Bureaucracy in “The Power Broker” by Robert Caro

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Table of Contents

Brief Summary
Bureaucracy
My opinion
Conclusion
Work cited

Brief Summary

In the book The Power Broker; Caro looks at the life of Moses, the main character, from his childhood days, to his later years when he was an advocate of reforms to progress New York City, which by then had a corrupt civil service system. Although he failed to deliver as the appointed advocate, he later got a chance to work for Al Smith, the then governor for New York County in the New York State Assembly. After that, he got another chance to work for the then New York mayor, Jimmy Walker in the state senate. During this working period, Moses gained skill, knowledge and experience, in matters of politics and learned how power worked and was delegated. This is knowledge he really needed because he had a plan of building roads and bridges across the city. The description of the city before Robert Moses shows a city that was underdeveloped and had minimal growth, poor transportation means and unplanned social amenities such as parks.

Moses kept on expanding his knowledge in matters of administration, power and public relations through interaction with influential people and those in power, and in the 1930s, Moses had already earned himself a good reputation in the construction of big and appealing parks around the city and across New York State. With time, various projects and contractors such as Verrazano Narrows Bridge started seeking him for his skill in bridges, roads and parks’ construction. He, however, charged them extravagant prices, taking advantage of his skills, reputation and popularity. With many people seeking him, Moses self-imposed himself as an unofficial (and unelected) bureaucratic leader, a position he used to gain power and even managed to make some of the leaders on top of him, his subjects. Through this, Moses became powerful because he ended up acquiring power belonging to those he was supposed to be responsive to. He achieved this when different mayors appointed him to take charge of various departments such as head of parks around New York, co-coordinator in charge of constructions and in fact at one time, he held 12 different leadership positions. He used these opportunities to develop his leadership skills and did his things bureaucratically. For example, he could collect tolls from New York residents and use the money in the construction of roads, bridges and parks, arguing that the same people will use the facilities anyway. These are some of the measures he took that are considered bureaucratic because he did not consult with the state council or mayor.

Moses notably preferred automobile traffic as opposed to mass transit, and always made it a big deal that he had in his earlier years served in many public offices without pay, lived lavishly and usually tipped (enriched) those people who sided with him and helped him, especially in his affairs. According to Caro, Moses is portrayed to be intelligent, politically mean and used an aggressive and rigid form of administration, and in fact the writer seems to have contempt towards Moses, the same way Moses has been portrayed to be contemptuous towards his subjects. Due to his ability to cunningly take power from those above him by taking advantage of his skill and position in the society, Moses was nicknamed The Power Broker. Although he had a few controversial cases linked to him, for example the unproven accusations that he had sexual ties with the Manhattan congresswoman who upon interviews he vehemently denied, Moses’ impacts on New York City still remain conspicuous to date. For that reason he is still referred to as the builder of the greatest city in the world. Moses left power and administration in late 1960s and later died a decade later, in 1981. Some of his projects though, still remain unfinished and incomplete, for example his Olympics and the West side project, Rebuilding Downtown project etc which is still under works.

In summary, Robert Moses can be viewed as a self imposed leader who forced his way up into power, not because he had good leadership qualities, but because of his aggressiveness. He is described as a leader who loved and had lust for power and took advantage of the resources and skill to his disposal to expand himself, his work and leadership skills.

Various reasons though, made some of his projects get terminated in the midstream, while others are still in works, almost 5 decades after his departure from power. One of the main hindrances to their realization is issues with finances between him and the councils and his bureaucratic form of administration. In handling managerial positions, financing and budgeting of his projects, he needed to have a few tips on how to go about it. According to John L. Mikesell’s book Fiscal Administration: Analysis and application in the public sector, managers working for whichever kind of an organization should study finance because every day, they have resources which need to be put to use and it’s up to them to know how they will be divided and distributed. They also need to know how to control resources and make sure they don’t exhaust the finances, available resources and make sure there is no misuse and misappropriation of funds. He also point out that people who understand how an organization operates are those who understand it to financial the financial level. The company should therefore have good budget systems (Mikesell 11). These are some of the strategies that Caro recommends were not applied by Moses Robert in his administration and delegation of his duties, and this had adverse effects on the implementation of his set goals and objectives. This is the reason why some of his set plans are still under implementation. For example, according to Caro, Robert Moses was facing major roadblocks and problems with financing small game tournaments at Yale for close to twenty years, and at the same time, he was being attacked by Ed Richards.

