About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


4 Regul. Rev. Depth 1 (2015)

handle is hein.journals/rgyrvidh4 and id is 1 raw text is: SAVE THE BUREAUCRATS Paul R. Verkuilt My topic deals not with the substance of regulations, but with those who process them. Bureaucracy and bureaucrat are loaded terms, often thought to be pejorative, as in oppressive, unenlightened, and bloated. But my use of the terms is intended to be complimentary. It recognizes that regulations don't implement themselves; principled agents (to borrow a phrase from John DiIulio) do.1 Francis Fukuyama, in his powerful new book, Political Order and Political Decay, tells us that bureaucratic autonomy was the formative issue of the Progressive Era. The Pendleton Act in the 19th Century and Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in the 20th overcame the spoils system by creating and nurturing the first professional civil service. (Just read Doris Kearns Goodwin's The Bully Pulpit to refresh your thinking.) Today, we seem to have forgotten some of the hard lessons learned during those periods. Indeed, we are coming uncomfortably close to a neo- spoils era at the state level and are dancing around the issue at the federal level. So why, after five years of government service at the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), has this become my theme? First, I have developed an enormous respect for the career officials I come into contact with. Second, I have always subscribed to the notion that whatever your political goals, pro- or anti-regulation, nothing can happen without responsible governance. Thus, for me, it's an obvious proposition: we must hire, promote or cull, and support people who do the difficult job of public administration. T Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States and president emeritus of the College of William and Mary. This essay is an edited version of the 2015 Distinguished Lecture on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The views presented do not necessarily represent the views of the Administrative Conference of the United States or the federal government. Chairman Verkuil's remarks stem originally from an opinion piece he wrote for the Public Administration Review and from the work of the University of Pennsylvania's Fox Leadership Professor, John DiIulio, whose book, Bring Back the Bureaucrats, Chairman Verkuil describes as a must-read. 1 See John D. DiIulio, Jr., Principled Agents: The Cultural Bases of Behavior in a Federal Government Bureaucracy, 4 J. PUB. ADMIN. RsCH. & THEORY 277 (1994).