The regulatory problem
Few problems in government are more pernicious or more intractable than the problem of the creeping advance of the power and incompetence of bureaucracy. I know of no better summation of the problem than this by Francis W. Poretto. The problem is so widespread that aphorisms abound for detailing and predicting the nature of bureaucratic failure like:
- Conquest’s Third Law of Politics: The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies
- Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy: in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people. First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
The entirety of the two BBC television programs, “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” (the former, famously, the favo(u)rite television program(me) of Margaret Thatcher) is devoted to exploring this theme.
All of this is fine, as long as the result is simply amusement or fodder for appropriate mockery, but unfortunately, real lives are damaged or ruined by unaccountable entities like the EPA or the IRS. Furthermore, real problems go unsolved or are exacerbated by bureaucratic incompetence, whether well-meaning or not.
In Central Texas, a very pretty and much-loved little bird, the golden-cheeked warbler, was “protected” by the Federal government (specifically, the US Fish and Wildlife Service) with such vigor that it was understood by the local farmers and ranchers that if any land was declared “warbler habitat” (by having warblers spotted on the land by the Feds) then any further use of that land would be severely restricted. Consequently, the local land owners tended to adopt a policy of “shoot on sight, and bury them deep” in place of the rather careful woodland stewardship that most of them preferred. Eventually, state and local projects with a lighter touch were introduced, with concomitantly much better results, but the Federal “experts” required a 3,000 rancher march* on the Texas capitol in August of 1994 before beginning to cede power to the locals (and, arguably, to the market since that area was moving to a different land use that valued woodlands more than grasslands anyway).
I have my own family EPA horror story, but my doctors advise that I leave it in the past for blood pressure reasons. A day may come when I will take up that narrative in print, but it is not this day!
The cultural problem
In addition to the myriad of problems attributable to our misrule by the bureaucracy, there is also a constellation of issues surrounding the fact that a relatively fixed “ruling class” has grown up in the US, marked as much by self-importance as high income or education. Many writers have described the phenomenon: Christopher Lasch as the “New Class,” Codevilla** as “America’s Ruling Class,” Kotkin as the “clerisy,” McWhorter as “The Elect,” Stoller as “The McKinsey types,” etc. All these writers have slightly different takes on the issues, but they are principally describing the same group: the managerial elite, credentialed but not educated, self-important but not competent, and openly contemptuous of those they rule so capriciously. The controlling units of every institution of American life – the press, the academy, many churches, and, most importantly, the bureaucracy – are filled with members of the same monoculture. They claim to want diversity, but this seems to mean “people who look different, but think alike.”
As the power of the bureaucracy grows, so does the impact of this culture divide, all the more so since disdain for the ruled is part of the culture of the rulers.
The solution(?)
So, what can be done structurally, constitutionally, to guard against the creeping march from limited government to unlimited, oversight-free rule by bureaucracy? From a philosophically conservative perspective, what sort of structure has been shown to be a bulwark against bureaucratic power grabs? I’m very much afraid that I have nothing specific to offer here, except to commend that power be centered locally insofar as is possible. Note carefully that a local bureaucracy isn’t necessarily more competent or knowledgeable (though that can happen) – it’s simply the case that the tyrants in the system are all petty tyrants. There is also more of a competitive incentive to rationality – if the next county over does things differently, with lower cost and better results, then perhaps bringing this up to the county government, along with a reminder of just how easy it is to move across the county line, will produce local reforms. This approach is of course much more difficult at the state level, and impossible at the federal level.
Consequently, perhaps the best suggestion that can be made for curbing bureaucracy is in the previous post about getting the central/state/local power structure right. A number of other options have been proposed over the years – constitutional sunset law requirements, a separate branch of government(s) devoted purely to repealing existing laws and programs, et al. – but I’m not aware that any have been actually shown to work. I certainly encourage state-level experimentation with a variety of such ideas to gather data.
Dealing with the problem of the elite monoculture is a different matter. Blind exams for jobs and promotions within the bureaucracy might help, but perhaps the best approach is simply to limit the power of the bureaucracy. If the bait is removed, perhaps the power-hungry elite will move elsewhere.
On a more basic level, I would suggest that the problem of bureaucracy results from failing to deal structurally with the problem of self-interest. I would further suggest that an interested reader would profit from the work of Thomas Sowell on the subject, particularly Knowledge and Decisions (also see here for another Sowell take on the subject). My best guess is that effective limits on bureaucratic growth of the central government will come not at the constitutional level, but at the statutory level, with providing micro-incentives for bureaucrats to behave as though they are in Pournelle’s first group, even if they are really in the second. This, however, requires a level of both understanding and character that appears to be lacking in the current political class.
Addendum: following the initial writing of this piece, I ran across this essay by Mackubin Owens. I think he would agree with me that bureaucracy is a massive problem and becoming worse. However, he makes a connection I had not – a connection to the Polybius cycle of constitutions (ἀνακύκλωσις πολιτειῶν): three basic forms (rule by one, rule by few, rule by many) with a bad and good form of each – normally, monarchy degenerates into tyranny, which is replaced by aristocracy, which degenerates into oligarchy, which is replaced by commonwealth which degenerates into mob rule, overthrown by a (possibly short-lived) monarch and the cycle begins again. In Owens’ view, the USA version 1 republic is a type of commonwealth (the “good” form of rule by the many). He also sees us currently as moving in retrograde fashion from commonwealth back to oligarchy, and is not sanguine about our chances of maintaining the commonwealth unless we the people do something to wrest control back from the oligarchic elites. A fascinating and sobering viewpoint – let us hope that in the attempt we do not overreach and cause a backlash that moves in the other direction: mob rule.
* Full disclosure: this march appears largely to have been organized by a very distant cousin of mine, though I didn’t know it at the time.
** This spectacularly prescient essay from 2010 was reworked later into a book. As I wrote this today, I read that Angelo Codevilla died yesterday in a traffic accident. Requiescat in Pacem.