"Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it."
--Economist J.A. Schumpeter
You may not be a government bureaucrat, but if you work in any type of hierarchy, you will still find this chapter relevant to your work. In any case, it will be helpful in understanding the behavior of bureaucrats at all levels of government who directly or indirectly affect your life.
Bureaucrats are a special class of followers.
The term bureaucrat has not fared well in popular culture, especially in recent years. It tends to be overlayed with images of poorly motivated, rule-bound functionaries who make life difficult when navigating the mundane requirements of society — tax payments, regulatory compliance, license renewals, immigration processes, and so on.
Yet, these same bureaucrats translate the vision and policies of political leaders into programs that affect the lives of citizens in crucial ways. Rather than a term of epithet, it would serve us better to understand the essential role bureaucrats play, how they may play it competently and beneficially, and what the nature of appropriate followership is in this role.
The number of bureaucrats in a large nation-state is nearly overwhelming. In a nation the size of the United States, the federal government operates with more than two million civilian personnel. Even this is dwarfed by the number of bureaucrats at lower levels of governance, including state and municipal, which approach five or six times that number. Many of these become specialists in their areas of expertise; some are world-class. Others become masters of making bureaucracy work despite its enormous size and complexity. Unlike bureaucracies that are staffed through patronage, all have a legitimate function to play in these highly complex, if often cumbersome, organizations.
The closer we get to observing the most talented individuals staffing these roles, the more we become aware of the depth of their knowledge and expertise. Yet, these highly qualified experts can become the channels for poorly thought-out policies and unintended adverse consequences.
A few years ago, I was conducting courageous follower training for a class of senior government managers. The concept of courageous followership suggests that to be effective at almost every level of an organization, individuals need to play both the leader and follower role adeptly. This offers a new model for the follower role that provides dynamic support for leaders but does not hesitate to speak truth to power. Nowhere is this more applicable than for government managers.
One of the managers in the class, a civilian woman employed by the United States Department of Defense, described her role in disposing of surplus military equipment. Rather than discard surplus or obsolete equipment, the US congress had passed legislation requiring the military to identify other ways it could be put to use. After all, the citizenry had paid for this equipment with their taxes, and contrary to common belief, conscientious civil servants keep in mind their obligation to minimize the waste of taxpayers' money. It seemed reasonable for the surplus equipment to be provided to state and municipal governments to use in their law enforcement agencies. Without much public debate or input, large amounts of armored personnel carriers and crowd control equipment began to be transferred to cities around the country. What could be bad about this?
Unintended Consequences
As we have come to see, this was not a policy that could be characterized as beating swords into plowshares. It resulted in the militarization of local police forces, very much at odds with "community policing" initiatives designed to create trust between law enforcement and those they are to protect. As cell phones began to capture the periodic misuse of lethal force by individual police officers—disproportionately against people of color—large-scale protests erupted across the land. It was only then, as a nation, that the citizenry began to see military-grade equipment being brought into the public square for crowd control. Suddenly, images of a militarized authoritarian presence suffused the national consciousness—in the language of this book, one might say a prototyrannical ethos. How had this come to be? Of course, I recalled the innocent description of this program that its manager had told the followership class.
The Washington Post noted, "During this summer's record-breaking nationwide Black Lives Matter demonstrations, some police have appeared ready for war. With armor, arms, and apparel resembling that of soldiers, they combatively disperse crowds, enforce curfews, and confront rioters.
Many police and sheriffs possess gear and equipment from or associated with the US armed forces. Some comes from the federal 1033 Program, which distributes excess military goods as federal grants-in-aid to police, sheriffs, and other agencies.
Based on our review of 1033 Program data from March 2020, we calculate that police departments in 49 percent of the approximately 1,000 places with protests as of June 8 have matériel from the 1033 Program. Of these, 160 police departments and a few county sheriffs received armored trucks, including MRAP vehicles, arguably the most prominent symbol of police militarization."1
The Challenge of Followership Within Bureaucracy
The prior story is a graphic example of the unintended consequences of legislating any bureaucratic activity, but it is certainly not an isolated instance. Here, we get to the nub of the challenge of followership within the government bureaucracy. By law, bureaucracy is professionally bound to support and implement the policies of the nation's political leadership. In other words, to be conformist followers and, at times, colluders.
