ABSTRACT
The one thing that is crystal clear about the federal bureaucracy is that nobody likes it. Everybody attacks it and no one defends it. Many seem to share Ronald Reagan’s view that the ten most frightening words in America are, ‘I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help’. The federal bureaucracy is widely perceived as too large, too costly and too intrusive. It has become an issue which reaches across partisan divisions to unite Democrats and Republicans. In 1964, the actor Ronald Reagan claimed that America had ‘a permanent structure so big and complex it is virtually beyond the control of Congress and the comprehension of the people’ (Reagan 1988: 21). In 1981, the newly elected President Reagan pledged himself in his inaugural address ‘to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment’ (Reagan 1988: 35). But this was not a break with conventional wisdom because his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had also spoken of the ‘horrible, bloated bureaucracy’ (Fawcett and Thomas 1983: 143) and his desire to cut it down to size.
