Pros And Cons Of Kludgeocracy

The American state has become an overly complex bureaucracy. The myriad of checkpoints needed to go through in order to get anything done dissuades citizens from participating actively in politics. And participatory governance being a crucial aspect of a prospering democracy makes the problem of kludgeocracy ever the more pressing. The inevitability of this has its roots in the founding fathers’ concern over the limits of a central government and the responsibilities a truly representative democracy should have. Their pragmatism has shielded the American people from many of the overreaches a government can impose on its citizenry, but at the price of turning our government into a kind of a labyrinth. This price, I believe is a steep one. When one cannot easily traverse through their governmental landscape, power gets consolidated into a few key figures and this is one of the fatal flaws of a convoluted system of governance. And though there are a few values to having …show more content…
This system makes changes in policies next to impossible, while at the same time creating obstacles for political institutions, and making governance mind-numbingly difficult. Steven M. Teles describes this as a complicated and self-defeating process that demands coordination between multiple, yet seemingly unrelated areas within the government (Teles, Kludgeocracy: The American Way of Policy). The government of The United States of America is a prototypical example of a kludgeocracy. When the federal and state share the role of implementing laws and policies, confusion over responsibility is bound to happen. This avoidable disorder can be seen in the handling of public education funds. Three levels of government are involved in this process: federal, state, and local. All three fund public education and by doing so, they all have some say in the matter of public