WHEN MISSIONS MATTER - PROFESSIONAL PRIORITIES AND THE STEPCHILD OF SUPERVISORY PROGRAMS

If there is a clear bottom line to the literature on political control of the bureaucracy, if is that control is never complete. Principals cart be multiple, priorities diverse, preferences for policy incomplet e and not articulated, and intentional choice lost in the muddle. Yet as long as bureaucratic studies remain focused upon outside political actors, or at best, the political appointee at the helm of an agency, we will not make many advances in our understanding of important organ izational dynamics that act as an independent force upon the phenomeno n of bureaucratic behavior. This article suggests a politically cogniz ant return to the bureaucracy by examining the distinct management eff orts of the Fed, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and th e FDIC to supervise the consumer and civil rights obligations of banks , known collectively as ''compliance'' obligations. The same mandates, issued and overseen by the same political principals, and implemented within common professional cultures, have been managed in ways that v ary in the context of each agency's organizational mission. It is argu ed that organizational mission provides an empirical link between the priorities and mandates imposed from a system of ''overhead democracy, '' and the influential priorities of a common professional group (bank examiners) in each of the agencies.