75th Anniversary ArticleRobert F. Durant is professor em.docx

75th Anniversary
Article
Robert F. Durant is professor emeritus
of public administration and policy at
American University. He is recipient of
the 2012 Dwight Waldo Award from the
American Society for Public Administration
and the 2013 John Gaus Award and
Lectureship from the American Political
Science Association. His latest book
is Why Public Service Matters:
Public Managers, Public Policy, and
Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
E-mail: [email protected]
206 Public Administration Review • March | April 2015
Public Administration Review,
Vol. 75, Iss. 2, pp. 206–218. © 2015 by

The American Society for Public Administration.
DOI: 10.1111/puar.12332.
Robert F. Durant
American University
overreach by federal agencies in the administrative
state—especially regulatory agencies—as a threat to
the U.S. Constitution (Grisinger 2012).
Th is article analyzes how well several of Long’s major
arguments in “Power and Administration” have stood
the test of time or have been realized, and why. It
begins by placing the themes of Long’s classic within
the larger context of his scholarship. Th e article then
analyzes several of his major arguments in light of
subsequent research in public administration, public
management, political science, and public policy.
It concludes by assessing the implications of this
analysis for future research
and theory building in public
administration.
Th is analysis reveals a compli-
cated legacy for Long’s article.
To borrow his prose, the arti-
cle’s legacy is one of attainment
(some support), dissipation
(opportunities not taken), and
loss (of a complete picture of
the budgeting of power that
Whither Power in Public Administration?
Attainment, Dissipation, and Loss

Editor’s Note: In this 75th anniversary essay, Robert Durant,
the 2012 Dwight Waldo Award winner,
refl ects about Norton Long’s iconic 1949 article, “Power and
Administration.” Th e central theme of
Durant’s essay is Long’s interest in the budgeting of power, that
is, how agencies gain, maintain, increase,
or lose power. Durant examines what we have learned about the
budgeting of power and what still needs
to be discovered to realize Long’s aspirations for a “realistic
science of administration.”
JLP
Abstract: Norton Long’s 1949 essay, “Power and
Administration,” has a complicated legacy. First, analysis
reveals
both support for and important refi nements of Long’s
arguments since the article’s publication. Second, Long’s claim
has proven problematic that competition among agencies for
power would bring more coordination and a cross-agency
sense of purpose to the federal government. Th ird, the
bureaucratic pluralism that he explained and defended produced
special interest biases that were off -putting to large segments
of citizens and thus helped create an unsupportive politi-
cal environment for needed capacity building in the federal
government. Fourth, by not considering how institutions
“coevolve,” Long failed to warn that “horizontal power”
building by individual agencies would provoke eff orts by
elected offi cials to enhance their control over bureaucracy in
ways that, over time, diminished their collective sources of
power. Finally, much remains to be done before what Long
called a “realistic science of administration” incorporating
the “budgeting of power” exists in public administration.
Th e jolt that Long sparked in
“Power and Administration”

was a full-throated, unapolo-
getic, and constitutionally
grounded rationale and justi-
fi cation of the pursuit of inde-
pendent power bases by federal
agencies.
One of the most memorable phrases ever written in American
public administra-tion appears in Norton Long’s classic
Public Administration Review (PAR) essay, “Power
and Administration” (1949). Long wrote that “the
lifeblood of administration is power. Its attain-
ment, maintenance, increase, dissipation, and loss
are subjects the practitioner and student [of admin-
istration] can ill aff ord to neglect” (257). Long, of
course, was part of a pantheon of scholars—Dwight
Waldo, Herbert Simon, Paul Appleby, and Robert
Dahl—who returned to academia after stints at vary-
ing levels of government to jolt the administrative
orthodoxy of their day. Th e jolt
that Long sparked in “Power
and Administration” was a
full-throated, unapologetic, and
constitutionally grounded ratio-
nale and justifi cation of the pur-
suit of independent power bases
by federal agencies. Moreover, it
came at a time when a grow-
ing chorus of conservatives in
both political parties saw, since
the New Deal, constitutional

Whither Power in Public Administration? Attainment,
Dissipation, and Loss 207
the budgeting of power—that is, how power is acquired,
maintained,
increased, dissipated, and lost over time.
Power, Administration, and the Pursuit
of Administrative Science
Realism. Pragmatism. Contrarianism. Th ese words capture
much of
the essence of Norton Long’s foundational body of work on
power
and administration. Charles Press writes that Long’s approach is
“best . . . described as tough-minded. He faces up to the facts
with
honesty. He is not tempted by a soft idealism that confuses hope
with fact or by a synthetic realism that invents new bogeymen
with
which to frighten readers” (Long 1962, viii). But, as this article
will
argue, he should have used a bit more realism and given a bit
more
warning to PAR readers about the downsides of the realpolitik
he
described, understood, and justifi ed so compellingly.
Aside from Long’s vivid prose in “Power and Administration,”
what one fi rst notices is that he did not defi ne power
explicitly. His
implicit defi nition has been stated best by one of Long’s
students,
Matthew Holden, in his own classic article, “‘Imperialism’ in
Bureaucracy.” Holden writes, “Th e condition of power is a
favorable
balance of constituencies,” broadly defi ned as “any body or

interest
to which the administrative politician looks for aid and
guidance,
or which seeks to establish itself as so important (in his
judgment)
that he ‘had better’ take account of its preferences even if he fi
nds
himself averse to those preferences” (1966, 944).
Moreover, Long was very clear about what did not alone convey
power to federal agencies. Administrative titles, court
decisions, legal
authorities, and budget allocations were “necessary but
politically
insuffi cient [power] bases of administration” (Long 1949,
257). No
hierarchical “focal point of leadership” existed in the
Madisonian
system of checks and balances, separate institutions sharing
powers,
federalism, and decentralized political parties that could either
nur-
ture or protect agencies or aff ord a de facto coordination and
sense
of purpose for them (258). Separate institutions sharing power
was
hardly a prescription for central policy direction or
coordination.
However, neither did Long think that the “responsible two-
party”
movement gaining momentum among some political scientists
of
his day was a viable solution to these problems (APSA 1950).
He
wrote that “an idealized picture of the British parliamentary
system

as a Platonic form to be realized or approximated [in the United
States] has exerted a baneful fascination in the fi eld” (258). Th
e
Madisonian system was designed to fragment power, not
concen-
trate it as in parliamentary systems, and the local basis of
political
parties precluded national programmatic emphases.
Long also saw bureaucracy playing a pragmatic, vital, and
norma-
tively grounded governance role in this Madisonian system. As
articulated in “Power and Administration,” as well as in another
classic article, “Bureaucracy and Constitutionalism” (1952),
Long
showed how America’s administrative state “fi t fi rmly within
the
American constitutional tradition” (Meehan and Judd 1994,
285).
In doing so, he grounded its legitimacy in pragmatism and
exper-
tise: “No problem is more momentous for the modern
democratic
state than its capacity to develop rational, [but democratically]
responsible, goal-oriented policy,” and this expertise “can
scarcely
be supplied elsewhere than in the great government
departments”
(Long 1954, 22, emphasis added).
has precluded a realistic theory of administration). First, both
support for and important refi nements of Long’s arguments
exist.
Second, his assumption has proven problematic that competition
among agencies for power would bring de facto coordination
and

a cross-agency sense of purpose that elected offi cials could not
give agencies in our Madisonian system. In practice, the legacy
of
the pursuit of horizontal power by agencies has helped produce
the stovepiping of agencies that President Barack Obama and
many of his predecessors have found so maddening and that
jeop-
ardizes coordinated policy eff orts in various problem areas.
Th ird, by not discussing the dangers of agency power building,
Long failed to warn PAR readers of the obvious potential of
what
he called “horizontal power” building by agencies to produce
biased pluralism (Schattschneider 1960), or what Lowi (1969)
famously labeled “interest group liberalism.” With interest
groups
and congressional committees and subcommittees varying in
power
themselves, it only stands to reason that agencies have since
tended
toward cultivating the most powerful among those actors as
bases
of power. Th is tendency, in turn, contributed to the creation of
a
highly receptive environment among segments of the voting
public
for antibureaucratic rhetoric by elected offi cials.
Fourth, by not noting how government institutions “coevolve”
or
adjust to actions taken by others that threaten their power or
pre-
rogative (Mahoney and Th elen 2010), Long failed to alert
readers
to the historically based likelihood of persistent escalation of
eff orts

