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Bureaucracy ( ) is a system of organization where laws or regulatory authority are implemented by civil servants or non-elected officials.Compare: Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected officials. Today, bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution, whether publicly owned or privately owned.Weber, Max "Bureaucracy" in Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society, translated and edited by Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters, Palgrave-Macmillan 2015. p. 114 The public administration in many jurisdictions is an example of bureaucracy, as is any centralized hierarchical structure of an institution, including Corporation, societies, nonprofit organizations, and Social club.
There are two key dilemmas in bureaucracy. The first dilemma relates to whether bureaucrats should be autonomous or directly accountable to their political masters. The second dilemma relates to bureaucrats' responsibility to follow preset rules, and what degree of latitude they may have to determine appropriate solutions for circumstances that are unaccounted for in advance.
Various commentators have argued for the necessity of bureaucracies in modern society. The German sociologist Max Weber argued that bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which human activity can be organized and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies are necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency, and eliminate favoritism. On the other hand, Weber also saw unfettered bureaucracy as a threat to individual freedom, with the potential of trapping individuals in an impersonal "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control.
The first known English-language use dates to 1818 with Irish novelist Lady Morgan referring to the apparatus used by the British government to subjugate Ireland as "the Bureaucratie, or office tyranny, by which Ireland has so long been governed". By the mid-19th century the word appeared in a more neutral sense, referring to a system of public administration in which offices were held by unelected career officials. In this context bureaucracy was seen as a distinct form of management, often subservient to a monarchy.
In the 1920s the German sociologist Max Weber expanded the definition to include any system of administration conducted by trained professionals according to fixed rules. Weber saw bureaucracy as a relatively positive development; however, by 1944 the economist Ludwig von Mises opined in the context of his experience in the Nazi regime that the term bureaucracy was "always applied with an opprobrious connotation", and by 1957 the American sociologist Robert Merton suggested that the term bureaucrat had become an "epithet, a Schimpfwort" in some circumstances.
The word bureaucracy is also used in politics and government with a disapproving tone to disparage official rules that appear to make it difficult—by insistence on procedure and compliance to rule, regulation, and law—to get things done. In workplaces, the word is used very often to blame complicated rules, processes, and written work that are interpreted as obstacles rather than safeguards and accountability assurances. Socio-bureaucracy would then refer to certain social influences that may affect the function of a society.
In modern usage, modern bureaucracy has been defined as comprising four features:
(2025). 9780801440908, Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801440908
/ref>Creel, H.G. (1949). Confucius: The Man and the Myth. New York: John Day Company. pp. 239–241
/ref>Michael Loewe pp. 145, 148. 2011. Dong Zhongshu, a 'Confucian'
/ref> where officials would select candidates to take part in an examination of the Confucian classics, from which Emperor Wu would select officials.Edward A Kracke Jr, Civil Service in Early Sung China, 960–1067, p. 253
In the Sui dynasty (581–618) and the subsequent Tang dynasty (618–907) the shi class would begin to present itself by means of the fully standardized civil service examination system, of partial recruitment of those who passed standard exams and earned an official degree. Yet recruitment by recommendations to office was still prominent in both dynasties. It was not until the Song dynasty (960–1279) that the recruitment of those who passed the exams and earned degrees was given greater emphasis and significantly expanded.Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, Anne Walthall, James Palais. (2006). East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. . 145–146. During the Song dynasty (960–1279) the bureaucracy became Meritocracy. Following the Song dynasty reforms, competitive examinations took place to determine which candidates qualified to hold given positions. The imperial examination system lasted until 1905, six years before the Qing dynasty collapsed, marking the end of China's traditional bureaucratic system.
/ref> Therefore, some sorts of bureaucracy techniques (named Diwan or Divan) was one of the significant inventions of the Iranians, holding its own functions, legitimacy, and importance, and continues after it, to be one of the fundamental mechanisms of successor states.Kuhrt, Amélie. The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period. Routledge, 2007.
