What is the federal bureaucracy? 457discretion on the part of the bureaucrats tasked to implement it—all they needed to do
was sign the contract, make sure the jets were delivered, and pay Lockheed Martin.
More commonly, however, legislation provides only general guidelines for meeting
governmental goals. Bureaucrats thus have considerable latitude to develop particular
policies and programs. For example, the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act
gave the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the job of determining which drugs are
safe and effective, but it allowed FDA bureaucrats to develop their own procedures for
making these determinations. Currently, the FDA requires that drug manufacturers
first test new drugs for safety and then conduct further trials to determine their
effectiveness. An FDA advisory board of scientists and doctors reviews the results of
these tests, and FDA bureaucrats decide whether to allow the manufacturer to market
the drug. While members of Congress and the president created this procedure, they
have no way to intervene in the process except by enacting a new bill that makes an
exception to the FDA’s normal procedures or revamps these procedures entirely.Developing Regulations A regulation is a rule that allows the government to
exercise control over individuals and corporations by allowing or prohibiting behavior,
setting out the conditions under which certain behaviors can occur, or assessing
costs or granting benefits based on behavior. Bureaucrats gain the authority to write
regulations from acts passed by Congress, either through the statute that initially set
up their agency or through subsequent laws. Consider the EPA’s Clean Power Plan,
enacted in 2015, which imposes limits on the amount of carbon dioxide that can be
emitted from electrical power plants. The EPA’s authority to develop these regulations,
as well as limits on other power plant emissions, comes from the Clean Air Act
legislation of 1970 (for more details, see How It Works: Bureaucracy and Legislation).regulation
A rule that allows the government to
exercise control over individuals and
corporations by restricting certain
behaviors.Regulations are developed according to the notice-and-comment procedure.^2
Before a proposed regulation can take effect, it must be published in the Fede ral
Register, an official journal that includes rules, proposed rules, and other types of
government documents. Individuals and companies potentially affected by the
regulation can then comment, or respond to the agency that proposed it, either
supporting or opposing the regulation or offering different versions for consideration.
They can also appeal to members of Congress or to the president’s staff for helpnotice-and-comment
procedure
A step in the rule-making process in
which proposed rules are published
in the Federal Register and made
available for debate by the general
public.Although the term bureaucracy may
suggest workers sitting behind desks
in offices, the agencies of the federal
bureaucracy perform a wide range
of tasks. The U.S. Forest Service—a
federal agency—helped fight the
wildfires that swept through California
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