by presidents and Congresses to control or circumvent agency
power-building eff orts. Inverting Long’s phrasing, as broader
grants
of discretion were delegated to federal agencies over the
ensuing
decades, elected offi cials came to believe that “administration
is the
lifeblood of power” (Holden, forthcoming). In turn, their eff
orts to
co-opt or off set power building and to pursue policies
administra-
tively in individual agencies gradually decreased the collective
sources
of power of the federal bureaucracy, complicated agency
operations,
and compromised agency eff ectiveness. In the process, a public
historically wary (except in crises) of the visible size and power
of
the federal government became less mobilizable to support the
agency capacity building needed to attain, maintain, or increase
the
collective power of the federal government (Durant 2014). Th
us,
rather than the environment shifting on Long to render his
assess-
ment inaccurate, eff orts by individual agencies to build the
horizon-
tal power that he described, rationalized, and hence justifi ed
helped
change the political environment in disadvantageous ways for
the
federal bureaucracy as a whole.
Finally, Long’s insistence that any eff ort to create a “realistic
science
of administration” had to include the “budgeting of power” has

gone
largely unheeded. Th is is because the evolution of the fi elds of
politi-
cal science, public administration, and public management since
Long’s day has—as he feared—eff ectively ceded the study of
agency
power building and maintenance to other fi elds (Holden 1966).
Moreover, even when scholarship has focused on agency power
build-
ing (a verb connoting process) rather than on agency power (a
noun
connoting something attained), researchers have
overwhelmingly
emphasized the sources of agency power and the reactions of
elected
offi cials to those dynamics (but see Carpenter 2001, 2010).
Only
rarely have researchers employed the longitudinal and
comparative
research designs necessary for truly studying the processes
involved in
and even common purpose to federal agencies that was beyond
the ability of political parties, presidents, or other elected offi
cials
to provide or implement in a Madisonian
system. Competition by agencies for power
would aff ord a “loose coordination of the play
of political forces” much like that done by the
economy (1949, 262). Moreover, competition
could also lead to cooperation when political

ends overlapped. Long continued this theme
in his 1958 article, “Th e Local Community
as an Ecology of Games.” He wrote that
coordination need not be centrally imposed
and could not be imposed in the Madisonian
system. Rather, it arises through what
Lindblom (1959) later called “partisan mutual
adjustment.” Referencing Dahl’s classic book,
Who Governs?, Long wrote that the “ecology
of games in the local territorial system accomplishes unplanned
but
largely functional results” without anyone trying to coordinate
the
whole (1958, 254).
Long—this time presaging today’s results-based management
focus
in the United States and internationally—still demanded
account-
ability for results. In critiquing the reigning ideal among
academics
and practitioners of neutral competence in the bureaucracy,
Long
wrote, “Were the administrative branch ever to become a neutral
instrument, it would, as a compact and homogeneous power
group,
either set up shop on its own account or provide the weapon for
some other group bent on subverting the constitution” (1952,
817).
Indeed, Long’s collective work repeatedly warns the fi eld
about the
dangers of agency experts embracing instrumentalism and
rational-
ism as their sole criteria for action. In “Power and

Administration,”
Long used Simon’s (1945) own words to dismiss the latter’s
prescrip-
tion for building administrative science on a fact–value
dichotomy.
Simon, he said, had argued that “rationality depends on the
establishment of uniform value premises in the decisional
centers
of organization. Unfortunately, the value premises of those
form-
ing vital elements of political support are often far from
uniform”
(Long 1949, 259).
Likewise, in “Public Policy and Administration,” Long—joining
Waldo and Dahl—argued explicitly what he had strongly
implied
in “Power and Administration”: the “view of administration as
merely instrumental, or even largely instrumental, must be
rejected
by researchers as empirically untenable and ethically
unwarranted”
(1954, 23, emphasis added). Th e exclusion of values “as an
area
largely beyond the scope of rational inquiry,” Long wrote,
comes
“perilously close to saying, ‘Of the important we can say
nothing of
importance’” (23). His fear was that those advocating the
building
of administrative science without power and values were on the
verge of creating a scholarly discipline that said little of
importance
(Holden 2014).
The Complicated Legacy of “Power and Administration”

Th e following review of relevant political science, public
administra-
tion, and public policy literature since “Power and
Administration”
shows that researchers have fi lled some of the research void
related
to what Long called the “sources and adequacy” of power in
Moreover, in America’s Madisonian system, “conditions [did
not
exist] for an even partially successful divorce of politics from
admin-
istration” (Long 1949, 258). Th us, in Long’s
overall philosophy, the “expert with his slide
rule or IBM machine must be part of the
policy process” and “cannot be a nonpartisan
technician” (Press in Long 1962, x). Experts
“must get involved in the political arena, deal-
ing with political demands and attempting to
create an informed public opinion” (x). In this
sense, Long’s work foreshadows the later New
Public Administration, Blacksburg Manifesto,
and New Public Governance movements in
public administration, with their focus on
the central role of the career bureaucracy in
informing, shaping, and implementing public
policy.
In this Madisonian context, and because of the limited capacity
of presidents and other elected offi cials to continuously
defend,
attend to, or support them, federal agencies had to gain,
maintain,
and increase what Long called “horizontal power.” Th is meant
constantly “mobiliz[ing interest] group support” to nurture
power

“fl ow[ing] in from the sides of an organization” (Long 1949,
258).
In the process, Long correctly argued that horizontal power—
what
we know today with decidedly less approbation as subsystem,
issue
network, and advocacy coalition politics—would become a
“com-
petitor of the formal hierarchy” both within agencies and across
the federal government as a whole (258). Nevertheless, agencies
had to turn on these spigots of horizontal power “to do their
jobs”
and to “supplement the resources available [to them] through
the
hierarchy . . . or accept the consequences in frustration—a
course
itself not without danger” (258). Long noted, “Th ere is no more
forlorn spectacle in the administrative world than an agency and
a
program possessed of statutory life, armed with executive
orders,
sustained in the courts, yet stricken with paralysis and deprived
of
power. An object of contempt to its enemies and of despair to
its
friends” (257).
Forlorn and deprived of power by extension was the fi eld of
public
administration in the late 1940s. Long questioned how a science
of
administration could ever develop if researchers failed to
incorpo-
rate the way agencies gained, maintained, increased, or lost
power.
“Th e budgeting of power,” he wrote, “is a basic subject matter

of a
realistic science of administration” (1949, 257). Moreover,
making
it so required a research focus on “complex and shifting forces
on
whose support, acquiescence, or temporary impotence the power
to
act depends” (257). But, as he famously wrote, existing theory
had
“neglected the problem of the sources and adequacy of power,
in all
probability because of a distaste for the disorderliness of
American
political life and a belief that this disorderliness [would be]
transi-
tory” once a parliamentary system was adopted (258). And yet
“the
bankruptcy that comes from an unbalanced power budget has far
more disastrous consequences [for an agency] than the necessity
of
seeking a defi ciency appropriation” from Congress (257).
Would this jockeying for power among agencies not preclude
eff ec-
tive coordination? On the contrary, Long argued in “Power and
Administration,” it would bring a de facto sense of coordination
Long’s work foreshad-
ows the later New Public
Administration, Blacksburg
Manifesto, and New Public
Governance movements in pub-
lic administration, with their

focus on the central role of the
career bureaucracy in inform-
ing, shaping, and implementing
public policy.
and off ensive to the Constitution (Grisinger 2012). Nor was
there
any reason for a realist to assume this assault would wane in the
future. Indeed, consonant with Friedrich’s (1940) position in the
early 1940s, “Power and Administration” might be read as a
deliber-
ate challenge to conservative arguments. Long characterized the
pur-
suit of horizontal power as necessary not only for agencies to
survive
and do their work but also as a positive practical and
constitutional
development, because competition would be an internal “check”
on
agencies.
So why not mention the possibility that horizontal power would
add fuel to critics’ fi re and produce in-kind eff orts by elected
offi cials to off set these actions? Did Long’s desire not to off
er critics
yet another reason to attack the bureaucracy breed silence on
the
possibility of interest group liberalism? Or was he so confi dent
that
vertical hierarchies would not work that he felt no need to

