Elections Won or Lost: Some Things Never Change

Before you get wildly excited or stunningly depressed about the results from election night, just remember, 99% of government wasn'’t affected by how you voted.

While we officially call few government organizations "“bureaus"anymore, they remain bureaucracies --– the people in them act and think, are motivated or not, by common customs and restraints, all rooted in the nature and role of government action in a law-abiding democracy. Yet, the Federalist Papers barely mentions them.

Renowned Harvard political scientist, James Q. Wilson, has explained their nature and behavior in a book we in the nuclear industry, in government or not, should read. Titled simply Bureaucracy, it starts with a reflection on the quality of customer service at the author'’s local department of motor vehicles in Cambridge, Mass. and then explains why such interactions are the norm rather than the exception, at all levels. Of course, people in the employ of bureaucracies are people like the rest of us, but their behavior in organizations is not personal but political behavior.

One telling concept is that the great battles for a bureaucrat are not between the bureaucrat and Congress, or with the President, or with the citizens it serves, but rather with other bureaucrats. In the history of the US nuclear industry, the early interactions between the NRC and predecessors with the Tennessee Valley Authority would serve as an example. The slow erosion of scope of NRC'’s regulation over to the EPA is another illustration. The rise and fall of the AEC is yet another.

With the extensive new plant licensing efforts just beginning, it would behoove us all to read and ponder this work.

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