POLSCI 318 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Grafting, Spoils System, Counter-Terrorism
4 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Congress and the President
11.11.16 Lecture Notes – Executive Branch Organization
x We left off at appointments and nominations
x We will talk about executive branch organization and how different presidents have attempted to
reorganize the branch
x Readings for the 18th (keep Caught in the Middle reading, kill the other piece)
Organization of the Executive Branch
x Executive has to figure out how to gain control of the bureaucracy and the executive branch
x Most efficient way – choosing an efficient organizational scheme
x That organizational scheme will start with how people closest to the president are organized
o Presidents have a lot of leeway in choosing who will be closest to them in the White House
o Chief-of-staff hired/disissed at the Presidet’s pleasure
x One of the things that Presidents can run into early on – are not fully informed how much their
organizational scheme will influence their success with Congress and the bureaucracy
x Why would the President need a very large staff?
o Humans are serial processors, whereas organizations are parallel processors
▪ Serial processing – humans have cognitive limitations in dealing with multiple issues at
one time
▪ Difficult for individuals to flip through multiple tasks throughout the day
▪ Humans are very bad at multi-tasking – decreased productivity
▪ Parallel processing – efficiency in dealing with multiple tasks simultaneously
▪ Congressmen and the president need large organizations to accomplish parallel
processing and deal with multiple issues at once
▪ Given the range of issues that the executive is responsible for, the executive branch has
evolved to have parallel processing capabilities that is on par or even better than
Congress
x Structures of the executive
o 1. President
o 2. Vice-President
o 3. White House
▪ White house staff and offices
o 4. Fifteen different departments that comprise of the cabinet
▪ First level of political appointments in the executive bureaucracy (secretary of
education, defense, energy, homeland security, attorney general, etc.)
▪ Article II, Section 2 – aiet’s role as supposed to e adisor to the presidet, ut
also implementation involvement for the policy domains of their respective department
▪ Washington only had a few cabinet positions
x Three Main Models for White House Organization
o 1. Pyramid model
o 2. Circular model (aka spokes on a wheel)
o 3. Ad Hoc model
x Pyramid model
o Gatekeeper between president and rest of the White House is normally the chief-of-staff
o Under this organization, everyone must gain clearance from the individual above them before
reporting to the President any problems, policy proposals, etc.
o Eisenhower and Nixon
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