speculate
on the possibility of congressional and presidential reactions,
despite
the higher transaction costs they would impose on agency
opera-
tions? Or was he so steeped in what would become the naive
plural-
ist theories of the day off ered by Truman (1951) and others that
he could not see that horizontal power building by agencies
might
result in interest group liberalism, become a red fl ag for critics
of
the federal government, dismay segments of the public, and
prompt
further eff orts by elected offi cials to rein in agencies? Or
perhaps,
given the vital role he saw for business in local governance and
eco-
nomic development (Holden, 2014), he was not concerned about
the potential for these relationships building at the federal level
either? It is also possible that Long assumed—as James
Madison had
incorrectly predicted for government as a whole (Elkin 2006)—
that
the legitimacy of agencies would depend on them responding to
all
aff ected interests.
Whatever the reason(s), perceptions by elected officials and
citizens of agency efforts to build horizontal power bases in the
short run did not lead to greater agency independence for all
agencies in the long run. Instead, and quite predictably, they led
to an escalation of Finer’s (1941) “outer checks” on agencies, or
what Rosenbloom (2012) calls the “complexity ratchet” imposed
by presidents and Congresses ever since. And today, whether
successful or not in individual cases, these control-oriented

countermeasures by Congresses and presidents cumulatively
threaten the collective power, capacity, and morale of the
federal
bureaucracy.
Th e pursuit of horizontal power building
by agencies was certainly not the sole cause
for complexity ratcheting by presidents
and Congresses. Indeed, some prominent
formal models often cast these activities as
a function of politicians’ desires to claim
electoral credit or the relative position of
the president, Congress, and the courts in
a policy space. But the bureaucracy has long been a
battleground
for control between presidents and members of Congress, with
the courts as a referee of sorts. So, too, have budget defi cits
prompted presidents from both parties to pursue politicization
eff orts. Politics, after all, follows discretion. Th us, for
example,
as agencies gained more discretion during the 1960s and 1970s,
and as divided government and hyperpartisanship spiraled since
administration (Long 1949, 258; see Allison 1971; Carpenter
2001,
2010; Clarke and McCool 1996; Meier 1980; Rourke 1984). A
collection of factors are among the most common sources
identifi ed
and tested. Th ese include quality of leadership, strength of
agency
clientele, clarity of agency mission, agency reputation acquired
through expertise and dependency of outsiders, and the esprit de
corps or vitality of the organization.
But the review also reveals that most of what we know about

these
topics today is the product of studies with rather short
timespans,
such as a part of or a single presidential administration or parts
of two administrations. Th us, with few notable exceptions
(e.g.,
Carpenter 2001, 2010), these studies are essentially cross-
sectional
in nature, with researchers focused on the proximate sources
and
adequacy of agency power rather than looking over time within
cases at the ebb and fl ow of power or comparatively across
cases
with diff erential experiences. Still, this body of research tells
us a
lot about the sources and outcomes of, and reactions of
Congresses
and presidents to, the budgeting of power (who has it and who
does not). As such, it has advanced our understanding
appreciably
and allows us to assess the staying power of several of Long’s
central
arguments in “Power and Administration.”
To Long’s credit, researchers have confi rmed the durability
over time
of several of his insights in “Power and Administration,” as
well as
suggested some refi nements to them. Less positively,
subsequent
research reveals a major analytical defi ciency in Long’s
classic: not
stating the likelihood that various presidents, Congresses, and
elements of the public would not take kindly to horizontal
power
building by agencies or stand by idly in its wake. Not

unexpectedly,
and as contemporary institutional scholars might put it, various
presidents and Congresses “coevolved” during the ensuing
decades
in response to horizontal power building by agencies, as well as
to
each other’s control eff orts.
In retrospect, this oversight is puzzling. Ironically, Long does
not
give suffi cient credit to the checking power of the Madisonian
system that he otherwise described so well in “Power and
Administration.” He was clear, after all, that horizontal agency
power would lead presidents to see agencies as “competitor[s]
of the
formal hierarchy” and cause Congress to see them as “rivals.”
But he
did not warn readers that these institutions would adapt by
pursu-
ing eff orts to co-opt and control that power building to protect
and
advance their power, access, and infl uence
in agency operations. Indeed, Congress had
already passed the Legislative Reorganization
Act of 1946 to institutionalize committee
oversight of the exercise of agency discre-
tion, as well as the Administrative Procedure
Act in that same year with accountability to
Congress as one of its primary aims. Ever
since, this oversight structure has persistently
ratcheted up the scrutiny of agency operations and has been
joined
by presidents trying to do the same to pursue their policy
agendas
and protect their prerogatives.

Moreover, Long was certainly aware that the administrative
state—
and especially regulatory agencies—had been under attack for at
least two decades by conservatives of both parties as “out of
control”
Th e pursuit of horizontal
power building by agencies
was certainly not the sole cause
for complexity ratcheting by
presidents and Congresses.
Th ese scholars saw policy bubbling up from closed, cozy
relation-
ships among interest groups, agencies, and congressional
oversight
committees. Interest groups attempted to infl uence the
discretion
that agencies were exercising, agencies were open to capture as
they
needed interest group electoral support and information, and
legis-
lative oversight committees needed interest group contributions
and
information to counter agency information asymmetries.
Grounded
in Long’s spirit of realpolitik, others wrote of “bureaucratic
imperial-
ism” (Holden 1966). Wrote Holden, “Th is by no means implies
that
administrators are pirates out for plunder. But it does imply that

the most saintly idealist (if a saintly idealist ever could arise to
such
a high post) could not function if he abandoned the maxim of
‘My
agency, right or wrong!’” (1966, 944).
Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing over the next two
dec-
ades, however, research support began waning for the iron
triangle
as a metaphor for bureaucratic politics. Heclo (1977) described
it
as not so much wrong as “disastrously incomplete.” More
accurate
in describing policy dynamics, he claimed, were issue networks
of
actors on various sides of policy issues who were motivated less
by
material stakes and more by normative or purposive concerns.
Issue
networks were also less structured, characterized by a fl uid
participa-
tion of actors, and accessed based on expertise in any given
policy
domain.
Most signifi cantly for considerations of relative power, Heclo
also
saw these expertise-based “technopols”—not agencies or public
managers—dominating the policy process. He was joined in the
1980s and 1990s by policy analysts who stressed the power of
ideas, ideology, and knowledge in organizing “advocacy
coalitions”
of interacting interest groups, agency bureaucrats, and the
media
(Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993). Again, bureaucracies were

not
the sole source of expertise, only one source among many.
Moreover,
Heclo saw public managers diminishing in power as
management
expertise took a backseat to policy expertise. Meanwhile, the
idea
of policy domains, niches, and ecosystems dominated by
powerful
actors grew in popularity as researchers began sorting out
network
dynamics. Embraced, too, was the idea of vertical subsystems
domi-
nated by special interests and an intergovernmental lobby
represent-
ing elected offi cials, albeit with policy analysts playing key
roles in a
“professional-bureaucratic complex” (Beer 1977, 9).
Th ese trends were further exacerbated by the exponential rise
of
professional advocacy groups in Washington beginning in the
1960s
and continuing to this day. No longer could expertise “scarcely
be supplied elsewhere than in the great government
departments”
(Long 1954, 22). In this instance, Long was writing about a
decade
before the proliferation of think tanks in Washington and state
capi-
tals aff ording elected offi cials other alternatives to agency
expertise.
But agencies pursuing the building of horizontal power played a
role in spawning this explosion, too, as funders—often
“conserva-
tives”—tried to break the hold presumably “liberal” agencies

