Politics and the administration 197as part of other departments, sometimes as independent executive agencies
directly responsible to the president. Some have gone through a complex
process of development; for example, a Bureau of Labor was created in 1884
as part of the Department of the Interior. It later became an independent
agency, but not of department status, only to lose its independence by becom-
ing part of the Department of Commerce and Labor, and finally to re-emerge
in 1913 as a fully fledged Department of Labor. At any one time, therefore,
a number of very important agencies may operate outside the structure of
the departments, headed by an administrator or director who is responsible
to the president and not to a cabinet officer. Some of these agencies may be
very large and important, for example the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. From time to time the amalgamation of agencies into a
department tends to simplify the general structure of the administration,
but there are always a number of such independent agencies, and there is a
continual pressure to create new ones to solve problems as they arise.
In form the departments follow a hierarchical pattern, with the secretary
at the head, supported by an under secretary or deputy secretary. Assistant
secretaries head the major administrative sections of the department, and
below these are the operative units of the department, the bureaus or of-
fices, headed by a director or a chief. This level of bureau chief is a critical
one in the administration. Many bureau chiefs are career officials, whereas
above this level nearly all are political appointments. Yet the bureau chiefs
become the focus of political pressure by congressmen or lobbyists because
it is at this level that the vital operative decisions are taken. Indeed, the ap-
parently straightforward chain of command from the president downward is
highly misleading. The president can, in most cases, obtain compliance from
subordinates in the departments provided that the time, the energy and the
information to exercise such control are available. But clearly the president
cannot be everywhere at once, and the nature of the cabinet hardly makes
it an effective coordinating body. Indeed, some presidents have encouraged
conflict within the administration as a means of ensuring their own pre-emi-
nence, or to help work out within the administrative structure the solutions
to the different political problems with which it must contend. But conflict is
by no means confined to relations between departments. The apparently mon-
olithic structure of the department is deceptive. Many bureaus are relatively
independent of higher control, both formally and in practice. Two outstand-
ing instances are the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Department of
Justice and the US Corps of Engineers in the Department of the Army.
Congress has contributed to the fragmentation of power in the admin-
istration by reinforcing the powers and independence of bureaus. It has
given specific authority by statute to bureau chiefs to exercise powers in-
dependently of the control of president or secretary; it has written detailed
administrative procedures into law which may make the practice of a bu-
reau quite different from the rest of the department; and it has ‘interfered’
in the working of departments by appropriating money in such detail that