PrintJanuary 5, 2011
Graph for the Day for January 5, 2011
"[B]ureaucracies with unique goals achieve autonomy when their middle-level officials establish reputations among diverse coalitions for effectively providing unique services. These coalitions enable agencies to resist political control and make it costly for politicians to ignore the agencies' ideas."[1] ... [This reality creates] "the conditions under which administrators have gained control over the political authorities that ostensibly control them."[2]
The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy
Bureaucratic Empire Building at the Food and Nutrition Service (never let a recession go to waste): 1981 number in poverty: 31.8 million ~ Food Stamp benefit expenditures $24.9 billion (2010 dollars)
1995 number in poverty: 36.4 million ~ Food Stamp benefit expenditures $32.4 billion (2010 dollars)
2010 number in poverty: 44.6 million[3] ~ Food Stamp benefit expenditures $64.7 billion (2010 dollars)
1995-2010: Persons in poverty: up 22.5 percent ~ Food Stamp benefit expenditures: up 99.5 percent
Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., author of "Children at Risk" (Transaction, 2010), is Senior Fellow, The Beverly LaHaye Institute, Concerned Women for America.
[1] Publishers blurb, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928, by Daniel P. Carpenter, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2001).
[2] Endorsement, Stephen Skowronek, Yale University, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928, by Daniel P. Carpenter, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2001).