had on
expertise and, thus, agenda setting and implementation.
In the process, a fracturing of the policy analysis world
occurred
(Radin 2000). Since the mid-1980s, analysts work directly for
legislative bodies, for nonprofi t organizations across policy
areas,
for various interest groups, and for think tanks focused on
particu-
lar policy areas. As a consequence, the most visible and infl
uential
the 1980s, eff orts by presidents to create a policy bias in favor
of
their policy agendas versus those of members of Congress grew
apace. Put diff erently, they sought responsive competence
rather
than neutral competence. Long certainly could not have antici-
pated these precise dynamics. However, as a student of politics
who understood that the federal bureaucracy operates under
joint
custody of Congresses and presidents (Rourke 1993), he had to
know they could happen and that agency power building would
be met with behavioral adjustment and/or countermeasures by
elected offi cials.
To see how and why all this is the case, we turn next to a
synopsis
of research considering how the presidency and Congress have
coevolved over the years in reaction to agencies’ pursuit of
power. In
the process, we will see how several of Long’s characterizations
of the
American political system and its dynamics were either on
target,

overwhelmed by new developments, and/or refi ned by
empirical
research. Th roughout the analysis, the complicated legacy of
“Power
and Administration” is evident.
The Paradoxical Quest for Horizontal Power
As noted, the staying power of many aspects of Long’s realism
is
apparent in subsequent research on bureaucratic politics.
Remaining
as true today, for instance, is the realpolitik of agencies having
to
build support for their actions and their continuing eff orts to do
so in a Madisonian system in which there exists no single focus
of power and leadership. What might surprise Long, however, is
the extent of hyperpluralism that developed in the nature of
those
interest groups to complicate the work of agencies, although he
did acknowledge that agency environments are composed of
varied
“interests friendly or hostile, vague and general or compact and
well
defi ned” (Long 1949, 258).
To be fair, Long may have counted on agencies having to take
eve-
ryone’s interests into account to some extent or else lose their
power
by squandering their legitimacy. But by not referencing well-
known
diff erentials in the power of those interest groups mobilizable
for
support, he did not alert readers to the likelihood of agencies
focus-
ing their horizontal power building on the most powerful

interests
while marginalizing weaker constituencies. Moreover, he failed
to show how these eff orts, in turn, would have constitutive and
interpretative eff ects on those weaker constituencies, reducing
their
sense of political effi cacy in future policy battles relative to
stronger
constituencies and making them less mobilizable to support
agency
capacity building politically (Mettler 2011).
As Harris and Tichenor (2002–03) have documented, the rise
of interest groups in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries in America preceded rather than followed the building
of the administrative state, as did the structure of the interest
group system. Still, by the mid-1950s and 1960s, scholars were
already seeing sinewy ties to powerful special interest groups
develop from the pursuit of horizontal power and congressional
reaction to it in the form of legislative oversight committees
(Frederickson 1971; Freeman 1955; Lowi 1969; Ostrom 1973;
Redford 1969). Produced was policy driven by what scholars
variously called “cozy triangles,” “whirlpools,” or “iron
triangles”
(Bernstein 1966; Cater 1964; Griffi th and Valeo 1975; James
1969; McConnell 1970).
Contrary to Long’s characterization, however, Congress has
since
ceded various responsibilities to presidents (Rosenbloom 2012;
Rudalevige 2005), and presidents’ resources are no longer
“primarily

demagogic” (i.e., dependent on “mass popular appeal[s]”) (Long
1949, 263). Indeed, the expansion of the Executive Offi ce of
the
President (EOP) has placed unprecedented resources at
presidents’
disposal to try to direct policy and aff ect agency behavior when
they
choose. Likewise, some researchers have documented the fact
that
mass appeals make little diff erence to presidential success or
failure
(Canes-Wrone 2005; Edwards 2003). In light of these realities,
Long’s claim that “bureaucrats . . . live under two jealous gods,
their
particular clientele and the loyalty check” (1949, 262) needs
updat-
ing to include the White House.
In recognizing these developments, subsequent research has also
been very unkind to Long’s implicit assumption that horizontal
power building would lead to greater power for federal
agencies. It
no doubt has for some agencies, but individual rationality has
led to
a collective political threat to all since the 1980s. Any true
believer
in the Madisonian system—especially one such as Long touting
no
focal point of power or leadership within it—should have antici-
pated that political institutions would not sit idly by while
agencies
built independent power bases. Th ey would themselves adjust
to
these dynamics to protect their own power. In short, they would
“coevolve” strategies with agency strategies (Mahoney and Th
elen

2010; Orren and Skowronek 2004) and engage in complexity
ratcheting.
Th is occurred as many elective offi cials and ordinary citizens
concluded that the “budgeting of power” by agencies had been
too successful. In reaction, they tried to reduce federal
agencies’
discretion, resources, and expertise while devolving
responsibilities
to third-party actors. Without question, the ferocity of the
reaction
and the angst it has caused agencies under the microscope
cannot be
gainsaid as a drain on the federal bureaucracy’s reputation,
standing,
and power. Th is, again, has combined with the aforementioned
rise
of a procedural republic in agency rulemaking processes to
make
them less supportive of the agency capacity building necessary
to
enhance power. Let us see how and why individual rationality
led
to collective irrationality, as agencies, presidents, and
Congresses
coevolved in reaction each other.
Presidentializing the bureaucracy? Just as in Long’s day, sub-
sequent research suggests that presidential preferences often are
neither complete, fi xed over time, nor transitive. Moreover,
presi-
dents and their political appointees frequently
know less about what they want to do than
what they do not want to do (Aberbach and
Rockman 2009; Durant 2009). Even when

presidents have clear preferences, they are
often multiple, confl ict during implementa-
tion, and must be balanced or traded off .
However, research—especially since the
Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan adminis-
trations—has also analyzed an expansion of eff orts by
presidents to
gain traction for their policy preferences in the face of
horizontal
power building by agencies. Th is occurred after the
administrative
state exploded in the 1960s, as budget defi cits began soaring in
the
analysts today often are not experts in federal agencies. Not
only
does this make gaining consensus on policy direction infi nitely
harder than in Long’s day, but it also threatens a loss of
reputational
power (Carpenter and Krause 2012).
Also off the mark was Long’s claim that the pursuit of
horizontal
power would produce a de facto coordination of policy across
the
federal government. As Steinmo (2010) describes, the American
solution to problem complexity has, until the late twentieth
century,
been more administrative complexity. Th is, in turn, aff ords
more
particularistic—rather than universalistic—benefi ts and tax
breaks
to narrow groups in subsystems, leaving the system even more
complex, uncoordinated, stovepiped, and absent a unifying

policy
purpose. Meanwhile, various policy areas become opaque to
citizens
in ways that advantage the well-organized constituencies of
power-
ful interests in a “submerged state” (Mettler 2011). As Hacker
and
Pierson (2012) and Mettler (2011) demonstrate in their research,
for example, conservatives and probusiness elements made up a
decades-long “durable policy coalition” of actors beginning in
the
1980s that quietly shaped regulatory and tax policy regimes in
their
favor—and against the lower and middle classes. Th is, in turn,
helped citizens feel even more marginalized from their
government
and, hence, less likely to see the need to support the building of
agency expertise that is so vital to the attainment, maintenance,
increase, dissipation, and loss of agency power.
Finally, as policy spaces grew denser with interest groups,
agency
rulemaking became ever more confl ictual, contingent, and
reversible
by the courts (Klyza and Sousa 2008). Long, of course, wrote in
an
era that was less litigious, and thus the courts were not as
continu-
ing a presence in the life of agencies. A judicialization of
adminis-
tration and the rulemaking power of agencies has since
occurred,
spawned by the otherwise benefi cial Administrative Procedure
Act
of 1946 and statutes that followed in the wake of the Great
Society,

the “new social regulation,” and the “rights revolution.” As
O’Leary
(1993) describes, attorneys gained in relative power over
program
bureaucrats within agencies, and the threat of suits could
occasion
risk-averse behavior by program managers. Moreover, as this
“proce-
dural republic” (Sandel 1984) expanded, expertise—legal,
techni-
cal, economic—became the coin of the realm for participation,
further marginalizing average citizens from key policy decisions
they
perceived—correctly or incorrectly—as dominated by well-
heeled
special interests.
Blindsided by Institutional Coevolution?
As noted, one of Long’s major arguments was
that presidential leadership or support of the
bureaucracy in a Madisonian political system
was problematic, if not futile, as was congres-
sional leadership. As Long put it, “power is
not concentrated by the structure of govern-
ment or politics into the hands of a leadership
with a capacity to budget it among a diverse
set of administrative activities” (1949, 258).
Moreover, the relationship between presidents
and Congress is one of shifting powers, but the “latent tendency
of the American Congress is to follow the age-old parliamentary
precedents and to try to reduce the President to the role of
constitu-
tional monarch” (263).
One of Long’s major arguments
was that presidential leadership

