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Successful government bureaucracies
Jason asks:
What are some examples of successful government bureaucracies?
Wars aside, here is a short and very incomplete list: the NIH, the Manhattan Project, U.C. Berkeley, the University of Michigan, Fairfax County, the World Trade Organization, the urban planners of postwar Germany, some of the Victorian public works and public health commissions, most of what goes on in Singapore, anywhere that J.S. Bach worked.
The European Union has been very good for eastern Europe. I'll leave aside the health care issue because we've debated that plenty already. The real question is what all these examples have in common.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 21, 2009 at 07:52 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
I want to throw out the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Posted by: J. Daniel Wright at Oct 21, 2009 8:14:54 AM
Awesome question - one that makes you feel dumb for not thinking to ask it yourself. I've never actually thought of it in these terms before, though I'm a big government lefty in general. The pattern seems like specificity of purpose ("build a bomb", "cure dysentry", "build a great educational institution"). This could change my view of what types of government intervention work, though I'll need to think on it more.
Other examples (incomplete list of course):
The US military production and supply system in WWII, the post-fire planners of Paris and London, whoever is in charge of transitioning China to capitalism (though this could change), the BBC.
Posted by: Andrew Edwards at Oct 21, 2009 8:42:43 AM
No success is forever, but US public schools at all levels were a tremendous success for a long time. In some respects, they still are.
Let me give you a hint on what each successful bureaucracy has: a clear mission. Failure becomes almost inevitable when an organization's mission goes away or get diluted by extraneous concerns. The public schools are again a classic example.
Posted by: capitalistimperialistpig at Oct 21, 2009 8:53:50 AM
Tyler wrote:
Wars aside...
In what sense are war bureaucracies successful? In major wars it is two government bureaucracies fighting each other, so the fact that one side wins doesn't prove anything. A coalition of the world's most powerful militaries hasn't been able to catch one guy (Osama bin Laden). (And for those who want to chastise my naivete and say he's never existed or been dead for 5 years, OK, but then that just underscores my point that Tyler shouldn't be citing wars as examples of government efficiency in achieving stated public aims.)
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Oct 21, 2009 8:58:53 AM
US public schools are questionable at best, especially when results vs dollar spent are compared. If a clear mission is all that it takes, then how come the DMV is such a failure no matter what state you reside in? Their mission seems simple enough: register cars, oversee driver's licenses, and in some states test emissions. Much more simple than the task of elementary education, imo.
Posted by: stinkaroo at Oct 21, 2009 9:00:44 AM
What do we make of D.A.R.P.A? Is that a pure government bureaucracy or is too involved with the private sector to be considered a successfully operated public bureaucracy?
Posted by: John Pertz at Oct 21, 2009 9:03:29 AM
Hong Kong under te British flag -1945/97 - was a pure apolitical bureacracy; and a very successful one.
The problem with government bureaucracies is not that they cannot succeed. Quite often they do their job very well indeed, and you can pick up the hum that comes from the organisation. It is that they need to be really accountable. They must have somebody with authority and the will to judge their objectives and performance, and impose change if needed. (The Governor of Hong Kong was always accountable to London.) They will also slip into decline if that somebody does not have a grasp of what realistic objectives should be.
Japanese post-war growth came unstuck when the civil service ceased to be accountable to its LDP 'masters'. The sprawling US Federal structure has two masters; and its salavation has been that both Congress and the Presidency are occasionally willing and able to judge objectives and performance. (Its curse is that the sprawl means that a lot of the bureaucracy is neglected by both masters much of the time.) The formidable British civil service is faltering because its political masters for the last 20 years seem to have lost the grasp of what are realistic objectives.
A good bureaucracy is like a good horse. It can get you where you want to be surprisingly fast over bad terrain. On occasion,it will even get its masters home when they are drunk or delirious. But if you persist in not controlling it, you will end up falling hard, stumbling into the ditch, or both.
Posted by: David Heigham at Oct 21, 2009 9:03:50 AM
Another thing, how is the Manhattan Project an example? Yes, they ended up creating an atomic weapon. But did they do it for less money than it would have taken a private company to do, if that had been legal and the company could reap the profits from selling A-bombs?
Tyler, have you read Richard Feynman's autobiographical books? If so you know how absurdly bad the security was on the atomic secrets, right?
To say the Manhattan Project is a government success is like saying Amtrak is a success. After all, I just took it the other day and the train didn't break down; I got from point A to point B.
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Oct 21, 2009 9:10:14 AM
SSA did an amazing job until the 1970s.
I don't see many complaints about the CDC either.
It is always amazing that for less than .50 cents I can mail a letter anywhere the US and it will be delivered in a two-three days.
This thing called the internet seems to have worked out ok.
Posted by: charlie at Oct 21, 2009 9:12:56 AM
NASA, internet, Pentagon, Library of Congress, Smithsonian, Vatican, United Nations, NSF, CERN (unless Nielsen is correct), Three Gorges Dam.
Posted by: RP at Oct 21, 2009 9:13:36 AM
Most of these organizations (I'm not too knowledgeable about Singapore) are staffed by a relatively small number of highly-educated, highly-motivated people. The same is not true of, say, the Department of Health and Human Services.
Posted by: y81 at Oct 21, 2009 9:17:37 AM
1. They all take place in affluent societies.
2. They are politically insulated. (I don't know about Fairfax County.)
3. They have some kind of peer review/feedback loop.
4. With respect to their goals, they consist of homogeneous groups.
Posted by: MostlyAPragmatist at Oct 21, 2009 9:18:29 AM
Public schools are statist indoctrination camps that happen to teach subjects like the 3Rs on the side.
Success hasn't been defined here, but in the private sector (i.e. the real world) it's defined by profit and loss, satisfied customers, productive employees, and wealthier capitalists.
