208 Politics and the administration
even more assiduous than Congress in creating a multitude of independ-
ent agencies hardly subject at all to gubernatorial authority. Furthermore,
many local authorities enjoy a high degree of autonomy, and are not easily
controlled by the state government, so that, where two or more levels of gov-
ernment are involved in administering a programme, overall federal control
may be very remote. It is true that in recent years the federal government
has tended to bypass state authorities in some programmes, and to work
directly with local authorities, particularly with city governments in urban
renewal programmes, but this has political drawbacks as well, for it tends to
arouse resentment in the state administration, which does not relish direct
federal–local relationships.
Another complication in this situation is that the merit system has not
been accepted to anything like the same extent for state and local employees
as it has for the federal civil service. Patronage, either openly or in disguised
forms, is still characteristic of great areas of state and local government.
The impact of state and local political situations upon politically appointed
officials is, therefore, likely to be considerable, and at one remove the federal
administrators will be aware of these pressures. In such circumstances the
administrative machinery becomes the vehicle through which political com-
promises are worked out. The federal legislature may be following a policy
that is only grudgingly accepted by the state legislature because of its desire
to attract the federal grants that go with the programme. In such circum-
stances federal and state administrators have to work out a modus vivendi
that will not offend their respective political masters, and in practice the fed-
eral officials may be in a position to be much more flexible than their state
colleagues. Indeed this is almost inevitable, for federal programmes must be
implemented across the whole continent in widely differing conditions, and
without such flexibility it is unlikely that it would be possible to administer
such a programme at all.
Further reading
Peters, B.G. (2002) ‘Bureaucracy and Public Management,’ in G. Peele, C.J. Bailey,
B. Cain and B.G. Peters (eds) Developments in American Politics 4, Basingstoke: Pal-
grave.
Stillman, R.J. (2003) The American Bureaucracy, 3rd edn, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Wilson, J.Q. (2000) Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, New
York: Basic Books.
Websites
The Administration: http://www.whitehouse.gov/government
Federal Agencies: http://www.lib.lsu.edu/gov/fedgov.html