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In his book, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (1989), James Q. Wilson explains that the reason why his advice will not be followed "...has nothing to do with the limitations or inadequacies of individual bureaucrats and everything to do with the constitutional regime of which they are a part" (p. 28). This statement provides a text for the remarks that follow: the Constitution--as revised--establishes the context within which our public officials must do certain things and cannot do other things. Unless we understand what these constraints are, we cannot fairly say what ought to be done about improving public administration or implementing public policies in the United States.
In addition, the relationship is reciprocal: bureaucracies influence constitutions. They may help them survive or undermine them. The theme of this article involves interactions between the American Constitution and our public bureaucracy. No doubt many nonconstitutional factors also affect both the Constitution and the bureaucracy, but it is not possible to deal with them here. I focus on the Constitution because, strangely, its implications for American public administration are not well enough understood. Admittedly, John Rohr (1986) and others have written about the difficulties of "running" a presidentialist Constitution, but much more needs to be discovered.
THE CONSTITUTION AS PARAMETER
Wilson suggests that readers who want to get quickly to "the bottom line" should turn to Federalist Paper number 51, written two centuries ago by James Madison. This paper prescribes the separation of powers between executive, legislative, and judicial powers, between the competing chambers of a bicameral Congress, and divisions of authority between the national and state governments in a federal system. Madison's preoccupation was to safeguard citizens, especially minorities (notably propertied minorities), from the usurpation of power by majorities. Madison, Hamilton, and other founding fathers were, indeed, against democracy--as they understood it--and in favor of a republic, i.e., government by representatives of the people so organized as, by checks and balances, to prevent abuse of authority--or the "tyranny of the majority."
The Madisonian formula persists, but the founders could not be foreseen all its implications. In the agrarian context of the 18th century, they did not worry much about the capacity of government to govern, whether the division of powers between...