Suspending Bureaucracy Is a Luxury

In response to the tragic accident that took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on March 26, the U.S. Transportation Secretary had some strong words.

“We will tear down any bureaucratic or administrative barrier that we responsibly can.

“To be clear, this has to be done safely. It has to be done properly, whether we're talking about checks to make sure that taxpayer funds are being used the right way or any safety consideration. But within that and within the framework of the law, we're going to provide as much flexibility as we responsibly can because we have got to get this port back open and we have got to get that bridge back up.

“The port reopening will, of course, come sooner than the bridge replacement, but both of those are important, not just for Baltimore, but really for our supply chains, for the U.S. economy. We have got to do everything we can to get it done.”

Secretary Buttigieg led with this message.

This “administrative discretion,” if we may call it that, comes up at times of urgency, real or contrived: the sense that speed is more important than the operation of the bureaucratic apparatus. In the case of American infrastructure, it may be that we need to suspend bureaucracy to see any kind of progress, at all, lest we be deterred by the intercession of myriad interest groups all baying for influence: unions who want to expand their membership and obtain better compensation, environmentalists who seek to restrain commerce, etc. Activists promoting any kind of agenda should be drawn to this opportunity. In the words of Rahm Emanual, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.””

“We’re from the government and we’re here to help.” Indeed.

This event and the reaction to it suggest an interesting question.

What are the necessary threshold conditions for suspending bureaucracy in a particular instance?

We’ve written before about how useful bureaucracy can be in slowing things down because it forces us into a proper decision-making process.

You may have seen in your own organizational life the willingness to throw the rules out the window if someone in power makes the call.

The question above is a trick question. There are no necessary threshold conditions. There is no logic at play. There are no rules-of-thumb to guide us, but one. Bureaucracy is the status quo until it’s not. It ceases to be a binding constraint the moment someone with sufficient power deems it not to be. They can rationalize it any number of ways, after the fact. But the decision to suspend its application is totally discretionary.

In the case of the bridge, we can see why the administration would favor setting aside the normal constraints. It’s an election year. Baltimore is a significant port. Container trans-shipment through the Port of Baltimore is the leading industry in that long-suffering city. It sits in the backyard of the national capital. These are blue-collar jobs. People are hurting.

Of course, we could come up with similar logic for pretty much everything subject to bureaucracy. Anything can be deemed urgent. That’s the point. The discretion here is arbitrary. It may be justifiable, but it defies prediction. In some cases, it is downright capricious.  There are no codified guidelines that would help us predict when bureaucracy will be suspended.

Perhaps, in this case, it was as simple as the sense of dread of another delayed project. It could be a function of its timing. The bridge collapse should be seen in the context of other large government interventions racked with delay. What’s the point of large fiscal spending if you can’t do it fast enough?

There are two corollary implications of the idea that we can slice through the red tape in the case of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

One, it’s maddening for those dependent on projects that don’t make the grade and who have to suffer under the heel of rules and regulations, many of which they do not understand or sympathize with.

Two, for all of the positive statements about urgency, there is a sense that bureaucracy will still manage to find a way to insert itself. I wouldn’t want to bet on how long it will take to restore the bridge. On a project as big as this one, it may prove difficult to contain the embedded regulatory instinct. It’s too big a target for interest groups.

Too much discretionary suspension of bureaucracy and it begins to lose its purchase. This kind of thing can be done only sparingly if the bureaucracy is to persist. That’s why it requires real power to effect. Imagine a scenario in which the rules were enforced only half the time. That would be untenable. There are limits to this kind of discretion. Like any luxury good, those who do not enjoy this liberating benefit hold it in jealous regard. They envy it. It’s exclusive. It’s a form of status. Not everyone gets to call the shot. Not everyone gets to benefit.

It's not just large projects. You can see this discretion in all kinds of situations. There is a fractal aspect to it. Companies and non-profits suspend the procurement process if they can persuade themselves that this purchase is super important or “strategic,” for example. Boards defer to imperial executives, even as the people who do the work in the trenches need to fill out their TPS reports. Politicians are perceived, correctly or not, as exempt from insider trading prohibitions. I’m sure you can see examples in your own experience.

In the case of the Key bridge, one can hope that the declared administrative discretion holds, though. The people of Baltimore have suffered enough.