the Constitution. Through a device called
delegation of authority, government agencies perform legislative, executive,
and judicial functions. Rulemaking occurs when agencies use the legislative
authority granted them by Congress."
Kerwin,
Cornelius M. Rulemaking: How Government Agencies Wirte Law and Make Policy. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2003: 3-4.
[xlviii]
See generally, Bertelli, Anthony M. "Governing the
Quango: An Auditing and Cheating Model of Quasi-Governmental Authorities."
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 16 (2005): 242 ("Public
bodies may have legal personality
separate from the government. But their legal status public or private and
gradations therein as well as the structure of the organization are matters of
discretion for the legislature or executive when creating the public body.
Legal status lays the framework for legal accountability.").
[xlix]
Moore, Mark H.
"Symposium: Public Values in an Era of Privatization: Introduction." Harvard
Law Review 116 (2003): 1212, 1218.
[l]
See Hutton, John P. "Defense Contract Management Agency: Amid
Ongoing Efforts to Rebuild Capacity, Several Factors Present Challenges in
Meeting Its Mission." edited by United States Government Accountability
Office, 44. Washington, D.C.: US GAO, 2011, 35-37. See also Hutton, John P. "Contingency Contracting: Improved
Planning and Management Oversight Needed to Address Challenges with Closing
Contracts." edited by United States Government Accountability Office, 42.
Washington, D.C.: US GAO, 2011.
[li]
Dubnick, Melvin J., and
H. George Frederickson. "Accountable Agents: Federal Performance
Measurement and Third-Party Government." Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory 20, in The State of Agents: A Special
Issue (2009): 146.