or support of the bureaucracy in
a Madisonian political system
was problematic, if not futile, as
was congressional leadership.
about the implementation of diff erent programs in a
comprehen-
sive and comparative way” (445) or “to reduce confl icts [and]
to
ensure consistent application of the regulatory analysis process”
(Comptroller General 1981, 53). Moreover, when administrative
initiatives are viewed from the grassroots where they interact,
there
is little evidence that a cohesive strategy either exists or is even
pos-
sible (Durant 1992).
Also consistent with Long’s point regarding no single “focal
point
of leadership” or purpose in the Madisonian system, subsequent
research suggests that Congress and the courts have eff ective
means
for slowing down policies pursued administratively. Among
these
are the informal rulemaking provisions of the Administrative
Procedure Act, application of the Unfunded Mandates Reform
Act,
control over the appropriations process, stipulation of
congressional
mandates in legislative reports accompanying statute

reauthoriza-
tion, and giving standing to sue to parties disaff ected by policy
redirection. Additional opportunities are aff orded in the
rulemaking
process to amend or stymie signifi cant or controversial
administra-
tive initiatives (Kerwin, Furlong, and West 2012; Mashaw 2012;
Yackee 2006). Rourke’s (1993) query, “Whose Bureaucracy Is
Th is,
Anyway?” rings very true.
In terms of contextual tools of the administrative presidency,
research since Long’s classic has focused on how presidents
have
relied on political appointees to advance their policy agendas
admin-
istratively. Th ey try to do so by aligning agency structures,
decision
rules, personnel policies and evaluations, and budgets with
presi-
dential goals (Durant 1992; Hult and Walcott 1989; Lewis 2008;
Maranto 1993; Nathan 1983). Yet methodological issues make
assessing these strategies diffi cult because presidential
priorities shift
over time. Most research also fi nds, as Long predicted, that this
administrative strategy varies in impact, that its tools are not
well
coordinated, and, thus, that it is neither as powerful as
proponents
hope nor as powerless as opponents count on. But it does show
how
these strategies disrupt agency routines and the quest for
horizontal
power building.
Moreover, although presidents in the modern era have intensifi

ed
eff orts to politicize the career bureaucracy, politicization is
quite
selective and contingent. Lewis (2008), for instance, fi nds that
levels
of politicization vary. Higher levels of politicization are found
in
agencies implementing social regulatory policies and policies
on
which partisans diff er most greatly, such as in the
environmental
policy arena. In addition, greater numbers of appointees are
found
during a president’s fi rst term, when the same party controls
the
presidency and Congress, and when intraparty policy diff
erences
exist. Th us, again, agencies’ relative autonomy will vary, not
so
much in terms of inherent sources of power but rather from
external
considerations by presidents (and Congresses). Still, these eff
orts
(e.g., reorganizations) bring their own level of disruption to
agencies
and can sap employee morale within them.
Additionally, the attractiveness to presidents of the unilateral
tools of
the presidency has increased as Neustadt’s (1960) bargaining
model
of presidential infl uence has been challenged. Since the 1990s,
scholars have seen the ferocity of partisan polarization in
Congress
diminishing the ability of presidents to bargain—or even their
need

to do so (Campbell 2008). As such, presidents have increasingly
1980s, and as partisan divides and permanent political
campaigns
made legislative gridlock commonplace in the 1990s and 2000s.
Th e default assumption in most White Houses was that the
power
of agencies that Long described and justifi ed was now
compromis-
ing, if not thwarting, presidential priorities and had to be
control-
led by expanding and coordinating available administrative
tools.
Referred to collectively as the “administrative presidency”
(Durant
1992; Nathan 1983), these strategies involved (1) centralizing
policy making in the White House, (2) changing the organiza-
tional context within which agencies exercise discretion, and (3)
taking unilateral actions to advance presidential policy agendas
(Canes-Wrone and Shotts 2004; Jacobs and Shapiro 2000a,
2000b; Shapiro, Kumar, and Jacobs 2000; Wood 2009).
Research since “Power and Administration” has shown how
presi-
dents have increasingly pulled policy making in areas of
presidential
interest from agency careerists into the White House and EOP,
as
well as centralized agency rulemaking through clearance
processes
in the Offi ce of Information and Regulatory Aff airs (OIRA) in
the
Offi ce of Management and Budget (Hult and Walcott 2004;
Moe
1985; but see Rudalevige 2002). Moreover, researchers fi nd
that

this “institutional presidency” is now highly bureaucratized and
laced with conventional bureaupathologies of its own, such as
turf
wars, information hoarding, and internecine confl icts (Burke
2000;
Warshaw 2006).
Th us, Long’s prose remains apropos today: “Th e literature
[monar-
chical] on court and palace has many an insight applicable to
the
White House. Access to the President, reigning favorites, even
the
court jester, are topics that show the continuity of institutions”
(1949, 263). Decidedly less so, however, is his unqualifi ed
accept-
ance of bureaucratic fi ghting within a much-expanded EOP:
“Th e
wrangling tests opinion, uncovers information that would
otherwise
not rise to the top, and provides eff ective opportunity for
decision
rather than mere ratifi cation of prearranged plans. . . .
Collective
responsibility is incompatible with a fi xed term of offi ce”
(263).
Although sometimes true and always valid at some level, Long
again
fails to mention the biased pluralism that can result within the
EOP
and that consistently advantages particular actors over time.
Recent research also fi nds exaggerated claims of centralization,
integration of initiatives, and strategic coherence in the White
House, thus confi rming that centrifugal forces still dominate
the

Madisonian system and that residual power often remains within
agencies. For example, Rudalevige’s (2002) analysis of trends
in
the sources of policy proposals from 1949 to 1996 fi nds that
only
17 percent and 11 percent of policy proposals, respectively,
origi-
nated exclusively in the White House or the EOP rather than in
the bureaucracy, in combination with the bureaucracy, or with
the
Congress. Instead, he off ers a contingency theory: the greater
the
number of issues involved, the more novel the policies, and the
more necessary reorganizations of agencies to implement them,
the
more likely presidents will opt for centralization of policy
making in
the White House.
Likewise, recent work by West (2006) on OIRA regulatory
review
questions the idea that presidents try to obtain cohesiveness,
coordination, and rationality of bureaucratic policy initiatives.
He
found that “little if any eff ort is made in the review process to
think
agencies. Th e effi cacy of these eff orts notwithstanding, the
Congress
institutionally now embraces rather than fl ees planning.

Moreover, recent research on the congressional delegation of
discre-
tion to public agencies indicates a dramatic increase in
congressional
oversight of agencies and the judicialization of politics in an era
of
divided government and extreme partisanship (Ornstein and
Mann
2013). Even during the 1970s, however, oversight was
increasing
in reaction to a variety of factors, including agencies’ pursuit of
hori-
zontal power (Aberbach 1990). Increased oversight was noted
both
in terms of “police patrol” and “fi re alarm” oversight,
supplemented
by “fi re alarms” (performance measurements) (McCubbins and
Schwartz 1984). Nor was all oversight post hoc. It was also
done a
priori through such tactics as “bureau shaping,” “stacking the
deck,”
and limiting the amount of discretion aff orded by statute
(Krause
2012; Wood 2012).
One key aspect of this literature also suggests variations in
agency
power when measured as levels of discretion assigned by
Congress
to agencies (Epstein and O’Halloran 1999; Ingram and
Schneider
1990; also see Krause 2012). Th is research refi nes Long’s
work
by assessing the conditions under which agencies are given
more
discretion by Congress. For example, scholars studying legisla-

