Public bureaucracies are the workhorses of contemporary government, responsible for implementing public policies, and in the process making far more laws than do legislatures and adjudicating more cases than do the courts. How do bureaucracies function within a political system? How do they behave in the context of surrounding systems? To what extent do governmental structure and political culture shape the performance of bureaucracies? In this comparison of two countries_Norway and the United States_the authors analyze similarities and differences in political-administrative systems, measuring the capacity to govern and the influence of structure and culture in each case. They provide a framework for a broader understanding of public bureaucracy, its importance in a given political system, and how it interacts with other institutions to govern.