In Defense of Bureaucracy

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, recently criticized the Trump administration’s effort to shut down the Education Department, saying it “sends a message that the president doesn’t care about opportunity for all kids.” The better approach, she said, would be for all sides to work together to improve efficiency at the department.

“No one likes bureaucracy,” Weingarten said.

Not so: I like bureaucracy. 

Bureaucracy is what gave us the interstate highway system and the moon landing. (Private companies are still trying to put an unmanned lander on the moon, something the federal government did nearly 60 years ago—with a computing system based on reams of paper and slide rules.) More recently, bureaucracy gave us a COVID vaccine at—to coin a phrase—warp speed. 

America’s political system is ossified, polarized and gridlocked. It’s bureaucratic structure is not. Neither, of course, is it particularly efficient. That’s because it’s not at all like a business. It is a sector of the economy unto itself. By its very nature, American government is not structured to be efficient. Rather, the system of checks and balances the founders laid as the foundation of the Constitution is designed to make sure a diversity of voices are heard, that government’s actions are equitable, and that all Americans are included in the opportunity to fulfill the promises of the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Bureaucracy makes the federal government a model employer, a dedicated administrator of programs, and a guardian of freedom and justice. It does this in spite of the fact that most of the tasks government takes on are thankless.

This comes at a price. Bureaucracy is inefficient. But chaos is much more inefficient. Allowing the president unfettered latitude to ignore the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives in Congress creates mass confusion both inside and outside of government. It also guarantees that the administrative state will have to be thoroughly restructured every few years as policy imperatives change with changes in presidential administrations. 

Despite its inefficiencies, the list of government’s accomplishments in recent years alone is long and impressive. The bureaucratic apparatus not only developed the COVID vaccine, but expanded access to health insurance and averted a catastrophe in the country’s financial sector.

“Despite endless cartoons, jokes, editorials, soundbites and other rantings to the contrary, American bureaucracy does work, in fact quite well,” wrote public administration professor Charles Goodsell a few decades ago. “It is something like your five-year-old car. As an immensely complex mechanism made up of tens of thousands of parts, this possession is by no means perfect or totally reliable. But it starts more often than it stalls and completes the vast majority of trips you take.”

Goodsell’s words are still true today. Meanwhile, private corporations are rapidly adding layers of bureaucratic inefficiency. Anyone who has ever dealt with an insurance company, cable TV provider or airline can attest to that. Actions as simple as getting a prescription refilled can lead to harrowing, hours-long nightmares. Inexplicable and capricious decisions are routine. 

None of this should be taken to suggest that governmental bureaucracy is perfect. The individuals who run the executive branch are sometimes incompetent or corrupt. There are serious ongoing issues with the country’s administrative systems, ranging from an antiquated job classification structure to a pervasive inability to deal effectively with poor performers. Nevertheless, waste, fraud and abuse make up a fraction of the cost of the bureaucratic system, which itself consumes a small portion of the federal budget.

To hijack the slogan favored by the movie character who epitomized unfettered capitalism: Bureaucracy, for lack of a better word, is good.