tive delegation conceptualize Congress as facing a “make-or-
buy”
decision when it passes legislation. Congress “trades off the
internal
policy production costs of the committee system against the
external
costs of delegation” (Epstein and O’Halloran 1999, 7). Th e
costs of
detailed statutes include such things as whether Congress has
the
information to make well-informed decisions, whether
institutional
factors inhibit speedy action, and whether logrolling will drive
up
the costs of action. When the transaction and political costs of
these considerations exceed the benefi ts that members of
Congress
anticipate, they try to write very detailed statutes that leave
little
discretion to the bureaucracy.
However, public policy scholars suggest that discretion is a
much
more complex phenomenon than the binary decision implied in
this scholarship. Th is means that studies of agency power have
to become more nuanced in specifying what type of discretion is
involved (Schneider and Ingram 1993). Specifi cally, discretion
can
vary across six diff erent dimensions of a statute—goals,
objectives,
agents, tools, rules, and assumptions—thus leaving agencies
with
varying degrees of power across dimensions. Th is also suggests
a
need for researchers to link sources of agency power to
variation in

diff erent types of discretion, rather than to agency power as a
whole.
Yet another elaboration and extension of Long’s thinking about
the
hierarchical dimensions of power has been research on the
politics
of organization structure. In Seidman’s (1998) now classic phra-
seology, organizational structure is about “politics, position,
and
power.” More recently, research by Lewis (2003) suggests that
the
institutional battle for responsive rather than neutral
competence
continues apace from Long’s day. Lewis’s analysis of 182
agencies
chartered between 1946 and 1997 fi nds that those created
admin-
istratively by presidents were structured to insulate the agency
from
congressional interference. Conversely, agencies created with a
high
level of congressional infl uence were more insulated from
presiden-
tial control. Members of Congress do this by creating
multiheaded
independent commissions, by limiting the number of
presidential
relied on unilateral tools—executive orders, presidential signing
statements, and national security directives—to advance their
policy
agendas in unprecedented ways in terms of scope and frequency.
What is more, some researchers fi nd strong evidence for fi rst-
mover
advantages for presidents, suggesting that power advantages

shift
to presidents over agencies (Howell 2003; Mayer 2001; Moe
1993;
Warber 2006). Only 3 percent of all unilateral actions ever
receive
immediate legislative scrutiny, and most eff orts to overturn
them fail
(Howell 2003; Warber 2006). Other studies have found the
federal
judiciary similarly passive (Howell 2003; Pious 2007).
Th e apparent short-term advantages of these unilateral and con-
textual tools notwithstanding, researchers fi nd—as Long would
predict—that political appointees can experience fi ts during
their
implementation. A Congressional Budget Offi ce study, for
exam-
ple, found that agencies ignored 9 out of 12 presidential signing
statements they examined. Unilateral tools also may require a
politically diffi cult reprogramming of funds that may harm
other
programs either dear to the hearts of members of Congress or
that
presidents also want advanced administratively or legislatively
(Durant 2009). Th ey also gain legislative attention during
agency
implementation through ex post monitoring and sanctions (e.g.,
budget cuts for implementation). Others, however, have argued
that the use of unilateral tools and claims of a “unitary execu-
tive” privilege are power grabs that violate the U.S.
Constitution
(Cooper 2002; Fisher 2008; Pfi ff ner 2008). Moreover, and
contrary
to Long’s generalization, some evidence regarding changes in
agency outputs in response to actions by elected offi cials and
the

courts indicates that bureaucrats are susceptible to hierarchical
control (Wood and Waterman 1994).
Finally, another reaction to the pursuit by agencies of horizontal
power is the popularity of strategic planning eff orts, such as
those
launched by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administra-
tions. Th ese were outgrowths of the Government Performance
and
Results Act of 1993 (and the GPRA Modernization Act of
2010).
Long would not be surprised by the political dynamics
accompany-
ing the implementation of these eff orts. GPRA’s
implementation,
for instance, was plagued by a “set of expectations and
experiences
that refl ect quite diff erent and often competing [political and
insti-
tutional] views about the process,” including among
congressional
committees and within the administration (Radin 1998, 307).
Evidence suggests they have brought no more of a government-
wide
focus on presidential purpose or guarantee of presidential
support
than Long would have predicted. But, again, the disruption,
oppor-
tunity costs, and diminution of control they aff ord agencies
have
proved to be setbacks to their relative autonomy. And they have
aroused citizen dissatisfaction with the overall performance of
the
bureaucracy through the politicized way in which they have
been
used by elected offi cials (Gilmour and Lewis 2006).

“Congressionalizing” the bureaucracy? Until the early 1990s,
subsequent research did little to refute Long’s basic insight
regarding
congressional–agency relationships: “Most students of
administra-
tion are planners of some sort. Most congressmen would fl y the
label like the plague” (1949, 262). And in individual cases,
Long’s
insight still remains powerful. Institutionally, however, the
enact-
ment of the GPRA in 1993 and the GPRA Modernization Act of
2010 have put Congress on record as requiring strategic
planning in
the stewardship of power either cross-sectionally or
longitudinally
(for exceptions, see, e.g., O’Leary and Bingham 2009; O’Toole
and
Meier 2004). What we do know from public management
research
more generally, however, is that a major source of diffi culty in
estab-
lishing partnerships is the need to overcome the turf concerns
that
are so elemental to agency power attainment, dissipation, and
loss
(Scharpf 1993). Such stovepiping is a product of horizontal
power
building since “Power and Administration.”
Subsequent research also reveals two important consequences of

networked government that reduce the mobilizability of citizens
to
support the building of agency capacity, which, in turn,
decreases
agencies’ reputational power as a whole. First, some scholars
study-
ing policy feedback (summarized in Soss and Moynihan 2014)
fi nd preliminary evidence that if the private or not-for-profi t
sector
delivers a service—even if part of a government program—
recipi-
ents do not link the benefi ts they receive to government
(Mettler
2011). Second, although some fi nd positive results, other
research-
ers studying networks fi nd that they can simply increase access
for
existing interests rather than society as a whole and may lead to
greater service inequality (O’Toole and Meier 2004). Prior
research
also suggests that local collaborations often exclude national
and
statewide advocacy groups (who represent broader citizen
access to
agency decision making), allowing for more infl uence by busi-
ness interests (Leach 2006; Neshkova and Guo 2012). Likewise,
O’Leary and Bingham (2009) fi nd that as the networks they
studied
addressed complicated issues, they disenfranchised those who
did
not support network decisions.
Finally, and not surprisingly, researchers have found evidence
of
morale problems among federal careerists because of
government

contracting, cutback management, wage freezes, pension
cutbacks,
and changes in personnel policy. For example, federal
government–
wide job satisfaction over the past three years has dropped to
57.8
percent satisfi ed, a decline of 7.2 points from its high of 65
percent
in 2010 (Hicks 2013). For technical and scientifi c job
recruits—a
category of employment that was just beginning to grow in
Long’s
day—a major attraction to federal service was doing research in
one’s professional area of expertise. Yet, today, professionals
often
become contract managers and monitors, overseeing the work of
those employed outside government—at higher salaries.
Sometimes
those contractors are even sitting in the same offi ces as civil
servants
in a “blended” workforce. To the extent that Carpenter (2001) is
correct that perceptions of expertise enhance agency reputation
and
organizational élan and, thus, agency power, these
developments
suggest diminished power for careerists.
An Administrative Science Unfulfi lled
Six decades and a half after Long’s call to
recognize the budgeting of power in any
science of administration, the importance of
his call remains compelling. As the preceding
section reveals, and unlike Long’s methodo-
logical fears regarding the scientifi c method,
researchers from various subfi elds have said
things of importance. We have learned a great

deal from largely cross-sectional and non-
comparative studies about the sources of agency power and
about
how other institutional actors and broad swaths of the American
political appointees allowed in agencies, by aff ording partial
funding
independence, and/or by requiring party balancing and
staggered
terms of appointees. All of which implies that agency power
suff ers
no matter which type of structuration is adopted.
Important research in this vein also alerts us to the reality that
bureau shaping—especially as it involves the amount of discre-
tion given agencies—is not a one-way street with agencies
merely
acted on by elected offi cials. Rather, it is a two-way street in
which
agencies actively try to shape the amount of discretion they
receive
(Krause 2012). Sometimes they want more discretion—for
example,
when policy is noncontroversial and not complex—while at
other
times, they actively seek to avoid it. Although only a nascent
body
of research at this point, this perspective is a welcome one
given the
overwhelming focus since the 1980s on top-down control of
federal
agencies, as well as on sterile debates over congressional versus
presi-
dential dominance of the bureaucracy.

