An Expansion and Application of Kaufman's Model of Red Tape: the Case of Community Development Block Grants

Abstract

HE GROWTH of government generally in the United States and the federal government in particular has led to a surge of Government growth is evident in the level and scope of intergovernmental aid and in a variety of regulatory activities. Along with this expanded government role has come detailed guidelines for expected and unexpected activities, procedures for decision-making and implementation of decisions, and forms to be filled out to keep records of all these activities. The sum total of these guidelines, procedures, and forms often is called red tape. But these are among the basic ingredients of Weber's notion of a bureaucracy. Perhaps then tape refers to excessive, unwieldy or slow administrative procedures. Individuals who deal with bureaucracies develop their own criteria for Therefore, tape may be understood best as a problem of individual perceptions rather than one of identifying objective measures for it. In this paper, tape refers to guidelines, procedures, forms, and government intervention that are perceived as excessive, unwieldy, or pointless in relationship to decision-making or implementation of decisions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of tape and to evaluate the phenomenon in a Nixon-era New Federalism program Community Development Block Grants (CDBG). We (a) explain four sets of factors political culture, federalism, Congress, and the bureaucracy -that may cause perceptions of tape; (b) analyze the CDBG program for evidence of these factors; (c) measure local government officials' perceptions of tape in the CDBG program; and (d) attempt to explain the reasons for these perceptions.