Now that we have some appreciation for the underpinnings of thinking about modern governmental bureaucracy, we need to understand the bureaucracy within the context of the constitutional principles for organizing government in the United States. The bureaucracies at the federal and, to a lesser extent, the state level have grown up in the margins of the three core branches of government: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The division of government into three branches and separate powers gives each branch both exclusive powers and some additional powers over the other two branches. Within this scheme, the bureaucracy seems an awkward fit, adding to our ambivalent attitudes toward the administrative face of government.
Over time, the bureaucracy has come to be conceived as a "fourth branch" that exists in tension with the principles of separated powers and checks and balances. The bureaucracy is nowhere specified in the US Constitution. There is an article dedicated to each of the three main branches, but none dedicated to any sort of bureaucracy. Nor is the bureaucracy explicitly provided for in articles on the three core branches.
Bureaucratic organs may be implied in the long list of powers of Congress: for instance, to lay and collect taxes, to regulate commerce with foreign nations, to establish post offices and post roads, etc (Article I, Section 8). And some administrative departments are clearly implied in the reference to the president at times requiring "the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices" (Article II, Section 2). But these various responsibilities and implied departments are nowhere identified as a coherent whole with a specific structure - in short, as a distinct and separate branch of government.
The sections that follow examine how constitutional organization provides an important context for the formation of political bureaucracies and the evolution of their roles in Texas.
