BUREAUCRACY

Sociologyindex, Bureaucracy Abstracts, Sociology Books 2011, Syllabus, Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is a formal organization with defined objectives, a hierarchy of specialized roles and systematic processes of direction and administration.

Bureaucracy can be found in earlier times in history in administration of agricultural irrigation systems, the Roman army, the Catholic church, but it becomes most prominent in the large-scale administration of agencies of the modern state and modern business corporations.

The German state created by Bismarck, was a model bureaucracy in both its armed forces and civil administration. According to Weber the creation of the modern state of Germany had only been possible because of the development of a disciplined state bureaucracy and a bureaucratised standing army.

Max Weber (1864-1920) gave particular attention to bureaucracy and saw this form of social organization becoming dominant in modern society due to the commitment to the value of rationalization - the organization of social activity so as to most efficiently achieve goals.

Bureaucracies enable governments to generate, process, distribute, and store information. Even the Egyptian, Roman, and other ancient empires were administered in part by bureaucracies. Yet the terms "bureaucracy," "bureaucratic," and "bureaucrat" are not ancient; they date from the 1830s and 1840s.

The growth of formal bureaucracy is a phenomenon of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the modern bureaucratic state is one of mankind's recent accomplishments. For organizations in both the public and private sectors, the bureaucracy represents an important, modern technology of control.

To some extent, a cyberocracy would be a bureaucracy changed by computers. This new form presumes the diffusion of advanced information and communications systems throughout a nation's government (and its public and private sectors generally). It also implies the rise of elites who rely on those systems and work to use them to their fullest capabilities.

But it would be a mistake to define a cyberocracy as a computerized bureaucracy, or a "cybercrat" as a bureaucrat with a computer. The new technology opens the doors to new capabilities and possibilities; it implies that things may be done differently. This difference may stem less from the computer someone may have than from the access it may provide to networks and databases outside one's office, and potentially across all branches and levels of government, in the private as well as the public sector, and internationally as well as domestically.

While bureaucracies are organized along thematic lines, big budgets and staffs are generally considered more important than information as bases of bureaucratic power. Moreover, the hierarchical structuring of bureaucracies into offices, departments, and lines of authority may confound the flow of information that may be needed to deal with complex issues in today's increasingly interconnected world.

Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, Random House Inc., New York, 1970. One of the first works to foresee that the information revolution would have a major impact on bureaucracy. He termed bureaucracy as "ad-hocracy,"

A good example of a bureaucracy is a university, where most of these characteristics exist. Of course, in the social world, no bureaucracy conforms exactly to the ideal type, and there is often favouritism, bending of rules, or incompetence. But many organizations have a large number of characteristics consistent with the ideal type. Further, the ideal type constitutes a model and the way that any actual bureaucracy operates can be compared to the ideal type. Often the complaints of individuals in bureaucratic organizations relate to ways in which some part of the ideal type is not met. For example, rules may not be clear or incumbents of a particular office may misuse their position.

While bureaucracies may limit freedom and form structures of domination, they are also necessary to carry out the administration of modern, complex society. If these bureaucratic forms did not exist, society would be worse off, in that actions would be carried out in an inefficient and wasteful manner.

At the same time, Weber notes that bureaucracies do tend to have great power. Their rational and efficient methods of administration, and their legitimate forms of authority do act to eliminate human freedom. Like Marx's alienation surplus value, Weber views bureaucracy as alienating (although he does not use this term) in that it is a set of structures which dominate people.

Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy has made it seem as if bureaucracies are inherently limiting to human freedom. While Weber praises bureaucracies for their efficiency and predictability, he feared that people would become too controlled by them.

Weber does not appear to focus on the forces of freedom and equality that can come from bureaucracy. Standardized rules make it less possible for personal favours to be provided and for arbitrary directive to be given. Members of an organization may generally benefit from bureaucratic rules and regulations, and these make it possible for hiring and promotion to occur on the basis of merit. Rewards can be given for performance, rather than through favouritism and arbitrariness.

In the title of his 1993 Gaus Award Lecture, Francis Rourke posed the deceptively simple question, “Whose Bureaucracy Is This, Anyway?” His subtitle was “Congress, the President, and Public Administration.” Rourke, a pioneer in the field of bureaucratic politics, concluded that federal administration was constitutionally and politically under the “joint custody” of Congress and the president. Clearly, Congress has formidable constitutional authority and responsibility for the structure and operation of the executive branch. A great deal of political science research demonstrates that the legislature and its committees are a major political force in federal administration. Even as the older “iron triangle” model gives way to newer approaches, no one (other than misguided reformers) could reasonably answer Rourke's question and exclude Congress. Its oversight, influence, and intervention in agency operations on behalf of policy objectives and incumbency are central features of contemporary federal administration. - “Whose Bureaucracy Is This, Anyway?” Congress' 1946 Answer - David H. Rosenbloom, American University. Political Science & Politics (2001), 34:4:773-777 American Political Science Association doi:10.1017/S1049096501000658

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