The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (57 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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transient nature of the political appointees; their babes-in-the-woods status vis-à-vis the career bureaucrats and the Washington power game; their inability, real or perceived, to fire or even transfer recalcitrant civil service subordinates; the alienation in which they live and work, having little sense of community within their own agency and even less among their appointee peer colleagues; and pressures from the White House, that competes with pressures to identify with their agency.
Heclo's is a contingency-based approach that uses exchange theory and is grounded in the values of the public service model (discussed below). His vision of exchange theory is illustrated in what he calls "conditional cooperation," that is, cooperation that is conditioned on the mutual performance of both political and career executives, a sophisticated and sometimes subtle game of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." Established as an informal but powerful quid pro quo, its reward and punishment structure can operate in very indirect ways: A political appointee can invite career executive presence and participation at key meetings or she or he can practice policies of exclusion and control. A career executive can warn political appointees of impending disaster or simply step aside and let them suffer the inevitable consequences of ignorance, can counsel neophyte appointees in the appearances-is-everything mentality of Washington or silently let them lavishly redecorate their offices and wait for them to be lambasted in the dreaded
Washington Post.
The federal bureaucracy is not a monolith; career and political appointees should understand that each side has different perspectives and motivations. Appointees can use this knowledge to advance their political goals. Heclo identifies four genres of bureaucrats (program, staff, reformers, and institutionalists), with four types of reactions to appointee overtures (opponents, reluctants, critics, and forgottens). He counsels political appointees to employ strategic leadership in working with their career subordinates and to use the diversity of the bureaucracy to evoke conditional cooperation rather than depending on invocations of formal authority to move their political agenda.
Only major crises create opportunities for what Heclo calls "Big Change" procedures that involve major shake-ups in organizations and expectations, and perhaps the creation of a new agency. Given their rare occurrence and the reality that "there are no magical management systems or organizational changes for 'getting control of the bureaucracy,"' he recommends that political executives seek out a strategy of cooperation with their career counterparts, rather than trying to change the norms and standard operating procedures of an organization with which they will have limited tenure. As he notes, ''For those both tough and sen-
 
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sitive enough, it is a job of managing a pluralistic, changing consensus with limited strategic resources" (Heclo 1977, 220-21, 233).
Heclo's exchange theory of conditional cooperation emphasizes the need for both sides to work at relationships that depend on the contingencies of one another's actions, not on preconceived ideas of strict supervision or harmonious goodwill. It assumes that career executives can recognize self-interest in the success of their political supervisors and can be motivated to work to ensure that success. Likewise, political executives can see the benefits to be gained by granting credibility and discretion to their career counterparts. Both are motivated to operationalize conditional cooperation. As Durant notes, "The real basis of conditional cooperation lies in making bureaucrats creditors rather than debtors to the political executives; that is, giving them a stake in (the appointee's) future performance" (Durant 1990, 321).
Heclo's concern for a middle ground between political rigidity and bureaucratic freewheeling is echoed by others. Durant, for example, asks, "How can a polity best reconcile its needs for bureaucratic responsiveness and accountability, presidential influence within the bureaucracy, and a neutrally competent civil service?" His answer builds on Heclo's system that is conditionally cooperative
and
grounded in a "public service model of appointee-careerist relations which embodies notions of mutual responsibility and respect, joint tempering and concern for the public interest" (ibid., 319).
After the Reagan years of bureaucrat bashing, this approach is absolutely necessary. To reach the middle ground of conditional cooperation means that:
1. Appointees must acquire more sophisticated, realistic, and less polarized expectations about the nature and legitimacy of careerist behavior and dissent than those typically informing the present debate; 2. They must be afforded the heuristic tools and strategies necessary for anticipating, understanding, and constructively engaging careerists, responding disparately to their initiatives; and 3. Careerists must appreciate what presidentialists already understand and what protean empirical evidence over the past four presidencies readily supports: If political direction and career expertise are to "season and temper" each other, appointees must increasingly wield the tools of the administrative presidency with political and strategic prowess. (Ibid., 319-20)
Durant's typology extends to bureaupolitical responses to policy initiatives that range from mutual accommodation to manipulated agree-
 
