Political costs of bureaucratic politics

A country's administrative reform policy and its politics are deeply interconnected. The making of reform policies is politically-driven. The implementation of reform policies produces far-reaching political consequences for all parties concerned. Administrative reform programmes reallocate the power balance among government agencies, in particular; among politicians and bureaucrats; and among bureaucrats themselves. Through the years, streams of reform fashions have come and gone. Today's fashions of administrative reform such as governance and new public management are political instruments for reformers to satisfy their domain-expansion ambitions, power aggrandisement and consolidation. From a political perspective, the question about administrative reform is 'which actors have eventually acquired more power and which actors have less power, once a reform has been implemented, and why is it so'. These enquiries fall under the concept of bureaucratic politics.
Studies in public administration and public policy have long argued that governments are not one entity. Rather they are made up of many bureaus and departments that are constantly trying to protect their turf and maintain or increase their power (Allison, 1971; Halperin, 1974; Allison and Halperin, 1972; Kingdon, 1995; Peters, 2001). The most well-known description of a "bureaucratic politics model" is the one proposed by Graham T. Allison (1971) to explain foreign policy decision-making in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Subsequently, by illustrating the cases of foreign policy decision-making in the U.S. during the Cold War era, Halperin (1974) introduced the politics within a government as the concept of bureaucratic politics. Garry Clifford (1990: 168) argues that by focusing on bureaucratic politics, which emphasises individual values and the tugging and hauling of key players, we are able to understand who wins and why. Akin to public choice theories in public administration (Down, 1967; Niskanen, 1971), bureaucratic politics is an important factor to explain the policy decision-making process. Building from the classical model, political scientists have modified and developed the concept as years passed by. An example is the 'adaptive model of bureaucratic politics' by Bendor and Moe (1984), where they proposed a new framework built on neoclassical approaches of Niskanen (1971) and Peltzman (1976). The distinctness of their model is the incorporation of Simon's (1947) behaviour tradition, in addition to identifying three actors: bureaus, politicians, and interest groups.
In order to further advance the concept of bureaucratic politics and explore its usefulness in analysing administrative reforms, the authors would like to propose a framework to study bureaucratic politics in the setting of administrative reforms. In linking the two concepts of bureaucratic politics and administrative reforms, one can use both concepts as an independent or dependent variable. That is to say, the phenomenon of bureaucratic politics can be used to explain aspects of administrative reform policies. While, at the same time, the phenomenon of administrative reform can, also, be used to explain the changes in power relations of bureaucratic politics. Discussions of administrative reform, in general, have sporadically but not systematically included this important, domestic institutional variable of bureaucratic politics in its theories.
Relationship between actors: Administrative reform is a struggle for power and control among various politician and bureaucrat actors. The victorious side in the battle for power ends up expanding their domain and turf in government; while the losers' relative power is lessened. Thus, the phrase bureaucratic politics in administrative reform is used to describe the political games of bargaining, pulling and hauling, that goes on among and between politicians and bureaucrats to push for administrative reforms in government which would increase one's relative power in government. In this bureaucratic politics framework, there are several types of power relations among and between politicians and bureaucrats. First is the relation between politicians and bureaucrats. Second is the relation among bureaucrats, which can further be divided into relations between central agencies; between core agencies and line agencies; between line agencies; between high-level bureaucrats and mid/low level bureaucrats; and between old-timer bureaucrats and new faces that have been assigned to the agency as part of the reform. And third is the relation among politicians. All three relations are interrelated and all effect the direction of reform policies and the types of managerial tools chosen. The details and examples of each type of bureaucratic politics relation are elaborated as follows.
Politicians vs. bureaucrats: As important as politicians' power is the notion of bureaucratic power (Meier, 1987; Dunleavy, 1991; Peters 2001). In their study on public management reform in ten countries, Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004) confirm the importance of understanding the relationship between administration and politics, and administrators and politicians. The bureaucratic politics of administrative reform can be seen as the struggle between politicians and bureaucrats for power and control of the state machine. Reform policies and tools are introduced to alter the power balance between politicians and bureaucrats (Bowornwathana, 2001a, 2001c, 2000a, 1999, 1996a, 1996b, and 1994). This refers to the relationships between politicians such as the prime minister and ministers on the one hand, and high-ranking bureaucrats such as under-secretaries, director-generals, state enterprise CEOs on the other. This is especially true in cases where the goal of reform is to reduce the power of bureaucrats, such as in the U.K., Japan, Thailand and Italy.