Bureaucracy

One major theme that stands out in the book The Power Broker is bureaucracy. It is by definition a method of administration that strongly adheres to a set of principles which cannot be changed or altered. It is a rigid form of administration, and in the current years many governments and non-governmental organizations have been discouraging this administration method. It is an evident form of leadership that Moses used and in fact it is the form of delegation that he found the moment he started working as an advocate in the reform process in New York. In fact it is this role that trained him to be a bureaucratic leader because this is where he learned practically everything about administration and work delegation. The office of the governor worked under very rigid conditions. For example, before money was provided by the accounts department for a certain project to be undertaken, a long code of procedure had to be followed. Failure to be signed by certain people such as the chief clerk would mean that no money will be provided to fund the project, and this is one limiting method of leadership when delegating projects, especially in the event of an emergency. Robert Moses’ bureaucratic way of going about things also affected the implementation of some of the projects that he started, and decades later, are yet to be completed. The reason is because they took too long to be funded or went through a very long procedure before they finally got funded. In some cases though, bureaucracy proved to be a good method of administration especially in cases where Robert Moses fully believed in himself and had a hundred percent confidence in succeeding. Most of his actions though, were interplay between his personality and acquired traits (Caro 4).

My opinion

In my opinion, bureaucracy played a big role in both the success and failure of Robert Moses’ projects. For example, in cases where he fully believed in himself and could see success and looked at a point from a perspective which no one else did, it really helped because he had the final voice on what was to be done. However, this form of administration did more harm than good. To his subjects, it sent a signal of a mean and autocratic leader, who did things his own way and this made it hard for people with fresh ideas to approach him. He also monopolized most of the industries that he was working in such as the roads and bridges’ construction industry, and this discouraged competition. Although many people believed in his work to be quality, there is still a possibility that there were even better ideas out there that could not be brought to utilization because the industry had already been subjected to monopoly. This also implied that work could not be determined by comparison whether it was whether or not its quality and this was yet another disadvantage.

Secondly, in the event of an emergency, it would be very hard for an effective corrective measure to be taken. This is because a specific code of procedure had to be followed for an action to be taken. This especially applies in financial matters, where a long procedure had to be followed before fund could be released. For this reason, whenever such an emergency came up, it resulted to a lot of complications and in some cases, temporary termination of the projects. It is in my opinion it is for this reason that some of his projects that he initiated such as Olympics and the west side are still in progress. Holding these projects on the other hand are disadvantageous because even if they will be improved and modernized, due to the many unavoidable changes that keep on taking place such as fluctuations in the economy, the projects keep on becoming more and more complicated and many changes in the initial script will therefore have to be made.

Conclusion

Bureaucracy was a popular method of administration that was used in the early 20^th century. It was mainly applied by autocratic administrators who had strong personalities and self confidence. Robert Moses was no exception. Bureaucracy, being a rigid method of administration, left no room for improvement, diversity and change. It is therefore not an ideal method of administration, unless the person applying it has a hundred percent confidence of the work he is doing and is guaranteed of success.

Secondly, bureaucracy is not an ideal form of administration in industries that keep on changing. This is because it is a rigid method that will not keep up with the changes. It’s especially not a good method to apply in finance and management and this is why in the recent years, it is mainly applied in politics alone, especially the underdeveloped and developing countries.

Work cited

Mikesell, John L. Fiscal Administration: Analysis and Applications for the Public Sector. Random House inc, 1975. Print.

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Bureaucracy in “The Power Broker” by Robert Caro

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