mpliance of the other branches for enforcement of the laws.The bureaucracy is not democratic for many reasons. They key features of a bureaucracy are that they are large, specialized, run by official and fixed rules, relatively free from outside control, run on a hierarchy, and they must keep written records of everything they do. Bureaucracies focus on rules, but their members are unhappy when the rules are exposed to the public. Bureaucracies violate the requirement of a legitimate democracy that public policy must be made publicly, not secretly. To be hired in a bureaucracy, a person must take a civil service exam. People working in bureaucracies may also be fired under extreme circumstances. This usually leads to the “Peter Principle;” that people who are competent at their jobs are promoted until they are in jobs in which they are no longer competent.Policymaking may be considered democratic to an extent. The public tends to get its way about 60 percent of the time. Because one of the key legitimating factors of government is a connection between what it does and what the public wants, policy making can be considered 60 percent legitimate. Furthermore, most of what the federal government does never reaches the public. Public opinion polls represent the small percentage of issues that people have heard about.Though the individual workings of the American government may not be particularly democratic, it must be somewhat legitimate overall because without legitimacy, government fails. However, the people who run for and win public office are not necessarily the most intelligent, best informed, wealthiest, or most successful business or professional people. At all levels of the political system, it is the most politically ambitious people who are willing to sacrifice time, family and private life, and energy and effort for the power and celebrity that comes with public office”. The legitimacy of the United States go...