In democracies, political leaders are elected and then, presumably, pass or issue policies that align with the general will of the populace; in authoritarian regimes, this is less true, but there is an even greater expectation for the bureaucracy to refrain from behaving as independent actors.
When political leadership is relatively legitimate and policies are relatively equitable and purposeful, political theory and practice merge to serve the populace well. However, this relationship can be distorted in either direction.
If political leadership is significantly corrupt, a professional bureaucracy can attempt to mute its negative impact on the citizenry. In other words, to act as courageous followers, loyal to their oath of service. If the bureaucracy is entrenched and itself corrupt, its members can become colluders and amplify the corruption and ineptitude of the political leadership. If a political leader is seeking to reform government corruption or inefficiency, they may need to bring their personal charisma and persuasiveness directly to the populace to enlist its support in overriding entrenched bureaucratic fiefdoms.
Here, we see the various states of good and poor followership. A reformist leader may need to bring all their talents to bear in order to get resistant followership to perform its rightful role. Followership based on ethical values may need to exercise its talents to extract more competent and principled performance from its governing leaders. As the focus of this book is on how followers can identify leadership with autocratic tendencies and interrupt the potential progression toward a tyrannical regime, we will give our attention to that scenario, the challenges to overcome it, and the available tools for doing this.
The Problem of Many Hands
In the prior story of repurposing military equipment for domestic policing, the mid-level manager did not appear to have any concerns or qualms about the role she was playing. It comported with the generally held value of not wasting taxpayer money. It was an approved program that came down the usual channels. In bureaucratic terms, it was quite legitimate.
What other ways can we look at this to explore the follower role in this crucial middle circle between government leaders and the people they are presumably there to serve?
Social scientists are aware of the problem of diffuse accountability, sometimes referred to as "the problem of many hands." A typical policy, program, or any formal initiative and the budget supporting it passes through many layers of approval. In a busy, deadline-driven environment, it is often easier to sign off on the initiative at your level than to begin to question it, which is likely to generate more meetings and paperwork. Even if you have a niggling discomfort, it seems reasonable to assume that if something is actually wrong with it, someone else will notice and take appropriate action. Of course, if everyone works on this assumption, then no one takes responsibility for the outcome of that decision chain. Often, this is how a bureaucracy will make a decision that no individual in that bureaucracy would have made were they the sole responsible party. I know this is a bit frightening.
There is another, perhaps more worrisome social dynamic that occurs that compounds the risk. In an earlier book on intelligent disobedience, I discussed a variation of the famous Stanley Milgram obedience experiments in which 90 percent of the subjects continued participating in an experiment to its conclusion, which involved (or so they thought) giving 450-volt shocks to another human being with a heart condition. Of all the variations Milgram did on the obedience experiments, this is the one that produced the highest level of inappropriate compliance. What was different about it?
In the basic experiment, the subject read a question to the learner, marked the answer as right or wrong, and administered a shock if it was incorrect. The subject was led to believe that the learner was the subject, which they were not. Nor were they receiving actual shocks, though the simulation was very convincing. In that basic experiment, a disturbing two-thirds continued administering shocks all the way through 450 volts. That, of course, is and should be very disturbing. Milgram created varying social conditions to reduce this level of obedience in which that ratio came down to near zero. So why was this variation producing close to 100 percent obedience?
Instead of having the subject ask the question, mark the answer, and administer the shock, these tasks were divided between three people. Two were confederates of the researcher. The one who was not a confederate-the true subject-was simply asked to read the question to the learner. They were not, themselves, administering a shock. So what harm were they doing? Plenty, of course.
