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Bureaucracy and the Democratic System Charles S Louisiana Law Review Volume 6 | Number 3 December 1945 Bureaucracy and the Democratic System Charles S. Hyneman Repository Citation Charles S. Hyneman, Bureaucracy and the Democratic System, 6 La. L. Rev. (1945) Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol6/iss3/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews and Journals at LSU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Louisiana Law Review by an authorized editor of LSU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Bureaucracy and the Democratic System CHARLES S. HYNEMAN* A citizen exercising his right to criticize the government is a good deal like a man with a shotgun. If it's the Fourth of July a man can fire his shotgun in any direction and get satisfaction out of the noise he creates. But if he is duck hunting, he has to make up his mind which duck he wants and take careful aim; otherwise he comes home empty handed. It is much the same way with the citizen exercising his right to criticize the government. He can raise hell generally and get whatever satisfaction there is in hearing the noise he makes. Or he can size up the situation carefully, identify something that doesn't look right and hope to lend a hand to correcting it by ad- dressing his remarks to the precise point. This short essay is intended for those who want to call their shots. It is concerned with certain problems that grow out of the big government of our times. It is based on the recent writings of a number of people who are concerned that we not let the pil- ing up of power in Washington destroy our democratic way of governing ourselves.' I hope that what is said here will help guide * Professor of Government and Director of the Bureau of Government Research of Louisiana State University. He has been on leave for govern- ment service since January, 1942. His Bureaucratic experience includes his present assignment as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, where he has general responsibility for the in- ternal management of the Commission; and previous positions as Director of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service of the Federal Communications Commission; Principal Administrative Analyst in the Bureau of the Budget; and Chief of the Training Branch in the Military Government Divison, Office of the Provost Marshal, War Department. 1. The books reviewed are: Paul H. Appleby, Big Democracy. Albert A. Knopf, New York, 1945. Pp. 197. $2.75. John H. Crider, The Bureaucrat. J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1944. Pp. 373. $3.00. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1944. Pp. viii, 248. $2.00. J. M. Juran, Bureaucracy:A Challenge to Better Management. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1944. Pp..xii, 138. $2.00. J. Donald Kingsley, Representative Bureaucracy: An Interpretation of the British Civil Service. The Antioch Press, Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1944. Pp. 324. $3.50. George Fort Milton, The Use of Presidential Power, 1789-1943. Little, Brown and Co., Philadelphia, 1944. Pp. xiii, 349. $3.00. Merlo J. Pusey, Big Government: Can We Control It? Harper & Broth- ers, New York, 1945. Pp. xx, 240. $2.50. [309] LOUISIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. VI the fire of individuals who wish, not to blast away at government generally, but rather to bring down some of the things that en- danger the effectiveness and security of our democracy. It will be well to start by making sure that no misunder- standing arises out of the use of the words democracy and bu- reaucracy. DEMOCRACY AND BUREAUCRACY: WHAT ARE THEY? The essential feature of democratic government lies in the ability of the people to control the individuals who have politic4l power. If the individuals who are put in public office or who in any other way get title to political power have to account to the people for the way they exercise that power, you have a de- mocracy. If the people cannot control the individuals who have power over them, you may have satisfactory government for awhile (no doubt there have been benevolent despots) but you have no way of making sure that such a government will continue to be satisfactory. The arrangements and procedures that make it possible for the people to get rid of a set of politicians and of- fice holders when they are convinced that things are not going right are the features of a government that give it its democratic character. The word bureaucracy has not been in our vocabulary as long as democracy has, and we are not in as much agreement as to its proper meaning. Some people make it synonymous with arro- gant, insolent, arbitrary government. Others make it synonymous with slow-moving, procedure-bound government. I prefer to say that bureaucracy is a word for big organization. I don't think we need to argue about how big an organization must be to be called bureaucratic. When it is big enough that you have to make a search to find who is responsible for its policies, or big enough that it has to have its principal policies and procedures written out, or big enough that you think it takes too long for one part to find out what another part proposes to do-in any such case it is big enough to be called a bureaucracy as I use the term in this essay. Business corporations, churches, and other non-governmental enterprises can have big organizations and they can be just as Lawrence Sullivan, Bureaucracy Runs Amuck. Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indian- apolis, 1944. Pp. 318. $2.00. Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1944. Pp. viii, 125. $2.00. 1945] BUREAUCRACY, DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM 311 slow-moving, just as procedure-bound, and just as arbitrary as any governmental bureaucracy. The books under review, how- ever, deal almost exclusively with the federal government and what is said in this essay will relate primarily to the executive- administrative branch of the federal government. RELATION OF BUREAUCRACY TO DEMOCRACY In trying to show how bureaucracy affects the security and effectiveness of our democracy, it will be necessary to show the effect of our big administrative departments on the ability of the people to control the affairs of government. It is not enough to point out that some bureaucratic organizations are not as efficient as we would like. Some grocery stores give rotten service and go bankrupt but that does not prove that capitalism is a poor system. Many ministers of the gospel are poor preachers and some positively go wrong but that does not prove that religion is a mistake. What we must get at in this essay is the behavior (the atti- tudes, states of mind, things that go on) or -particular adminis- trative departments and the executive-administrative branch as a whole that tend to make it easy or to make it hard for the citizen t6 find out what is going on and take the action that keeps the policies and performance within the bounds set by the popu- lar will. In view of the content and emphasis of the books being reviewed, this will be done by giving attention to the following questions: (1) What can the chief executive and the adminis- trative departments do that would endanger democratic govern- ment? (2) What is the relation of the President to responsible exercise of administrative power? (3) Can Congress control the executive-administrative branch? (4) Can the people control the bureaucracy by direct action? (5) Can government get too big to be controlled? How can the executive-administrative branch endanger democracy? There are four principal ways in which the chief executive and the various departments can effectively obstruct democratic processes. and weaken or destroy the democratic institutions of the country: (a) They may interfere with or prejudice elections; (b) they may misinform the people about the issues that confront the public, about how these issues may be dealt with, and about what is being done to meet them; (c) they may inaugurate and pursue policies of government which are positively contrary to LOUISIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. VI the public will; and (d) they may, by sheer inefficiency in their operations, destroy popular faith in democratic government. Prejudicing elections. The chief executive and the principal officers in administrative departments are leaders of political groups. They got in office by winning elections; they hope to stay in power by winning elections. It is natural that they should seek to win elections, by whatever means seem promising, including the use of the governmental, authority and power that they control. In some countries the crowd in power uses the army to break up political parties, to control voting, and to destroy the whole system of free elections. We appear to be safely past that stage in the United States. But the great organizations of civilian pub- lic employees can be used to the same end. State and city police forces can break up political meetings, scare people away from the polls, destroy ballot boxes, line up illegal voters, and what not. A state highway department can plaster the telephone poles of the state with posters, coerce voters by putting them on and off the payroll, haul people from precinct to precinct for multiple voting, and a lot of other things that ought never to be thought of. No one in Louisiana who is old enough to read this article needs to be told about these things.
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