It looks to me like the Carter and Reagan administrations in the US and the Thatcher administration in the UK really did greatly cut back the bureaucracy fairly successfully.
Carter’s (of all people!) deregulation of airlines and the subsequent phase-out of the CAB was indeed a rare example of politicians effectively shutting down an entire bureaucratic agency. The rest of Carter’s record is very different, though; for one, his administration created the federal departments of education and energy. (And frankly, I’d be surprised if any major CAB bureaucrats actually got laid off rather than transferred to equally cushy positions.)
Regarding Reagan, I disagree. His ascent was indeed seen back then—with hope or horror, depending on whom you asked—as a reactionary tsunami that would sweep away huge parts of the federal bureaucracy, and he openly campaigned on this sentiment. Yet, in practice, he achieved almost nothing. This tremendous populist momentum crashed against the Washington bureaucracy while barely making a dent in it. Reagan didn’t even manage to eliminate the fledgling education and energy departments that Carter had just created, which he promised explicitly; he also failed in his later plan to merely trim them somewhat and turn them into subdivisions of other departments.
With Thatcher, it’s a similar story. Public spending went up during most of her years in office. The reductions in civil service size under her might look significant—until you realize that most of it was due to eliminating blue-collar jobs from the civil service payrolls and replacing them with subcontracting (see Figures 3 and 4 in this paper). (Not to mention how well bureaucrats know to cook the numbers to make them look like “reductions” where there’s no such thing really going on. It’s classic “Yes Minister” business.)
Worse yet, when politicians manage to score some partial victory in reducing the size and scope of bureaucracy, it typically turns out to be a random lucky victory that throws a wrench into some part of the government machinery, rather than a sensible reorganization. This part then usually malfunctions with visible bad consequences—resulting in rushed measures to fix the situation by employing even more bureaucracy than there had been in the first place. (And even more bad PR for “deregulation.”)
Also, like the bureaucrats don’t decide what wars get fought, etc.
Yes, war, and to some limited extent foreign policy, are among the exceptions I mentioned, where elected politicians in the U.S. can still influence things significantly. But while a president and a willing Congress can start a war without much say from the bureaucrats, the bureaucrats, with the help from their allies in the media, judiciary, etc., still have the power to make the success in this war impossible, and to turn it into a slow-motion career disaster for the politicians involved.
MichaelVassar:
Carter’s (of all people!) deregulation of airlines and the subsequent phase-out of the CAB was indeed a rare example of politicians effectively shutting down an entire bureaucratic agency. The rest of Carter’s record is very different, though; for one, his administration created the federal departments of education and energy. (And frankly, I’d be surprised if any major CAB bureaucrats actually got laid off rather than transferred to equally cushy positions.)
Regarding Reagan, I disagree. His ascent was indeed seen back then—with hope or horror, depending on whom you asked—as a reactionary tsunami that would sweep away huge parts of the federal bureaucracy, and he openly campaigned on this sentiment. Yet, in practice, he achieved almost nothing. This tremendous populist momentum crashed against the Washington bureaucracy while barely making a dent in it. Reagan didn’t even manage to eliminate the fledgling education and energy departments that Carter had just created, which he promised explicitly; he also failed in his later plan to merely trim them somewhat and turn them into subdivisions of other departments.
With Thatcher, it’s a similar story. Public spending went up during most of her years in office. The reductions in civil service size under her might look significant—until you realize that most of it was due to eliminating blue-collar jobs from the civil service payrolls and replacing them with subcontracting (see Figures 3 and 4 in this paper). (Not to mention how well bureaucrats know to cook the numbers to make them look like “reductions” where there’s no such thing really going on. It’s classic “Yes Minister” business.)
Worse yet, when politicians manage to score some partial victory in reducing the size and scope of bureaucracy, it typically turns out to be a random lucky victory that throws a wrench into some part of the government machinery, rather than a sensible reorganization. This part then usually malfunctions with visible bad consequences—resulting in rushed measures to fix the situation by employing even more bureaucracy than there had been in the first place. (And even more bad PR for “deregulation.”)
Yes, war, and to some limited extent foreign policy, are among the exceptions I mentioned, where elected politicians in the U.S. can still influence things significantly. But while a president and a willing Congress can start a war without much say from the bureaucrats, the bureaucrats, with the help from their allies in the media, judiciary, etc., still have the power to make the success in this war impossible, and to turn it into a slow-motion career disaster for the politicians involved.