By remaining silent and cooperative, they were normalizing the outrageous act of continuing to raise the level of shocks being given to another human being despite that individual's protests and insistence that the experiment be stopped. The way the experiment was choreographed, they didn't even know if the "learner" was still alive as the shocks were increased to levels above 360 volts. They were able to tell themselves that they weren't giving the shocks and hold themselves blameless.
How few in a bureaucracy actually pull the trigger? The well-meaning, mid-level manager in my class was not driving a military vehicle into a crowd of demonstrators. She was not lobbing tear gas and wasn't dressed in the riot gear the local police used. She looked like the thousands of government managers who sit in a cubicle or small office and was rather proud of the work she was doing.
Suppose we tweak this scenario a bit and have a prototyrant use violence to quell democratic protests against increasing oppression. In that case, we see the passive role that the legions of bureaucrats under his authority play while he methodically consolidates power. By the time the bureaucrat wakes up to the way in which they are enabling that trajectory, it is often too late to stop the juggernaut, short of sabotage and self-sacrifice.
Incentives to Follow Autocratic Policy
The path of least resistance for the bureaucrat is to implement the policy that political leadership sets and follow orders on how to do so. This is almost always the safe course of action for the bureaucrat's career and their livelihood.
There is an old saying in Washington, DC, about politicians and bureaucrats and the public they are there serve: "A politician is someone who hates to say 'no; bureaucrat is someone who hates to say 'yes." This contains a grain of truth in that it is rare to be disciplined for sticking rigidly to the letter of a policy or order and easy to be criticized for exercising independent judgment.
Like most things, this fact of bureaucratic life can be functional or dysfunctional depending on context, interpretation, judgment, and culture. All senior executives in bureaucracies have been driven to despair by someone below them in the chain of command who is a stickler for the "letter of the law." At times, a sensible application of a rule requires flexibility to adapt the spirit of the rule to the circumstances. At other times, this stubborn "underling" actually holds an important ethical line.
Depending on culture, laws, and customs, bureaucrats have a range of incentives for complying with policies and orders. In cultures with weak private sectors, government employment is one of the few reliable paths to creating a financial floor for the family. In others, where there are robust entrepreneurial sectors, those who self-select into government service are typically more risk-averse or public service-minded-sometimes both. In cultures with fewer social safety nets, the benefits of a government position often include highly valued paid leave, health insurance, pension benefits, and other perks the employee values and may fear losing by “bucking the system." In cultures where the autocrat is already demonstrating no compunction about using brute force, failure to comply may incur much more severe penalties.
And yet, the bureaucrats whose choices feel constrained by these potential consequences often have an equally strong sense of loyalty to the people they serve, to the law or constitution, and to their conscience. These values compete with the incentives to "fall in line" and must either be honored or repressed with whatever psychological or physical consequences that choice brings.
Principled Disobedience
There is always a choice when faced with a values conflict. In a bureaucracy, one can refuse to implement an illegal order and risk the repercussions. What are the human costs of disobedience? It's easy to stereotype bureaucrats and make them into a symbol of "big government." But they are very much flesh-and-blood beings with the same concerns we have for health, family, financial solvency, a secure retirement, and so on.
There are practical steps one can take to soften the blow of potential reprisals for noncompliance with orders that violate civic values. But it is difficult to insulate oneself fully. Rational decision-making collides with courageous follower values, often leaving the bureaucrat with limited choices for working within the system to counter encroaching authoritarianism. Let's look at one example told to me by the former head of a whistleblower protection organization.
As we have seen, context is a large determinant of leader and follower behaviors. When countering external threats, governments will tend to become more autocratic, which, unchecked, can move them along the continuum to a dictatorial mode. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, there was a great sense of urgency to prevent future attacks. This required plugging the intelligence gaps that had allowed planning for that attack to go undetected.
In this atmosphere, the administration of President George W. Bush, through the National Security Agency (NSA), which was charged with monitoring foreign communication for early warning signs, began bumping against and then crossing the boundaries permitted by law for monitoring US citizens. Executive orders were issued by the administration for what became known as "warrantless wiretapping"-in other words, forgoing the constitutional requirement for a court-approved warrant before initiating invasive searches of a suspect's property or communications.
