Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

Managing External Constituencies 211
sponsor their formation. There are two aspects of this move towards policy
communities most relevant for present purposes.
First, the decline in prestige and influence of the bureaucracy and the
bureaucratic model led to other initiatives in the relationships between government
and interest groups. The decline in bureaucracy is consistent with the
decline of the traditional model of administration. If the power and influence
of the bureaucracy had indeed declined, then legitimacy needed to be derived
from somewhere. The relevant interest groups could be argued to have filled
a power vacuum created by the decline of a bureaucratic model. This may be
why they have been so readily accepted as important players in the political
game.
Secondly, the relationship between government and groups has changed to a
more openly political system, that is, one where policy outcomes are the result
of political competition between a range of inside and outside actors. In this
competition, interest groups are a decided asset; so much so that they will be
encouraged and enlisted by the bureaucracy to assist in its struggle with other
agencies. Two important resources are the ability to give technical advice and
the ability to assist in policy implementation. Policy-makers ‘rarely understand
or have information on all the complexities of the issues they decide; advice
from interest groups helps’. The bureaucracy is no longer regarded as having
an information monopoly. Also, many types of policy can be implemented
‘more easily, cheaply, and effectively if the relevant interest groups cooperate’
(Wilson, 1992, p. 81).
Pross (1986, p. 243) also argues that the development of policy communities
‘has transformed participating interest groups from useful adjuncts of agencies
into vitally important allies’ and the relationship between agency and interest
group is more equal than it was. As a result the policy system is more open and
dynamic. It is hard to say which came first: whether the changes to a more open
managerial system have led to an enhanced role for groups or whether, as Pross
argues, events occurred the other way around. However, there is certainly
greater commonality between groups and government and between the new
theories of groups and the system of managerialism.
In another variant of the idea that groups and the bureaucracy have common
interests, Goodsell (1983, p. 138) sees bureaucratic interests within government
as representative of outside interests:
Because of the mammoth scope of tasks given bureaucracy in the modern society, virtually
every interest has an administrative counterpart, whether it be agriculture, labour, the
scientific community, war veterans, oil companies, schoolteachers, or beekeepers.
Moreover, the interests represented are not merely those of the rich and well-born.
Bureaucracies exist for enforcement of civil rights, promotion of minority employment,
alleviation of urban poverty, protection of migrant workers, education of pre-school
blacks, safeguarding of the environment, advancement of solar energy, enhancement of
worker safety, promotion of labour unions, and receipt of consumer complaints. Very few
causes are completely without an administrative spokesman.