Coordination in the United States (1980–2005)

Abstract

While politicians in almost any country might contest this claim, the federal government of the United States presents perhaps even more challenges to effective coordination than do governments in other countries. The American political system was designed by its founding fathers1 to be ‘all anchor and no sail’. To that institutionally divided and highly contentious political system has been added a bureaucratic system that is itself very divided, with the agencies being given a good deal of legal autonomy. These agencies also have developed sufficient political support from their clientele groups to develop and are able to maintain that autonomy (Carpenter 2001; Wolf 1997). In this administrative system some agencies are designed to be extremely independent, even though they exercise important public functions. Although almost all presidents since at least Franklin Roosevelt have sought to find ways to manage policy better from the centre (see Seidman 1998; Arnold 2000), the various coordination mechanisms that have been created rarely have been sufficiently powerful to overcome the divisions that exist within the administrative system.