Beauracracy Essay Research Paper In a democratic

Beauracracy Essay, Research Paper

In a democratic society, we the people elect representatives to carry out our needs and trust in them that they will carry out that representation in an efficient and responsible manner for the best interest of the public they are representing. That United States government as a legislature, executive branch, and a judiciary branch carries out that responsibility usually with much success and fairness. When the government becomes almost controlled by bureaucracy, that is when our republic becomes undermined and the democratic government that we entrust is, falls apart.

The bureaucracy is permanent or ongoing structure that will always exist and will never be replaced. It is comprised of individual groups of government working to finish a common task. It is made up of supervisors upon supervisors who all have a specific job so that the end task is completed with preciseness and in an expeditious manner. The thing that ends up happening is that while the legislature may make the law and the executive branch may have to administer them as supervisors, but what ends up happening is that it is the supervised who do the work and often they exceed their authority. When they do, the entire system is undermined.

The executive and legislative branches have created laws and regulations to control bureaucracy as a whole. The bureaucrats often times tend to step on the shoes if you will of the two branches and take matters into their own hands and completely disregard the law. In drafting and enforcing the regulations they issue under the laws passed by the legislators, they often act in excess of their legal authority. Such things they do are unconstitutional.

A recent example of this is an issue that came up with the FDA. The FDA attempted to create rules and regulations concerning smoking and tobacco. The almost passed the laws until the government said that is was against regulations and they couldn t do it. The law specifically exempts tobacco from the FDA s jurisdiction and it went before the Supreme Court. The supreme court decided that the FDA acted completely out of their jurisdiction and made them recall their initiative to control tobacco and tobacco products such as cigarettes, cigars, and chewing tobacco.

Another example of bureaucrats undermining the democratic principles is in a recent case in California. Californians voted on an initiative that would virtually close out the private sector from any design or engineering work on schools, hospitals, bridges and other needed projects. Instead that work would go to state bureaucrats — the same bureaucrats who wrote the initiative. They called it the “Government Cost Savings and Taxpayers Protection Amendment,” but it wouldn’t save California money and it certainly wouldn’t protect taxpayers. The bureaucrats created a system that took work from private operations and placed it into their hands. It goes against the democratic system because the government is supposed to protect and serve the people it represents. This operation is taking away from private business and placing the affluence in the hands of the government. The only reason this issue is up for debate is because the government spent millions of dollars of taxpayers money to get professional government employers to collect enough information and get enough governmental votes to address it to the public. Besides the financial burden on taxpayers for initiating the campaigning of this idea, if this law were to pass, the initiative would give one politician — the state controller — enormous power to decide on tens of thousands of projects worth billions of dollars. That is clearly too much power to give to one politician, thus once again, undermining our republic system.

Theoretically, when bureaucrats exceed their authority and make up rules that the laws don’t really allow, the best remedy is in the courts because the legislative and administrative branches are too slow or cumbersome or subject to bribery called campaign financing. This entire concept of bribery and sluggish behavior by government, again, undermines what our forefathers have established as a republic.

Bureaucracy as a whole has undermined our political system and our nation as a democracy. It places far too much control in the hands of individuals. These individuals, although attempting to represent the body of people they are endeavoring to provide for, tend to fall into self-indulgence and allow political power to surmount their initial goals and tasks at hand.