⇒ The executive branch carries out and enforces laws. It includes the President, Vice President, the Cabinet, executive departments, independent agencies, and other boards, commissions, and committees.

⇒ President has a few benefits in the legislative process

• The president can veto (i.e. reject) legislation passed by Congress
• Although this veto can be overturned by the House and Senate if there are enough votes to do so – however, overriding a presidential veto is quite difficult because of the number of votes they need to get to do so
• The president also has a pocket veto: this occurs when the president of the United States fails to sign a piece of legislation, either intentionally or unintentionally, while Congress is adjourned and unable to override a veto.

⇒ President has an organisational advantage in being a single person, so he/she has more power to follow a path that he/she wants to take

⇒ The president also gets a lot of attention from the media

⇒ The president also enjoys a lot of information that the other branches of government doesn’t get e.g. information about government spending and how exactly problems are being tackled

• Although this gap is closing with the rise of agencies such as the Government Accountability Office

⇒ The president’s power isn’t limitless

⇒ Neustadt argues that the president’s main power is one of persuasion

⇒ The Executive branch – which includes various officials and agencies – is massive, meaning the president cannot reasonably supervise everything that is happening

• The president relies on their staff to let them know what is happening

⇒ Kingdon states that the president is more concerned with agenda setting than developing policy alternatives to address the problems he/she raises on the agenda

⇒ A bureaucracy is a large group of people who are involved in running a government but who are not elected

⇒ Max Weber says bureaucracy’s have the following features:

• Hierarchy: “a firmly ordered system of super- and subordination in which there is supervision of the lower offices by the higher ones”
• Defined powers across the hierarchy: “fixed and official jurisdictional areas”
• Trained staff who work full-time

⇒ People often criticise bureaucratic governments for being very big

• When the Founding Fathers ratified the Constitution the task of administrating Government was nowhere near as big as it is now
• Today about one in seven Americans work for the federal, state, or local government

⇒ A government agency will handle tasks that are not economically beneficial for the private sector to handle or tasks that we simply demand the government to provide (instead of the private sector)

⇒ If a good involves a free rider problem (a situation where people can benefit from something without paying for it) it is a public good

• For example, you might have a situation where someone pays no tax (a free rider) but benefits from national defence (public good)
• In Welfare Economics and the Theory of the State (1952) William Baumol makes the case for government provision of public goods in areas where there is free-rider problem

⇒ Many people complain as they do not know what the bureaucracy does

• Some people think they have too much influence in our lives, their work is unaccountable, and they make the wrong decisions
• A lot of these complaints come from their direct involvement and knowledge of services that affect them e.g. the postal service
• The unpopularity of bureaucracies has existed for a long time and many people value the role of private firms over bureaucratic agencies e.g. many Americans see FedEx and UPS as a better service than the general postal service

⇒ Other people complain that bureaucracies are unaccountable – individuals are usually unelected and chosen based on skill rather than party affiliation

• People thus think that workers in a bureaucracy simply seek more power and influence rather than any desire to help the people

⇒ Many political thinkers in the 19th and 20th centuries didn’t view the bureaucracy as a policy maker – their belief was that the bureaucracy was distinct from politics and simply did what the other (accountable) branches told them to do

⇒ However, this is not the current mode of thinking

• The bureaucracy are constantly making decisions that affect the public without any direct input from Congress (i.e. they are exercising bureaucratic discretion)
• Exercising bureaucratic discretion – with little public oversight – is therefore seen as undemocratic

⇒ Nevertheless, achieving proper bureaucratic accountability is difficult without a clearly defined public interest to work towards (and this clearly isn’t the case in a country as big as the USA)

⇒ The level of discretion afforded to the various bureaucratic agencies is not always the same

• Kenneth Meier: “The amount of discretion accorded an agency is a function of its resources (expertise, cohesion, legislative authority, policy salience, and leadership) and the tolerances of other actors in the political system.”

⇒ How do the agencies exercise their discretion?

• If they are exercising their discretion based on popular pressure or influence from the elected branches, then the level of accountability of such agencies will be higher than if they don’t
• Some people question the level of private influence over these agencies e.g. it has been argued that the Federal Aviation Administration pandered to the airline industry at the expense of public safety