But the most signifi cant reaction of Congress (and presidents)
to
agencies’ quests for horizontal power has come in the
downsizing,
devolution, deskilling, outsourcing, and partnering of the
federal
government with third-party actors. Other factors are also at
work
in creating these dynamics, including shifts in the nature of the
pub-
lic problems involved, downward pressures on the visible size
of the
federal government due to economic globalization, persistent
budget
defi cits, and a spiraling national debt. But all are themselves
partially
products of perceptions that agencies are unresponsive, infl
exible,
and profl igate because of their pursuit of horizontal power.
Wrought
in the process is an unprecedented assault on agency expertise,
élan,
and leadership—all conventionally cited as sources of agency
power.
Th e logic is simple in a “starve the beast” strategy: the struggle
for
agency power that Long describes will continue, but there will
be
less for agencies collectively to struggle over in Washington.
To be sure, a great deal of intellectual fi repower has targeted
the
networked state created by these dynamics. Yet a puzzling
absence of
research exists on power relationships in networks. Th e closest
that

most studies in this genre come to incorporating power
dynamics
is to identify the characteristics of target populations (e.g.,
minor-
ity districts) and to count the number of contacts that managers
have with external actors. Moreover, whenever power-related
factors
are present in this research, they are not foregrounded—perhaps
because of the focus over the past two decades on demonstrating
that “management matters.”
Granted, environmental factors—which might include power
diff erentials—are a key set of variables in the two leading
analyti-
cal frameworks striving to bring a cumula-
tive research base to the fi eld: one by Meier
and O’Toole (2006) and the other by Lynn,
Heinrich, and Hill (2000). Th e former,
although technically applicable to federal
agencies, is focused largely on the local level
and has, with one recent and notable excep-
tion, deemphasized power (see O’Toole and
Meier 2014). Th e latter talks rightly of essen-
tial links to constitutional law and politics
and multilevel governance issues. But it joins the Meier and
O’Toole
framework in mostly not addressing Long’s central concerns
about
Six decades and a half after
Long’s call to recognize the
budgeting of power in any
science of administration, the
importance of his call remains

compelling.
about how agencies shape those decisions for legislators over
time.
• Strategic planning is a major tool of agency control, but we
are not sure how it aff ects the budgeting of agency power over
time and the strategies used by agency careerists in putting
countermeasures together (but see Moynihan 2008). Nor do
we know how agency power is aff ected when plans are deemed
either successful or unsuccessful by elected offi cials.
• Th e courts play a major role in agency operations, but we
still
lack a clear understanding of how these dynamics work and
interact over time, whether they have amplifying eff ects that
create path dependency for internal and external agency power,
and whether court decisions permanently advantage or disad-
vantage agencies over time.
• Variation in agency discretion occurs, but we do not know as
much as we should about the implications of discretion. We
are not sure whether and how discretion wielded well or badly
in the eyes of key elected offi cials shifts the relative power of
agencies over time, or whether discretion is dissipated or lost
over time because of controversies and how it is regained, if
it is. Instead, relative autonomy is assumed to increase agency
power, and some evidence exists that reputation increases
autonomy. But the research evidence for such assumptions is
thin and requires much more longitudinal and comparative
exploration before validity is established (Carpenter 2001,

2010).
• Agency reputation has been reported as a source of autonomy
and power in a limited number of cases studied (Carpenter
2001, 2010; Carpenter and Krause 2012), but we are not sure
how generalizable these results are across all types of agen-
cies. Nor are we sure whether diff erent strategies are needed
in diff erent types of agencies, what accounts for successes and
failures, and whether these strategies wax and wane over time
and with what consequences.
• Bureaucratic and congressional drift occurs over time, but
we are not sure how the two interact over time, whether the
sequencing of these eff orts matters, and whether and with what
consequences congressional drift advantages or disadvantages
agency power.
• Th ink tanks have exploded in Washington and state capitals
to
diminish the near monopoly on expertise that agencies had in
Long’s day, but we are unsure of how various agencies gar-
nered, increased, dissipated, or lost infl uence and power over
time because of these trends.
Th ese and many other research questions await scholars
interested
in advancing Long’s vision of power as a key component of any
realistic science of administration. Cross-sectional and
noncompara-
tive research designs have signifi cantly enhanced our
understanding
of the sources and reactions to horizontal power building by
federal
agencies. But without longitudinal and comparative designs
incor-
porating power and complexity ratcheting among institutions, a

key
missing link to Long’s vision will elude public administration.
Conclusion
As the preceding has chronicled, the legacy of “Power and
Administration” is a mixed one. Long’s diagnosis of the
realpolitik
of federal agencies has remained powerful and instructive.
However,
in failing to elucidate the darker sides of horizontal power
building
public have reacted to it. A sustained coalition of elected offi
cials
have hollowed out government capacity in everything but
national
security agencies, tried to impose more top-down control of
agency
discretion, and hived off federal responsibilities to third-party
actors.
Meanwhile, an estranged public is not mobilizable to counter
the
assault on federal agency capacity.
But understanding the dynamics of the attainment, maintenance,
increase, dissipation, and loss of power—all terms implying
change
and processes—requires research over time and in a
comparative
sense that studies their ebb and fl ow (for related points
regarding the
fi eld’s dominant methodologies to marginalize history, see
Durant
2014; Holden, forthcoming; Pierson 2004). Indeed, longitudinal
comparative studies—over time for a single organization or
across

diff erent ones with contrasting experiences—are not only
necessary
to give a fuller picture of the dynamics of power, they are
critical for
validity checks on the fi ndings of cross-sectional research.
Consider the following samples of the “blind spots” in our
under-
standing of the budgeting of power because of a dearth of
studies
using longitudinal and comparative research designs. We know,
for
example,
• How and why top-down control eff orts have spiraled, but we
still do not know how agencies marshal horizontal sources of
power to combat these eff orts at top-down control, how eff orts
to do so in one administration aff ect eff orts in the next admin-
istration, and how and why eff orts to do so are aff ected by the
sequencing of eff orts or the conjuncture of various factors over
time.
• Th e administrative presidency is a major component of po-
liticizing federal agencies, but we still do not know how and
why some initiatives succeed and others fail over time, using
what strategies alone or in combination, and provoking what
kinds of strategies by careerists. Moreover, much remains to be
learned about how these tools and various responses interact
to aff ect agency power across diff erent policy types—cross-
sectionally or longitudinally.
• Power varies across agencies, but we remain unsure how the
relative power of agencies is aff ected over time by politiciza-
tion and whether the ebb and fl ow of appointees has disruptive
eff ects on agency power. Nor do we know much about how
the use of this strategy aff ects the trust that careerists have in

political appointees in the short or longer term because our
focus has been on appointee trust of careerists during a given
presidency (but see Resh 2011).
• Agency structures matter in defi ning power, access, and infl
u-
ence, but questions remain unanswered about how and why
power is gained, increased, or lost over time because of changes
or continuities in structures, especially when agency programs
are comanaged by Congress (Gilmour and Halley 1994;
Rourke 1993).
• Bureaucratic control is “a two-way street” wherein agencies
are strategic actors who sometimes seek and other times avoid
additional increments of Long’s horizontal power. To date,
however, much empirical research remains to be done in devel-
oping this contingency model of the attainment, maintenance,
increase, dissipation, and loss of discretion. For example, we
still need further longitudinal research designs to fi nd out more
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and anticipate the coevolution of institutions, he failed to
articulate
how this realpolitik might—and did—collectively hurt rather
than
help agency power building.
Long’s desire for a power-informed science of administration or
theory also remains unfulfi lled, partly because our
understanding
of how public agencies go about gaining, maintaining,
increasing,
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studies of agency power as a complement to cross-sectional
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Essentially, researchers’ focus has been on measuring power
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agency
power at single points in time, but we have much less sense of
the
processes involved in budgeting agency power across time, and
how
and why some agencies are successful and others unsuccessful.
Th is is not to say that Long’s fears have materialized about
logical
positivism creating “an empty manipulation of logical concepts”
regarding power. As the preceding review of literature related

to
agency power and reactions to it illustrates, this has not been
the
case. As I have argued elsewhere, however, public
administration
and public management since Long’s era have increasingly
associ-
ated scientifi c rigor with sophisticated statistical analyses and,
thus,
have pursued such a methodological emphasis in doctoral
education.
Consequently, the otherwise benefi cial behavioral movement
has
increasingly made longitudinal and comparative research on
power
(and other important topics) decidedly less on the minds of
research-
ers generally. Th is is partly attributable to the diffi culty of
collecting
data on needed timescales across agencies with consistent
measure-
ments, without gaps, and operationalizing all relevant concepts.
As Albert Einstein once said, “Everything should be kept as
simple
as possible, but no simpler.” Long feared precisely this
development
in public administration if administrative science failed to
incorpo-
rate considerations of the budgeting of power cross-sectionally
and
longitudinally. Indeed, Carpenter’s (2001, 2010) work
illustrates
how incorporating time and agency comparisons can produce
diff erent results from cross-sectional analyses (see also Oberfi
eld

