Ubiquitous Anomie: Public Service in an Era of Ideological Dissensus

In a little piece on leadership, Irving Spitzberg, Jr. writes about the ubiquitous . . . throughout the federal service.' That seems to describe the situation pretty well. Things are bad and are unlikely to get better. Civil servants by themselves cannot do much to improve the situation because their situation is the effect not the cause. The cause lies in ideological dissensus within the political stratum, profound disagreements over equality, democracy, and hence the role of government, disagreements that create conflicting expectations that no conceivable cadre of civil servants can meet. What is possible is to approach better understanding of why there is and will continue to be this ubiquitous anomie and to encourage members of the public service to ameliorate what they alone cannot change. When Max Weber provided the classical definition of bureaucracy, he emphasized two features: security of tenure and monopoly of expertise. In the United States, this monopoly, though it never existed entirely in a system of checks and balances, has been shattered by the rise of policy analysis. All around the country, in think-tanks, consulting firms, universities, state and local governments, congressional staffs, and elsewhere, there are rival teams of analysts who have recently been or expect soon to be in government. They know as much as those in the bureaucracy (or they used to know as much or more). Virtually everything that officials can say based on their expertise can be contradicted with conviction by these analysts in (temporary) exile. Consequently, public officials can no longer say with confidence that their views should carry special weight because they know so much more than their critics. Security of tenure has also been weakened. The legal rights of civil servants are now counterbalanced by the rights others have against them. When their units go, so may they. What accounts for the defensive position of the public service? In days gone by, the divisions among and within the two major political parties were more supportive of public servants. Republicans wanted a smaller domestic government and Democrats a larger one. At least under the Democrats, then, who usually held at least one house of Congress, public servants could expect support, perhaps even sympathy, for they were the ones who carried out the programs. Even under the Republicans, there was respect for their authority if not agreement on their size and scope. No longer. Now both parties contain elements antithetical to the bureaucracy.