At different points, several government bureaucrats became aware of this and felt duty-bound to uphold the law. One of them was Thomas Drake, a senior executive with the NSA. Drake helped to develop ThinThread, a program that monitored telecommunications and detected patterns of connections between likely terrorist nodes without scooping up metadata from US area codes, which would have violated the Espionage Act against spying on US citizens. It was estimated that ThinThread could have been developed and deployed for under $40 million.
Drake was initially confused by the lack of interest in ThinThread by higher-ups. He then discovered the NSA already had an arrangement to gather intelligence by listening to phone calls, which was costing vastly greater sums. This program, initially called Trailblazer and later Stellar Wind, was being carried out by executive order in violation of the constitutional requirement for court-approved warrants. Unlike ThinThread, it removed the protections against harvesting metadata from US citizens.
Trying and finding no way to remedy the matter within the agency or through congressional and judicial channels, Drake became a whistleblower and spoke with an accredited journalist about the NSAs violations, being careful not to disclose classified information. Despite this caution, he lost his security clearance and career and faced financially ruinous legal costs.
The example that was set by the administration ruthlessly attacking him when confronted with their illegality led a future whistleblower to avoid this risk by going straight to the press to reveal additional violations of the law. He, too, had his career and life severely interrupted.
By then, some of the highest-ranking political appointees could no longer countenance renewing the illegal warrantless wiretapping. They threatened to resign if this were done. When President Bush learned of this, he astutely supported his senior appointees, and the matter was sent to Congress to write constitutionally supportable legislation. The trajectory to potential tyrannical surveillance of American citizens was successfully interrupted.
The lesson I take from this is that the events leading to restoring legality by the government, occurred because a few courageous bureaucrats stepped up and did the right thing despite the risks and consequences. They acted as courageous followers, and they did so in the window before power could be further consolidated around the abuse of power.
An even healthier state would be for senior bureaucrats and political appointees to create a culture in which internal whistleblowing is treated as a courageous and loyal act, eliminating the need for external whistleblowing and its painful consequences. If you are one of these senior government executives, this is not rhetorical musing but rather an invitation.
Create an organizational culture in which it is expected that those discovering violations of safety, legality, or human decency will call them out in a time and manner that minimizes political embarrassment and allows for responsible remediation. This is courageous followership at its best.
Chain of Command and Communication Channels Available to the Bureaucrat
Let's further examine the actions to be taken when a bureaucrat has found the courage to rise above the incentives to remain compliant despite personal risks. They allow the moral conflict being experienced to ripen rather than deny or rationalize it. They recognize they have a choice of whether or not to follow increasingly autocratic leadership, even if that choice is difficult.
Knowing they must "choose their battles" they have decided the situation in question is a battle worth fighting. Perhaps lives are at risk or public health, or children's welfare, or national security, or public integrity, or constitutional safeguards that are being eroded intentionally or not by the regime. Do you see what serious issues our often disparaged bureaucrats may be dealing with in addition to the mundane? These are not "small potatoes."
Now, the nature of bureaucracy itself must be confronted. One of the ironclad rules of bureaucracy, whether written or unwritten, is respecting the chain of command. Skipping over one's direct managerial superiors is a cardinal sin, and this same chain of superiors are the very ones who can make or break the bureaucrat's career. Remember that everyone in that chain of command above them is also a follower and a civil servant with personal concerns about what they can lose if they fall out of favor with higher-ups and political appointees.
When I conduct courageous follower training for midlevel and senior career bureaucrats, I use an exercise to expose the dilemma this bureaucratic norm can produce. I introduce a hypothetical that requires them to wrestle with the cultural taboo of skipping channels. It is not a situation that involves a prototyrant but a more mundane example of a bad order coming down through channels. Still, it offers an opportunity to examine and test their values in the face of this rigid bureaucratic norm.