2014) and, thus, how useful it can be for confi rming, refi ning,
or elaborating and extending the fi ndings of existing studies
and
administrative theories. Arguably, expanding our research
design
horizons in these ways will create a more robust empirical basis
for
informing the study of power in the future, as well as a fi rmer
test
of what we think we know presently about the budgeting of
power.
As such, it off ers less forlorn prospects for an administrative
science
incorporating power than Long and his cohort inherited from
their
predecessors.
Acknowledgments:
I wish to thank Jim Perry for inviting me to revisit Professor
Long’s
PAR classic, as well as several anonymous reviewers for their
com-
ments on earlier drafts of this article. I am especially indebted
to Matthew Holden for a series of email conversations aff ord-
ing insights on Long’s career and thinking, as well as to David
Rosenbloom for his suggestions for improving the manuscript. I,
of
course, am responsible for any misinterpretations or
misapplications
of their valuable insights, as well as for the nature of the
arguments
made in this article. Finally, I wish to thank Jennifer Durant for
her
technical and editorial contributions to the article.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Miller, Barbara D.
Title: Cultural anthropology / Barbara Miller, George
Washington University,
George Washington University.
Description: Eighth edition. | Boston : Pearson, [2017] |
Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015038754| ISBN 9780134419077 (alk.
paper) |
ISBN 0134419073 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethnology.
Classification: LCC GN316 .M49 2013 | DDC 305.8--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038754
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Student
ISBN-10: 0-13-441907-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-441907-7

A La Carte
ISBN-10: 0-13-441964-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-441964-0
v
1 Anthropology and the Study of Culture 1
2 The Evolution of Humanity and Culture 26
3 Researching Culture 53
4 Making a Living 77
5 Consumption and Exchange 101
6 Reproduction and Human Development 126
7 Disease, Illness, and Healing 151
8 Kinship and Domestic Life 176
9 Social Groups and Social Stratification 202
10 Power, Politics, and Social Order 225
11 Communication 250
12 Religion 273
13 Expressive Culture 299
14 People on the Move 323

15 People Defining Development 345
Brief Contents
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vii
Preface xiv
Support for Instructors and Students xviii
About the Author xix
1 Anthropology and the Study
of Culture 1
Learning Objectives 2
Introducing Anthropology’s Four Fields 2
Biological or Physical Anthropology 3
Archaeology 4
Linguistic Anthropology 5
Cultural Anthropology 5
Anthropology Works Delivering Health Care
in Rural Haiti 6
Applied Anthropology: Separate Field
or Cross-Cutting Focus? 6
Introducing Cultural Anthropology 7
Highlights in the History of Cultural Anthropology 7

Three Debates 9
Changing Perspectives 11
The Concept of Culture 11
Think Like an Anthropologist Power in the Kitchen 14
Multiple Cultural Worlds 18
Culturama San Peoples of Southern Africa 20
Distinctive Features of Cultural Anthropology 22
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism 22
Valuing and Sustaining Diversity 23
Cultural Anthropology Is Relevant to Careers 23
Learning Objectives Revisited 24
2 The Evolution of Humanity
and Culture 26
Nonhuman Primates and the Roots of Human Culture 27
Primate Characteristics 28
The Great Apes 29
Nonhuman Primate Culture 33
Anthropology Works 34
Hominin Evolution to Modern Humans 35
The Early Hominins 35
Think Like an Anthropologist
38
Eye on the Environment
41

Modern Humans 42
The Neolithic Revolution and the Emergence of Cities
and States 45
The Neolithic Revolution 46
Cities and States 48
3 Researching Culture 53
Changing Research Methods 54
From the Armchair to the Field 54
Participant Observation 55
Culturama
of Papua New Guinea 56
Doing Fieldwork in Cultural Anthropology 57
Beginning the Fieldwork Process 57
Anthropology Works
58
Working in the Field 60
Fieldwork Techniques 64
Recording Culture 68
69
Data Analysis 71
Urgent Issues in Cultural Anthropology Research 73

Ethics and Collaborative Research 73
Safety in the Field 74
4 Making a Living 77
Culture and Economic Systems 78
Categorizing Livelihoods 78
Modes of Livelihood and Globalization 80
Making a Living: Five Modes of Livelihood 80
Foraging 81
Think Like an Anthropologist 83
Culturama 84
Horticulture 85
Pastoralism 87
Agriculture 88
Anthropology Works
90
Industrialism and the Digital Age 92
Changing Livelihoods 94
Foragers: The Tiwi of Northern Australia 95
Horticulturalists: The Mundurucu
of the Brazilian Amazon 95
Contents

viii Contents
Socialization During Childhood 139
Adolescence and Identity 140
Think Like an Anthropologist Cultural
143
Adulthood 146
7 Disease, Illness, and Healing 151
Ethnomedicine 152
Perceptions of the Body 153
Defining and Classifying Health Problems 153
Ethno-Etiologies 156
Prevention 157
Healing Ways 158
162
Three Theoretical Approaches 163
The Ecological/Epidemiological Approach 163
The Symbolic/Interpretivist Approach 165
Critical Medical Anthropology 166
Globalization and Change 168
Infectious Diseases 168
Diseases of Development 169

Medical Pluralism 169
Culturama 171
Applied Medical Anthropology 172
Anthropology Works
173
8 Kinship and Domestic Life 176
How Cultures Create Kinship 177
Studying Kinship: From Formal Analysis
to Kinship in Action 178
Descent 180
Sharing 181
Think Like an Anthropologist 182
Culturama 183
Marriage 184
Households and Domestic Life 190
The Household: Variations on a Theme 191
Intrahousehold Dynamics 193
Anthropology Works
196
Changing Kinship and Household Dynamics 197
Change in Descent 197

Change in Marriage 197
Pastoralists: The Herders of Mongolia 96
Family Farmers: The Maya of Chiapas, Mexico 97
Global Capitalism: Taiwanese Industrialists
in South Africa 98
5 Consumption and Exchange 101
Culture and Consumption 102
What Is Consumption? 103
Modes of Consumption 103
Consumption Funds 106
Theorizing Consumption Inequalities 106
Forbidden Consumption: Food Taboos 111
Culture and Exchange 112
What Is Exchanged? 112
Think Like an Anthropologist
of Hospitality 114
Modes of Exchange 116
Unbalanced Exchange 117
Anthropology Works Evaluating the Social
120
Consumption, Exchange, and Global-Local Relations 121
Sugar, Salt, and Steel Tools in the Amazon 121
Global Networks and Ecstasy in the United States 122
Global Demand for Phosphate Eats an Island 122
Alternative Food Movements in Europe and North

America 122
Culturama a a 123
The Enduring Potlatch 124
6 Reproduction and Human
Development 126
Modes of Reproduction 127
The Foraging Mode of Reproduction 127
The Agricultural Mode of Reproduction 127
The Industrial/Digital Mode of Reproduction 128
Culturama
129
Culture and Fertility 130
Sexual Intercourse 130
Anthropology Works
132
Fertility Decision Making 133
Fertility Control 135
Infanticide 136
Personality and the Life Cycle 137
Birth, Infancy, and Childhood 137
Contents ix

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