348 CHAPTER 11|THE BUREAUCRACY
disagreements between the president and Congress can give an agency signifi cant
freedom, as long as it retains the support of at least one branch of government.
A n a gency may a lso be able to fend off elected offi cia ls’ at tempts to ta ke politica l
control if it has a reputation for expertise. For example, one reason that attempts
to pass legislation forcing the FDA to alter its drug approval process have had little
success is that the FDA’s process is thought to have worked mostly as intended,
approving new drugs that are safe and eff ective and keeping ineff ective or unsafe
drugs off the market. At the same time, the FDA has responded to pressure from
Congress and the president to revise some rules on its own.^70
Finally, agencies can sometimes combat attempts to control their behavior
by appealing to groups that benefi t from agency actions.^71 For example, since the
1980s, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has resisted
attempts by Republica n presidents a nd Republica n members of Cong ress to elimi-
nate the agency.^72 One element of its strategy has been to build strong ties to labor
unions; as a result, OSHA is much more likely to receive complaints about work-
place safety from companies with strong unions. The strategy has also involved
building cooperative arrangements with large companies to prevent workplace
accidents, an approach that not only protects workers but also can save compa-
nies a lot of money over the long term. Moreover, when OSHA levies fi nes against
companies that violate safety regulations, the fi nes are generally much less than
would be allowed by law. As a result, when proposals to limit or eliminate OSHA
are debated in Congress, members hear from unions as well as many large corpo-
rations in support of keeping the agency in place. Over time, this strategy has gen-
erated support for the agency from congressional Democrats and Republicans.The Consequences of Control
In the following discussion of attempts to control what bureaucrats do while at the
same time tapping their expertise, we seek to explain some of the seemingly dys-
functional aspects of the bureaucracy. Part of the problem is the nature of the tasks
given to bureaucrats: even when members of Congress and the president agree on
which problems deserve attention, bureaucrats face the much harder task of trans-
lating these goals into concrete policies. Given the magnitude of this job, it is no
surprise that even the best eff orts of government agencies do not always succeed.
Most important, the use of standard operating procedures is rooted partly in the
complexity of bureaucrats’ tasks—but also in the desire of agency heads and elected
offi cials to control the actions of lower-level staff. Consider three examples. Some of
FEMA’s failures after Hurricane Katrina were the product of preset plans and pro-
cedures that did not anticipate a disaster of the magnitude faced in New Orleans.
Giving laptops to government employees so they can work while out of the offi ce
sounds like a good idea, but it also puts sensitive data at risk because laptops are eas-
ily lost or stolen. And while the FDA’s drug approval process succeeds for the most
part at preventing harmful drugs from coming to market, the delays imposed by the
process do prevent some patients from receiving life-saving treatments. However, in
all these cases the decisions do not refl ect incompetence or malice. Rules and proce-
dures are needed in any organization to ensure that decisions are fair and refl ect the
goals of the organization. Yet it is impossible to fi nd procedures that will work well
in all cases, particularly for the kinds of policy decisions bureaucrats must make.
It is also important to remember that many government regulations, even those
that are the product of standard operating procedures, work as intended and do pro-