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Constitutionalism and Bureaucracy A Commentary on Herman Belz's Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2020

Charles M. Hardin
Charles M. Hardin*
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis, Emeritus
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Extract

The spring 1984 issue of APSA's NEWS for Teachers of Political Science contains Herman Belz's provocative piece on “Constitutionalism and Bureaucracy in the 1980's.” His definitions of both terms are unsatisfactory. His concept of constitutionalism is anemic. It fails to recognize that governments must have some characteristics of Leviathan: they must be large and formidable. To constitutionalize such governments is proportionately difficult. In the United States the difficulty is greatly aggravated by the bureaucracies which the separation of powers fosters that tend to fragment government into quasi-independent power blocks. Nor are these bureaucracies mere aggregations of civil servants. They typically include political administrators, veteran legislators, and experienced group leaders. Let me turn first to Professor Belz's argument.

Type
Research Article
Information
News for Teachers of Political Science , Volume 46 , Summer 1985 , pp. 16 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1985

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References

Notes

1. Cornell University Press: 1940, 1947, 1958.

2. “Politicians and Bureaucrats,” in Truman, David B., ed.. The Congress and America's Future (Columbia University, The American Assembly: Prentice Hall, New York, 1956Google Scholar).

3. Hardin, Charles M., “The Tobacco Program, Exception or Portent?” The Journal of Farm Economics, Autumn, 1946CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. References to farm price policy are based on Hardin, Charles M., Food and Fiber in the Nation's Politics, Vol. III, Technical Papers, National Advisory Commission on Food and Fiber, U.S.G.P.O., August, 1967Google Scholar. Especially pp. 9-15, 129-133. See also Charles M. Hardin, “Agricultural Price Policy: The Political Role of Bureaucracy,” in Don F. Hadwiger, William P. Browne, and Richard Fraenkel, Eds., “Symposium on Agricultural Policy.” Policy Studies Journal, Urbana, III. Summer, 1978.

5. The University of Chicago Press. All quotations from this unless otherwise indicated.

6. White, Theodore H., “Weinberger on the Ramparts,” The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 6, 1983Google Scholar.

7. Scheer, Robert, The Los Angeles Times —see “McNamara Says U.S. Scared Soviets into Nuclear Arms Race,” The Sacramento Bee, April 9, 1982Google Scholar.

8. Oxford University Press, 1942, 1947, pp. 88-89.

9. The New York Review of Books, Sept. 29, 1983, p. 20.

10. Bass, Sam, Unlikely Heroes (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983Google Scholar). See also Lewis Anthony on the Sullivan decision in the New Yorker for Nov. 5, 1984.

11. Tuchman, Barbara, The March of Folly (New York: Knopf, 1983Google Scholar).