I create a scenario in which a lower-level government employee reports to a supervisor, who reports to a manager. These are three tiers within a larger bureaucratic system. The manager has instructed the supervisor to have their team take on additional responsibilities to their core function without providing extra resources. To make this matter consequential, let's assume this change jeopardizes public health or safety if done without the full resources safety requires. The team discusses this, explores different ways they can successfully implement the order, and concludes it cannot be done without serious failure of their core responsibilities. They inform their direct supervisor, who is not a courageous follower, and tells the team to just do the best they can despite the fact they will fail. What should the team do?
The class works in groups of four or five to develop responses to the situation. Many are clever or heroic in their attempt to get the job done, but the condition of the exercise is that the order cannot be successfully implemented-it is fundamentally flawed due to under-resourcing.
Some conclude they should suggest to the direct supervisor that he tell the manager the impending consequences. The problem with that approach is that the supervisor is intimidated by this manager and declines to do so. I have conducted this exercise with hundreds of seasoned bureaucrats and, to my recollection, almost none suggest going to the higher level manager themselves. Such is the power of the bureaucratic culture.
I then ask another question: If they were the senior manager, would they want to know if the order was unachievable so they could modify it while there was still an opportunity to find a successful alternative? Nearly 100 percent say yes, they would want to know. If so, wouldn't a manager two levels above them also want to know? At that point, they see the contradiction between the internalized cultural rule and their responsibility.
Finding Solutions That Maintain Respect for the Chain of Command
The exercise then becomes how they can use language to frame the act of going above the supervisor's head while minimizing the damage this does to the relationship with that supervisor. The answers prove surprisingly easy once the cultural taboo is moved aside. To the supervisor, they can say something to this effect:
"We have too much respect for you to go behind your back. We can do this any way you prefer. You can come with us. You can let us take the risk and go on our own. You can even distance yourself from what we are doing if you think it is inappropriate. The only thing we can't do is leave the manager in the dark about the failure we believe will occur."
This is not asking for permission, which can be denied. They are acting on the value that the manager has a right to know about the likely consequences to make adjustments and avoid a mission failure. Depending on the supervisor's level of security or insecurity, they may hold this against the channel skipper, or they may not. Oddly enough, some research shows that in about a quarter of the instances, going to the next higher level improves the relationship with the supervisor for a variety of reasons, including having taken the problem off their hands.
When the individual follower or team goes to the higher level manager, how they phrase the information is important. They do not disparage their supervisor. They focus on the data and its predicted impact on the mission. In most cases, the manager will be grateful for the early warning unless there is a hidden political agenda. The next time they see the supervisor, they may even compliment them for having such an alert team!
But what about delivering messages that can make actors at an even higher level than the manager look bad? Now, the ante has been raised.
Communicating with Higher Levels
Because of the complexity of motivations in the first circle of followers (the confidants of the political leader), those in the second and third circles need to be particularly strategic in what information they feed to these agenda-driven, powerful followers who see their future inextricably linked to the autocratic leader. If they are found to be withholding information that would be of value to this first circle of followers, it could cost them their position. If they unartfully convey the information, they can be sidelined or scapegoated.
When possible, followers in the bureaucratic circle should frame the information in ways that promote the leader's legitimate self-interest (such as succeeding in the position) and serving the mission. Also, present the information so that it promotes a positive work culture. What does this look like? It is about avoiding the temptation of framing information in ways they believe ingratiate them to the first circle by sensationalizing it or inflaming its negative aspects. The very senior appointees to whom they send that information rarely have time to closely examine and vet the information they are given. Therefore, they may latch onto incendiary bits, which then come out in speeches and policies that only worsen conditions. Let's see how this might work.