In general, the politician-bureaucrat power relationships in the U.K. governments have been characterised as having "weak politicians and strong bureaucrats."  The "Yes Ministers" are said to be under the influence and directions of career bureaucrats. However, administrative reforms introduced since the Thatcher government (1979-1990) have reduced the power of bureaucrats. These reform programmes are, for example, the next step's executive agencies' programmes, performance agreement frameworks, the citizens' charters and quangos intended to produce "weaker bureaucrats, and stronger politicians" (Jarvis, 2002; Massey and Pyper, 2005; Bowornwathana, 2001b, 107-168). Some scholars, however, contended that the change from government (or the Westminster model) to governance (or Rhodes's "differentiated polity model") might have gone too far resulting in a hollowed-out state with self-organising networks that are beyond the control of the executive core (Rhodes, 1996, 1997; Richards and Smith, 2005). In other words, the elected governments are unable to control and coordinate policy across all of Whitehall.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party's antidote to departmentalism is "joined-up government," which, under the "Modernising Government" Programme, a strong central control from Number 10 and the Cabinet Office, is advocated (Richards and Smith, 2005, 4-7; McAnulla, 2006, 143-164; and Bogdanor, 2005). The Japanese polity has a long tradition of strong bureaucrats, weak politicians. As Vogel (1979, 54) explained: "The politicians make many important political decisions, but compared to the American government the top politicians have little leverage over the bureaucracy. The prime minister may appoint one politician to be minister and another parliamentary vice-minister in each minister, but there are no other political appointments in the ministry, and the person who really runs it is the administrative vice-minister, the highest career officer in the ministry. The key decisions in the ministry are made by the permanent bureaucrats rather than by the politicians of the Diet and the Cabinet." One aim of the January 2001 Reform of Central Government was to strengthen the power of the prime minister through several initiatives such as changing the cabinet law to allow the prime minister to propose policies in cabinet meetings; and making the prime minister head of the new Cabinet Office (Bowornwathana, 2001b, 28-42; Neary, 2002, 121-129; Stockwin, 2005, 57; Rothacher, 1993; Woronoff, 1986). The tradition of "strong bureaucrats, weak politicians" can also be observed in the Thai polity. Since the overthrow of absolute monarchy in 1932, Thai bureaucrats have wielded tremendous policy making and implementation power. Elected coalition governments were short-lived, and military rule was the rule, not the exception. Changes have been taken place during the last two decades with elected politicians becoming more powerful, while the career bureaucrats less powerful. Under the Thaksin government, various administrative reforms undertaken have consolidated power in the hands of Prime Minister Thaksin at the expense of bureaucrats and other politicians (Bowornwathana, 2002a, 2002b, 2004a, 2005a, 2005b, 2006b, 2006d).
In Italy, there is the tradition of the separation of the administrative system from the political domain. The 1948 constitution reserved the power to determine the structure and the functions of the administration to parliament rather than to the government. The ideology of administrative neutrality and impartiality of bureaucrats is practised in the Italian polity (Lewansky, 2000, 233-234). In this regard, Italian bureaucrats are strong. On the other hand, politicians are weak because of the nature of unstable coalition governments of Italy which brings together political parties and factions with diverse ideologies. Recent administrative reform policies undertaken by the Italian governments such as the Amato and Ciampi governments in 1992 and 1993 had moved into the direction of "stronger politicians, weaker bureaucrats." Examples of reform: the legislative decree No. 29 of 1993 changed the legal basis of public employers' contracts by undermining job security; and the effort to reduce the cost of administration through reform of structures and administrative procedures such as by amalgamating the Ministries of Transport and Merchant Shipping together (Bull and Newell, 2005, 150). The four-country cases clearly indicate a common trend in administrative reform to move away from the tradition of "weak politicians, strong bureaucrats" to a new paradigm of "stronger politicians, and weaker bureaucrats". We understand this because we have incorporated the relations between politicians and bureaucrats as an element in this bureaucratic politics framework.
Bureaucrats vs. bureaucrats: The bureaucratic politics of administrative reform is very intense among the bureaucrats themselves, especially those from different government agencies. A common manifestation of politics among bureaucrats is the struggle among central agencies for turf and domain expansion (Bowornwathana and Poocharoen, 2005). Bureaucracies constantly build empires and they constantly struggle to survive (Peters 2001). Especially in states with large number of agencies with relatively little coordination, competition becomes an important part of the agencies' lives and very important for their survival (Peters, 2001). There are five general types of politics among bureaucrats. The first type refers to the competition among core or central agencies. The second type is the contestation between core and line agencies. The third type is the struggle for superior power between bureaucrats of different line ministries. The fourth type is the politics between high and mid/low levels of bureaucrats. And the fifth type is the competition within an agency between old bureaucrats and new bureaucrats, who are usually politically appointed. The following is an elaboration of each type within the context of administrative reform.
(To be continued)
The writer is General Secretary, Bangladesh Economic Association, and Chairman, Emerging Credit Rating Limited.
 [email protected]