Does the Post Office count?
Posted by: AADL at Oct 21, 2009 9:22:11 AM
People forget that governments are just people. My guess is the parts that are successful aren't really governments. Successful schools are parents and teachers. Should the government get credit for this? The government part of NIH just directs funds from taxpayers. A big part of that is publications for example. Are journals now the government? I'm not sure how successful that is. There seems to be a lot of sketchy research.
I'm a graduate student, am I government? Maybe so. I try to do my best but I'm stuck in a situation that forces me to do a lot of stupid stuff. I have to fight through a lot of crap to get at what I think is important. How much of the crap versus important stuff is the government? I think it's mostly the crap. At some point they get tired of me and let me go and we agree to call it success. Would everyone have been better off if I were in the industry for 5 years? I don't even want to think about it.
The Manhattan project was successful if you want to call success sucking off a large number of geniuses from other work to build something to slaughter millions of people before the other government does it first. The accomplishment is impressive while the results are horrific. Only a government could succeed like that.
Posted by: Andrew at Oct 21, 2009 9:28:05 AM
I'm very happy to see you put the NIH up here.
In 2002, a mysterious respiratory disease that was killing 9.6% of those it infected was discovered in rural China.
In 22 months, scientists at the NIH had not only discovered the virus that caused SARS, but had advanced a vaccine to the point where they had begun human trials. 22 months.
It's easy to focus on bureaucratic inefficiencies and waste that can be produced with public institutions (though people don't like to focus on private waste and private bureaucracies as much). Still, we have to remember we have some incredible resources in this country, particularly in the field of basic research.
Posted by: James at Oct 21, 2009 9:35:19 AM
I'd support specificity of purpose or clear strategic direction as being a big factor in success.
Also - manageable size. When a bureaucracy gets too big, it spends a lot of time managing itself rather than doing what it was set up to do.
Posted by: Tom at Oct 21, 2009 9:35:36 AM
I would take issue with the claim that the DMV is a failure in every state. In California, the DMV seems to work as well as any business in terms of ease of access and wait times. A lot of renewals can be done through the mail or online and when you have to go in person, you can make an appointment online. They seem to be pretty good about ensuring there are enough staff to handle everyone at a given time. My wait time never seemed any worse than, say, waiting for a table at a crowded restaurant or waiting to see a doctor or dentist.
I'm sure this didn't happen by accident, though. As others have noted above, having a clear mission with incentives geared toward achieving that mission probably make a big difference. If DMV offices were judged by average wait times or amount of forms processed per day and managers were expected to account for any poor performance, that could be one way to make more DMV offices more efficient. When you just pay people by the hour and don't supervise them or care about how well they do their jobs, on the other hand, that's asking for trouble.
Posted by: Ricardo at Oct 21, 2009 9:36:18 AM
Eastern Europe going from Soviet to EU rule is not a sign of successful bureaucracy, just less bad.
As a Brit I'm laughing at some of these examples. The BBC? Sticking thousands of single mothers in jail is not a sign of success! Even after the immoral threat of imprisonment the BBC produces only a handful of quality series a year with a budget of $6bn.
Posted by: musing market at Oct 21, 2009 9:41:04 AM
Here in Switzerland, we have one example after another of well-run and successful bureaucracies. Even the local equivalent of the DMV.
I think a big part of it is that people are RESPECTED for being members of these organizations, and many of the best and brightest choose to work in them. I also think there is a cultural appreciation for competence and disdain for incompetence that creates great cooperative pressure in response to poor performance.
Posted by: David at Oct 21, 2009 9:41:53 AM
A few more, South Korea economic development, German (then French) public education, food safety, securities (the bond market), etc.
With a few exception most of these examples and those mentioned above are relative to catching up and massification, forging ahead is seemingly rare.
Posted by: maharbbal at Oct 21, 2009 9:46:41 AM
If there was a government bureaucracy that provided education, training, and a structured meritocracy to 1.45 million Americans (the majority of which with only a high school degree), surely that would be laudable, wouldn't it?
But it's the military, so let's not talk about it and resume the regularly scheduled programming of intellectual self-regard and extol the wonders that are Cal-Berkeley and the U of M.
Brian Timoney
Posted by: Brian Timoney at Oct 21, 2009 9:53:00 AM
What's so great about Fairfax County? The taxes are silly and the bus system sucks. I guess the public library was pretty good though.
Posted by: Noah Yetter at Oct 21, 2009 9:55:15 AM
1) Here's one thing that many of them have in common: they are designed to innovate technologically to solve relatively narrowly defined problems. That's true for the Manhattan project, NIH, the internet, DARPA, and to a lesser extent research universities
2) @ Bob Murphy: if the Manhattan project were private and "could reap the profits from selling A-bombs", Iran would have a nuclear bomb, along with many others. So maybe we would have saved some money in creating it, but that's clearly not the whole picture.
3) @ Andrew: "People forget that governments are just people. My guess is the parts that are successful aren't really governments. Successful schools are parents and teachers. Should the government get credit for this?"
It's very hard to credit an organization for something if you disconnect its members from the organization. By analogy, would you say that Apple deserves no credit for the iPhone because it was its employees, not the company itself, that actually invented it? That would be silly, since an organization is defined by its members. And that is true for companies (like Apple) and for governments.
Posted by: libert at Oct 21, 2009 9:57:40 AM
"If a clear mission is all that it takes, then how come the DMV is such a failure no matter what state you reside in?"
The DMV in South Carolina works remarkably efficiently and effectively.
Posted by: Rick A. at Oct 21, 2009 10:07:33 AM
I think NOAA deserves to be on this list. I'll claim ignorance of their budget, but they seem pretty damned good at what they do.
Posted by: Aaron at Oct 21, 2009 10:15:03 AM
