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The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928.
Until now political scientists have devoted little attention to the origins of American bureaucracy and the relationship between bureaucratic and interest group politics. In this pioneering book, Daniel Carpenter contributes to our understanding of institutions by presenting a unified study of bureaucratic autonomy in democratic regimes. He focuses on the emergence of bureaucratic policy innovation in the United States during the Progressive Era, asking why the Post Office Department and the Department of Agriculture became politically independent authors of new policy and why the Interior Department did not. To explain these developments, Carpenter offers a new theory of bureaucratic autonomy grounded in organization theory, rational choice models, and network concepts.
According to the author, bureaucracies with unique goals achieve autonomy when their middle-level officials establish reputations among diverse coalitions for effectively providing unique services. These coalitions enable agencies to resist political control and make it costly for politicians to ignore the agencies' ideas. Carpenter assesses his argument through a highly innovative combination of historical narratives, statistical analyses, counterfactuals, and carefully structured policy comparisons. Along the way, he reinterprets the rise of national food and drug regulation, Comstockery and the Progressive anti-vice movement, the emergence of American conservation policy, the ascent of the farm lobby, the creation of postal savings banks and free rural mail delivery, and even the congressional Cannon Revolt of 1910.
According to the author, bureaucracies with unique goals achieve autonomy when their middle-level officials establish reputations among diverse coalitions for effectively providing unique services. These coalitions enable agencies to resist political control and make it costly for politicians to ignore the agencies' ideas. Carpenter assesses his argument through a highly innovative combination of historical narratives, statistical analyses, counterfactuals, and carefully structured policy comparisons. Along the way, he reinterprets the rise of national food and drug regulation, Comstockery and the Progressive anti-vice movement, the emergence of American conservation policy, the ascent of the farm lobby, the creation of postal savings banks and free rural mail delivery, and even the congressional Cannon Revolt of 1910.
504 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 3, 2019
Challenging the political science tradition that bureaucratic autonomy began with the New Deal, Carpenter suggests it developed earlier — in the late 19th century when the Postal Service began RFD. Carpenter also finds that it occurs internally when strong leadership (weber’s charisma) forged a reputation for expertise and efficiency. Drawing on case studies of the postal service,the USDA, and the failure of the Department of the Interior, the author challenges conventions of the iron triangle and the role of political parties.
October 2, 2010
Over the past month I've also had time to read snippets of this book on my own, and luckily it's a fantastic piece of work. I can't remember another book that used such extensive research so effectively. For one, the author, a political scientist, plumbed the very depths of the National Archives to discover the everyday minutiae of government at the turn of the 20th century, and to connect that minuatiae to government's long-term transformations. He also used the census and other records to perform numerous detailed regressions on everything from the geographical background of Agricultural Department employees to the factors which encouraged postal efficiency. The combination of broad quantitative and qualitative evidence makes this the most convincing book about government I've read in awhile.
Briefly, the author's thesis is that in some federal agencies, bureaucrats were the major motivators of Progressive policy change in the early 20th century. While the typical Progressive reform narrative claims the movement was a "response to industrialism" or an expression of regulatory capture by business, the author shows that in two of the most important federal agencies of era, the Post Office and the Agricultural Department, almost all of the major reforms came out of the bureaucracy itself, with middle-managers being the main pushers of everything from rural free delivery, to the parcel post, to postal savings banks, to the Food and Drug Act of 1906, to the Agricultural Extension Service, and on and on. Often these ambitious bureaucrats expanded their terrain despite the vigorous opposition of the private sector (as in the parcel post) or Congressional leadership (as in Speaker Cannon's opposition to the 1905 Transfer Act confirming the Forest Bureau's independence). These bureaucrats were not stodgy pencil-pushers, but aggressive politicians who cultivated organizational competence and outside interest groups (the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest farm lobbying group in America today, was basically formed as an extension of the USDA in 1919). The author mainly, and correctly, ignores whether all of this was "good" or "bad" policy, but he shows how it all came about.
Despite being understandably dry at times, the book can also be strangely inspiring, as it shows how dedicated research and creative thinking can change our view of American history.
May 23, 2016
I had to present on this book. I was not looking forward to reading this book or presenting on it. However, once you get started it is actually quite interesting. I never thought the post-office would have such as an interesting history, but it does as told by Carpenter.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews