Group Involvement in Administration

Organized groups, as was noted earlier, may play a role of representation in relationships with administrative agencies. They advocate the cause of their members, provide information, encourage, and, on occasion, intimidate. In another range of relationships they attempt to bring under their dominion administrative agencies of concern to them. One can only speak of recurring tendencies, for the realities differ from time to time and from situation to situation. Moreover, though the relationships often elude precise description because of their subtlety, they range from friendly collaboration, through virtual subjection of the administrative agency to the will of the organized group, to formal assumption of governmental powers by the private group. Interest groups tend to share and advocate a similar fundamental philosophy about administrative role and organization. The doctrine recurs that the role of administrative agencies should be to function as advocates within the government of the interests within society with which they are concerned: the Department of Commerce should look out for business; Agriculture, for the farmer; the Bureau of Wildlife Management, for the sportsmen. Adherence to this doctrine by public officials, as often occurs, paves the way for harmonious relations between organized groups and their opposite numbers within administration.

The philosophy of administrative representation of private interest carries with it the doctrine that administrative structure should be arranged to facilitate the exertion of group influences over administration, though rarely does a group make the contention so baldly. Thus, groups often advocate administrative arrangements that segregate into compact units governmental activities of concern to them. Such an arrangement facilitates the development of relations of mutual interdependence. For example, the teamsters union and truck transport associations urge that road transport regulation be handled by an independent agency and not by the Interstate Commerce Commission, an agency that also deals with railroads. The commercial fishermen hope for a separate bureau dedicated to their problems.

These administrative arrangements may create a relationship between agency and clientele in which the clientele, in the reality of politics, comes to control agency policy or at least have a veto over it. In state governments, for example, it is often difficult to tell at what point the state banking department ends and the state bankers' association begins. Professor Fesler, after examining the situation in several states, concludes: "State banking departments are typically dominated by the bankers' association of the state." He finds that the control of state departments concerned with insurance and building and loan associations is "roughly analogous to that of banking departments.” Not often is the relation between the administrative agency and affected interest quite so intimate as is the case with the Kansas state board of agriculture which is elected by delegates from county farm organizations and certain other agricultural associations. Pieces of federal administrative machinery also at times come virtually under the control of private groups. In 1946 the Executive Committee of the American Legion had the effrontery virtually to summon General Omar Bradley, the Administrator of Veterans Affairs, to appear before it in Indianapolis to defend his policies. The General found it "impracticable" to attend and invited the committee to appear in his Washington office. The incident warrants attention only because it indicated that the usual plasticity of the Administrator at the hands of the Legion did not prevail in this instance.

Formalized advisory and consultative relations between government agencies and those affected by its action provide a linkage that may closely approach group management of the agency. During World War II, the War Production Board built up an extensive system of industry advisory committees to aid in the formulation of policies concerning particular industries. These committees consisted of businessmen chosen by the board in a manner to be representative of all segments of industry: large and small, trade association and non-trade association. The Business and Defense Services Administration of the Department of Commerce has maintained an extensive system of industry advisory committees. During the early years of the Eisenhower Administration the BDSA even followed a policy of appointing as directors of its industry branches industrialists who served for short periods and without compensation. That policy brought such practices as the rotation of the directorship of the aluminum branch among men from the three major aluminum producers – Alcoa, Reynolds, and Kaiser.

Authority is both elusive and mercurial, and in these and other relations the determination of who is the boss at a particular time – government agency or private group – is often not easy. Private associations at times virtually take over an administrative agency by their control of the appointment of its chief. The capacity to exert this control varies, but a private group almost invariably desires the chief of an agency of concern to them to be one of their own kind, a person who "understands" their problems.

All these relationships between administration and private group produce varying results. The situation recurs in which the private group tends to convert public administration to group purpose. At the extreme, the power of the state is formally delegated to private organization, and the line between public and private realms, often hazy at best, is erased. Even when that point is not reached, private organizations, interwoven as they tend to be with the state's administrative apparatus, constitute to a degree an element of the machinery of government. Observation of the tendency of private groups to become assimilated into the apparatus of the state has led some political philosophers to advocate a formal incorporation of private groups into the governmental machinery. While such theories of pluralism once enjoyed considerable vogue, the prevailing American view is that such aggrandizement of centers of privale power would mightily complicate the problem of governing in the general interest.

1. to deduce from smth. – приходить к заключению, сделать вывод

2. to hammer out – приходить к решению после длительного обсуждения; говорить о чем-то в подробностях

3. under propitious circumstances – при благоприятных обстоятельствах

4. give-and-take – тактика взаимных уступок, компромисса

5. to move the government to act – побуждать; заставлять, вынуждать правительство действовать

6. to be alert – быть внимательным, бдительным, настороженным;

быть живым, проворным

7. to wield influence – обладать влиянием

8. to generate a schism – вызывать, производить раскол

9. to lay a foundation of/for smth. – заложить фундамент / основу для чего-л.; положить начало чему-л.

10. to set in motion – приводить в действие, приводить в движение

11. to impinge on/upon smth. – вторгаться; покушаться, посягать на что-л.

12. to whip up – подстегивать; подгонять; расшевелить

13. public utilities – коммунальные предприятия

14. on a pecuniary basis – на материальной основе

15. in the doghouse – в немилости

16. to bear on smth. –касаться, иметь отношение к чему-л.

17. in magnitude – по (абсолютной) величине, по абсолютному значению

18. to regard as importunate (зд: in their demands) – рассматривать как настойчивого, назойливого

19. to stave off smth. (зд: a boycott) – предотвращать, предупреждать что-л.

20. to be in charge of smth. – быть ответственным за что-л.

21. tenure – срок пребывания (в должности)

22. to conjure up smth. (зд: a picture) – вызывать в воображении

23. by and large – в общем и целом; в общем

24. to content oneself with smth. – довольствоваться чем-л.

25. to seem expedient – казаться целесообразным, подходящим, выгодным

26. to stir up pressure on Congress – оказывать давление на Конгресс

27. to resort (to) smth. – прибегать (к чему-л.), обращаться за помощью

28. under dire circumstances – при (в) крайних обстоятельствах

29. an acute situation – острая ситуация

30. all and sundry – все вместе и каждый в отдельности; все без исключения, все подряд, все до одного

syn: everyone

Eg: He was well known to all and sundry. – Он был хорошо известен всем.

31. fallow ground – еще не паханная земля, целина

32. in ignorance of – в неведении

33. tax invasion – уклонение от уплаты налогов

34. to spearhead a movement – возглавлять движение

35. pecuniary ties – финансовые, преследующие материальные интересы, ищущие выгоду отношения

36. an outright bribe – явная взятка

37. a skirmish – столкновение, перепалка

syn: encounter

38. roll call – поименное голосование; перекличка

39. to lodge authority (power) with smb. (or in the hands of smb.) – облекать кого-л. властью, полномочиями

40. to keep track of smth. – отслеживать что-л.

41. to stir up a commotion – побуждать, вызывать гражданские волнения, беспорядки

42. to mount a camgaign against smb. / smth. – организовывать кампанию против кого-л. / чего-л.

43. amicus curiae – независимый эксперт в суде

44. to jog smb. to do smth. – подталкивать кого-л. сделать что-л.

45. to emasculate smth. (зд: legislation) – ослабить

syn: to weaken, to enervate

46. peaceful coexistence – мирное сосуществование

47. litigation – тяжба, судебный процесс

Eg: to initiate, to start litigation – возбудить судебный процесс

48. to fight smth. Out to a stalemate – привести к патовой ситуации, тупику; ставить в безвыходное положение; «загонять в угол»

49. to obtain endorsement (from smb.) – получить поддержку (кого-л.)

50. to verge on smth. (зд: coercion) – граничить с чем-л.; походить на что-л.

51. to prejudice one's main cause – наносить ущерб, причинять вред своему основному / главному делу

52. antecedent to smth. – предшествующий чему-л.

53. reconciliation of differences – урегулирование разногласий

54. to the detriment of smth. (зд: the public interest) – в ущерб чему-л.

55. at the behest of smb. / at smb's behest – по чьей-л. Воле

56. an untoward effect – нежелательный, неблагоприятный эффект

57. to be wary of smb. – относиться подозрительно, настороженно к кому-л.

58. hit-and-run tactics – тактика (нанесения) коротких ударов