Top Bureaucrats and the Distribution of Influence in Reagan's Executive Branch

Abstract

How did career executives think influence was distributed in their agencies during the Reagan administration? Who would top bureaucrats have preferred to exercise influence? Which actors did career executives believe had too much influence and which too little? This article investigates the attitudes of a sample of career members of the senior executive service regarding these questions. The dominant view of presidential-bureaucratic relations in the public administration literature emphasizes the influence exercised by bureaucrats, key members of Congress, and representatives of interest groups at the expense of hierarchical guidance by agents of the president. The findings reported here suggest that top bureaucrats (1) thought that political appointees were very influential in their agencies and, (2) wanted more influence to be exercised by key political executives. The Reagan team's administrative strategy was apparently successful in gaining the support of top members of the higher civil service. One of the most important developments in the conduct of the presidency in recent years has been the increased use of the administrative tools to pursue presidential policy objectives (Nathan, 1975; 1983). With presidential-legislative stalemate becoming routine and bureaucratic performance widely seen as critical to presidential success, gaining control of the administrative apparatus has been a top priority of modern presidents as diverse as Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. Each of these presidents attempted to centralize policy and implementation decisions in the executive office of the presidency and to politicize the agencies and bureaus of the executive branch by placing political appointees in many top leadership positions (Waterman, 1989; Rourke, 1991a; Hart, 1987). The conventional view that hierarchical control of federal bureaucracies is difficult if not impossible was called into question by President Ronald Reagan's apparent success in reducing administrative discretion in some of the most critical domestic policy agencies of the federal government (Barnett, 1982; Goldenberg, 1984; Wholey, 1984; Lynn, 1984; Rubin, 1985; Huddleston, 1987). Immediately after taking office, Reagan and his inner circle of White House aides embarked on an ambitious and energetic program designed to seize control of policy making and implementation in the executive branch. Budget and regulatory clearance power was centralized within the executive office of the President, key administrative positions in the departments and agencies were staffed with loyal appointees who were philosophically unsympathetic to most forms of government activism; and political executives were encouraged to exclude career professionals from important policy-making duties and responsibilities (Moe, 1985; Benda and Levine, 1988; Aberbach and Rockman, 1990). While the elements of Reagan's administrative strategy have been well documented, the actual effects of these efforts on the distribution of influence in the executive branch have not been. This is an important area of research for several reasons. If executive branch decision-making was dominated by political executives, policies may have been formulated and implemented without the appropriate contributions of career officials (Williams, 1993). The rough balance between responsiveness and competence that we expect our administrative structures to strike may have broken down. In addition, the lack of policy-making responsibility and poor relations with political appointees may have caused low morale and dissatisfaction with government service among career bureaucrats (Mosher, 1984; U.S. General Accounting Office, 1987b; Ban, 1987; U.S. House of Representatives, 1989; Martino-Golden, 1992; Wilson, 1994). In this article, I report the views of a sample of career members of the senior executive service (SES) concerning the distribution of influence in their agencies during the later stages of the Reagan administration. …