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ment, adversarial engagement, and disintegrative conflict. The response of the careerist to policy initiatives, which he calls the noncompliance delay effect (NDE), depends on the degree of threat she or he perceives to the mission and program of the agency as a result of resistance; the greater the threat to the agency, the lesser the resistance, and vice versa.
Using the NDE as a diagnostic tool, Durant advises appointees to assess careerists' readiness to adjust to new policy initiatives and encourages them to nurture rather than demand change in their subordinates' levels of readiness. He employs Hershey and Blanchard's (1988) concept of "follower readiness" to provide a model for when appointees should provide greater or lesser supervision of careerists. Durant's "strategic approach informed by the NDE allows appointees to identify leadership styles, tactics (telling, selling, participating, and delegating strategies), and targets most critical for crafting accomplishment in ways that also advance the values associated with a public service model of appointee-careerist relations" (ibid.,1990, 326).
What is the career side of this interaction? Zuck advises careerists to recognize that change in policy direction is part and parcel of democratic government and that career staff will be employed in service of that change. Therefore, careerists should behave in a professional manner, providing their "best advice, information, and insight which . . . experience has provided." He urges careerists not to withhold negative information in the name of "loyalty." Also, careerists need to think beyond their own bureaucratic horizon to creative ways of accomplishing goals, cutting through red tape, and providing to appointees options and their likely consequences to appointees. Perhaps his most salient (if not comforting) word is that careerists should expect to have their advice regularly ignored or rejected. "Not only is it likely that one's advice is not always sound, but also each administration and political appointee has the right to fail. It is the career official's responsibility to provide the most professional advice he or she possesses, but recognize the right and responsibility for the final decision to be made by the appropriate political executive" (Zuck 1984, 18).
In the "balancing-and-controlling" routine that characterizes the bureaucratic game, each side has powers to exercise. The careerists' include "the power of relative independence in status and tenure, the power of expertise and specialized information, the power of permanence and stability, i.e., to 'wait and delay,' and the power of providing or withholding their services." The political appointees' powers include "the power of legitimacy and formal credentials, the power of the purse and budgetary decisions, the power to select and set goals, and the power to establish new bureaucratic rules and internal support" (Lorentzen 1984, 10-11).
 
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It is important to maintain realistic expectations of improving political-career relations. Tension, power plays, strategizing, and differing motivations are inherent in the body politic. Arguing against the hidebound politics/administration dichotomy that posits a role for careerists confined strictly to carrying out the orders of their political superiors, Lorentzen argues for the development of collaborative working relationships between the two groups of executives. A relationship built on trust and a mutual understanding of perspectives and orientations would allow careerists a role in policy formulation as well as implementation and make for greater success in government administration. "These features of executive branch life are not only inherent in the American democratic system of government, but ultimately are operational aspects of how we have decided to pursue our fundamental political values: dispersed and not unitary power, multiple and not single controls, and consensus/compromise rather than efficiency" (ibid., 11).
The point is not to abolish the game or take away one player's powers, but rather to give its participants "a more supportive environment and better skills for constructive interactions." Both sides carry responsibility for developing this more trusting environment for the creation of collegiality. Careerists must initiate the start of constructive relations; PASs must let them know that such overtures are welcome and that dissent will not incur retaliation (Lorentzen 1985, 413).
The Goal Congruency Model of Political-Career Relations
Aberbach and Rockman (1988), Brauer (1987), and Maranto (1991) note the limitations of a theory of political-career relations that assumes an inevitable clash between the two groups of executives, as do the three political approaches discussed above. They suggest a fourth approach to understanding those relations, goal congruency: "If there exists high goal congruence between a presidential administration and a federal organization, relations between careerists and political appointees are likely to start well and remain that way. If, on the other hand, organization and administration goals are at odds, one can expect relations to start badly and take some time to recover" (Maranto 1991, 249-50).
Some agencies are likely, thanks to goal congruency, to escape political pressure and to enjoy smooth political-career relations from the start. Those are the defense agencies. Maranto's research suggests that no cycle of accommodation is evident in defense organizations because none is neededpolitical-career relations start well and continue in that vein. The popular and presidential support of the military and the defense buildup during the Reagan years make it a less-contentious arena than
 
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many of the domestic agencies he studied. "It is," Maranto observes, "notable that no president since Eisenhower has been less than highly supportive of the military"
4
(ibid., 262).
The more appointees there are in an agency, the greater the opportunity for conflict, because the growth of appointees was likely due to the actions of a president seeking to exercise political control and probably came at the expense of career positions. On the other hand, agencies dealing with highly technical or scientific tasks or noncontroversial issues are likely to be more heavily, perhaps even entirely career and, thus, to be free of political tension (ibid., 251). They are also less likely to experience the turbulence of short tenure.
Maranto finds that while the cycle of accommodation does operate in some domestic organizations in the throes of policy change even before controversial appointees are replaced, his data suggest that the cycle would be short-circuited were the leadership not to change. In other domestic organizations where the cycle of accommodation is one-sided and only operates among appointees but not among careerists, there is no improvement in their relations. This suggests that
the goal congruence of an administration and organization has a strong impact on relations between career and noncareer executives in the organization. . . . Even in conflict-prone organizations, the attitudes of incoming noncareer executives may shorten or prolong the era of bad feelings associated with the transition. If this is the case, better preparation of appointees could help. The relatively experienced Bush cabinet and the president's experience in, and respect for, the federal government should account for better relations in the current administration than in the two past terms, particularly since there has been no change of party. Early discussions of the Bush presidency in fact fail to note significant tensions between appointees and careerists. Indeed, had Michael Dukakis won, it is quite possible that
his
appointees would have distrusted the careerists who served a GOP president for so long. (Maranto 1991, 263)
The Politics/Administration Dichotomy Revisited: Power Without Competence? Competence Without Power?
A third set of models deals with the relationship between political and career executives and seeks to separate the policy roles and responsibilities of each in the traditional politics/administration dichotomy. While attempting to exclude careerists from key policy-making functions and positions, however, these models fail to develop in the appointees the skills, experience, and networks to fill the resulting void.

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