Administrative Ethics and the Rule of Law

“Anybody we like is efficient. Anybody we do not like is a bureaucrat.” This good-natured comment on legislative attitudes toward the executive branch was made recently in Congress by an experienced lawmaker, speaking as chairman of a subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations. The epigram may be relished for its knowing humor, but its greater significance lies in the light it sheds on one of the most important problems of modern government—the problem of insuring responsible administration in the framework of democratic society.For, of course, one way of getting nowhere in attempting a solution of this problem is to reduce it to a matter of personal preference. In the broader context, it is plainly irrelevant whether or not “we,” as citizens or as lawmakers, happen to “like” the individual administrative official we confront, or the particular public agency, or the functions that have to be performed under the laws, or the general direction in which things are moving in response to the policies of those elected to exercise political control. Nor do our likes and dislikes furnish a trustworthy criterion to mark the border line between “efficient” public service and “bureaucracy.”And yet, for the administrative official it is a familiar experience to encounter sharp animosity on the part of some legislators, as well as some elements of the public, precisely for doing his statutory duty. In a party system like ours, which puts only a small premium on political solidarity, the frequency of such experience is increased because lawmakers exercise great freedom of dissent from legislative measures passed with the support of their own party.