Politics, Power, and Organization 55
Neustadt, and others have demonstrated, bureaucratic politics within the execu-
tive branch almost certainly aff ected policy. Such scholars as Seidman suggested
that bureaucracies—their organization, staff s, authority, and responsibilities—
were involved in and oft en the focus of much broader and more intense political
games.
Seidman supported his argument by examining the well-known organiza-
tional eccentricities of the executive branch through a political rather than an ad-
ministrative lens. From the perspective of public administration orthodoxy, many
elements of the executive branch are perversely designed. Th ere are overlapping
jurisdictions, unclear lines of authority, programs assigned to agencies with little
regard to the functional priorities of the organization, and agencies built on a
variety of organizational blueprints using a bewildering variety of organizational
processes and procedures. To a public administration analyst steeped in the in-
violability of the politics-administration dichotomy and prizing effi ciency as a
guiding principle, this makes little sense.
But it makes perfect sense from a political point of view. For example, fi ve
federal agencies regulate banks, savings and loans, and credit unions. Why the
duplication? Why put up with the consumption of extra resources, the inevitable
turf wars, and the confusion over regulatory authority? Administrative orthodoxy
would call for consolidating regulation of depository agencies under one federal
agency. Yet the banking industry has successfully resisted all eff orts to achieve
such administrative concentration. Why? Seidman argued that the duplication
allows commercial banks to pick their regulators according to the activity they
engage in. Duplication, in short, shift s power from the regulators to the regu-
lated, and the banking industry has had enough infl uence in Congress to keep the
“eccentric” administration of banking regulations. It is not particularly effi cient
or eff ective, but it is a politically desirable (or at least acceptable) way to regulate
depository agencies (Seidman 1998, 14).
Looking at federal agencies through a political lens also off ers numerous other
insights into why programs and policies succeed or fail. A key determinant of a
program’s success or failure is where it gets assigned. Programs and policies will
be neglected if they are assigned to an agency that considers them peripheral to
its primary mission (a phenomenon also observed by Wilson). Th e National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), for example, considers science
its primary mission. When resources become scarce, the nonscience programs
the NOAA administers (nautical and aeronautical charting, for example) are the
fi rst to suff er (Seidman 1998, 16). Such assignment and organizational issues de-
termine not only the success or failure of the program but also the balance of
political power. A program assigned to an executive department will be subject
to diff erent lines of authority and accountability than a program assigned to an
independent agency, a government corporation, or any one of the other bewil-
dering variety of organizational arrangements in the federal bureaucracy. Institu-
tional type thus helps determine how power and infl uence over a given program