In the US system of government, cabinet members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Most of the senior staff that report directly to them are classified as political appointees rather than as civil servants, and their appointment begins and ends with each new administration. The political appointees who come in with a new administration are often highly critical of career employees, buying into the negative stereotype surrounding government workers. This results in knowledgeable and effective senior civil servants enduring a period of distrust with the new administration until they have demonstrated their true value. This usually occurs after the civil servants save the political appointees' bacon by helping them weather a public crisis. Here is an example of how cynicism needed to be countered by a career bureaucrat as it seeped into Circles 1 and 2 above her.
The new cabinet secretary was a confidant of the new president but highly cynical about the federal workforce. One of the political appointees who reported to him about the workforce played into that cynicism. Morale in the department was bad, and this appointee's approach to changing it was more or less "the beatings will continue until morale improves." Based on the assumption that the civil service was trying to make sure the new president failed, he designed performance review criteria that reflected this, thinking it would appeal to the cabinet secretary's cynical views. Naturally, this only worsened morale.
During this period, my client, who had been highly valued by the former administration, had to keep a low profile while she soldiered through, getting the job done. After a few months, by reason of her excellent work and her political astuteness, she came to the cabinet secretary's attention as someone to trust. Federal employees do an annual morale survey. His department wasn't looking good in comparison to others. Therefore, he didn't look good.
My client took the opportunity to explain to him the pride that civil servants take in their work. With her help, he began acknowledging this in his internal communicаtion with the department's employees, and the surveys soon reflected this in the levels of morale reported. Now, tough news could be reported without cynicism and focus on the options for dealing with complex issues in productive ways. This avoided rash policy decisions being made on information from manipulative political followers.
Effective, ethical followers make the information that they are conveying to senior leaders as concise and digestible as possible. They frame it so the superior sees how that information is important to the mission, as well as to their reputation and their own boss's political capital. They highlight ways in which it can be used to persuade the most senior leader to make choices that are achievable, given existing conditions. Or to help them understand why a poorly conceived position should be rethought.
This is exemplary followership: remaining mission-centered while finding the leverage points that align the perspectives of those within the organization system for better outcomes.
Courage
Clearly, these carefully thought-out approaches are not guarantees of success when attempting to temper authoritarian impulses. But neither are they adding fuel to the fire. If a courageous follower is shrewd enough in their advice, and the higher-ups benefit from their counsel, they may be better positioned to be a moderating voice. At least one is trying to do the right thing and "living another day" to continue trying.
As bureaucrats rise in their organization, they may find themselves as little as two degrees of separation from the inner sanctum. With courage and skill, at the crucial point, they may indeed make a difference in the trajectory of the administration's use or abuse of power. Even at much lower levels, principled acts of courage make a difference.
Unlike water, courage can flow uphill to where it is needed. Courage modeled from below is as powerful as courage modeled from above.
In my workshops, I invite participants to identify their sources of courage. Often, it is an individual, historic or contemporary, who lived courageously. These personal role models come from all areas of their lives and are powerful touchstones. These can include you, who show the courage to take that principled stance.
Of course, it's one thing to influence your boss or their boss in a hierarchy to make the right decision. It's quite another to strategically exert influence that gets the head of government to change course. At best, it's a long shot, probably a bank shot involving several others closer to the leader-a matter of two or three degrees of separation.
Followers in this circle need to tap into and develop skills of strategic influence. The practice field available to them is their level of the governing system and a level or two above them. Conscious practice and experience may equip the bureaucratic follower to make that long shot if the window for doing so presents itself as part of a task force or an inquiry on which they are seated. A classic example of such a role was the Vietnam Study Task Force, which we will examine in Chapter 14 on coalitions of followers. It utilized a number of government bureaucrats to evaluate the US position, prospects, and policy in Vietnam while the war was being prosecuted with large numbers of casualties. Opportunities happen, and, like Scouts, it's good to be prepared.
Similar to operating a shipping canal in which water does, at times, "flow" uphill, it requires opening and closing strategically located "locks" to lift vessels of influence over obstacles in the terrain. In the next chapter, we will examine the skills for exerting positive bureaucratic influence that can provide this lift.
© Ira Chaleff 2024, posted by GovLeaders.org with the author's kind permission.