The Safavid Iran state was one of checks and balance, both within the government and on a local level. At the apex of this system was the Shah, with total power over the state, legitimized by his bloodline as a sayyid, or descendant of Muhammad. To ensure transparency and avoid decisions being made that circumvented the Shah, a complex system of bureaucracy and departmental procedures had been put in place that prevented fraud. Every office had a deputy or superintendent, whose job was to keep records of all actions of the state officials and report directly to the Shah. The Shah himself exercised his own measures for keeping his ministers under control by fostering an atmosphere of rivalry and competitive surveillance. And since the Safavid society was meritocratic, and successions seldom were made on the basis of heritage, this meant that government offices constantly felt the pressure of being under surveillance and had to make sure they governed in the best interest of their leader, and not merely their own.
The Ottoman Empire adopted Persian bureaucratic traditions and culture.
The tsarist bureaucracy, alongside the military, the judiciary and the Russian Orthodox Church, played a major role in solidifying and maintaining the rule of the Tsars in the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721) and in the Russian Empire (1721–1917). In the 19th century, the forces of change brought on by the Industrial Revolution propelled many countries, especially in Europe, to significant social changes. However, due to the conservative nature of the Tsarist regime and its desire to maintain power and control, social change in Russia lagged behind that of Europe.
Russian-speakers referred to bureaucrats as chinovniki (чиновники) because of the rank or chin (чин) which they held.
In the British civil service, just as it was in China, entrance to the civil service was usually based on a general education in ancient classics, which similarly gave bureaucrats greater prestige. The Cambridge-Oxford ideal of the civil service was identical to the Confucian ideal of a general education in world affairs through humanism. Well into the 20th century, classics, literature, history and language remained heavily favoured in British civil service examinations.
Napoleonic France adopted this meritocracy system and soon saw a rapid and dramatic expansion of government, accompanied by the rise of the French civil service and its complex systems of bureaucracy. This phenomenon became known as "bureaumania". In the early 19th century, Napoleon attempted to reform the bureaucracies of France and other territories under his control by the imposition of the standardized Napoleonic Code. But paradoxically, that led to even further growth of the bureaucracy.
French civil service examinations adopted in the late 19th century were also heavily based on general cultural studies. These features have been likened to the earlier Chinese model.
Within capitalist systems, informal bureaucratic structures began to appear in the form of corporate power hierarchies, as detailed in mid-century works like The Organization Man and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc nations, a powerful class of bureaucratic administrators termed nomenklatura governed nearly all aspects of public life.
The 1980s brought a backlash against perceptions of "big government" and the associated bureaucracy. Politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan gained power by promising to eliminate government regulatory bureaucracies, which they saw as overbearing, and return economic production to a more purely capitalistic mode, which they saw as more efficient. In the business world, managers like Jack Welch gained fortune and renown by eliminating bureaucratic structures inside corporations. Still, in the modern world, most organized institutions rely on bureaucratic systems to manage information, process records, and administer complex systems, although the decline of paperwork and the widespread use of electronic databases is transforming the way bureaucracies function.
One of the predictions made by Trotsky in his 1936 work, The Revolution Betrayed, was that the USSR would come before a disjuncture: either the toppling of the Nomenklatura by means of a political revolution, or capitalist restoration led by the bureaucracy:
(1969). 9781349000340, Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN 9781349000340 In the period of 1925–1935, 67 percent of British civil service entrants consisted of such graduates. Like the Chinese model's consideration of personal values, the British model also took personal physique and character into account.
France
Like the British, the development of French bureaucracy was influenced by the Chinese system. (1996). 9780822974734, University of Pittsburgh Pre. ISBN 9780822974734 Under Louis XIV of France, the old nobility had neither power nor political influence, their only privilege being exemption from taxes. The dissatisfied noblemen complained about this "unnatural" state of affairs, and discovered similarities between absolute monarchy and bureaucratic despotism. With the translation of Confucian texts during the Enlightenment, the concept of a meritocracy reached intellectuals in the West, who saw it as an alternative to the traditional ancien regime of Europe.Schwarz (1996), p. 229 Western perception of China even in the 18th century admired the Chinese bureaucratic system as favourable over European governments for its seeming meritocracy; Voltaire claimed that the Chinese had "perfected moral science" and François Quesnay advocated an economic and political system modeled after that of the Chinese.Schwarz (1996), p. 232
The governments of China, Egypt, Peru and Empress Catherine II were regarded as models of Enlightened Despotism, admired by such figures as Diderot, D'Alembert and Voltaire.
Other industrialized nations
By the mid-19th century, bureaucratic forms of administration were firmly in place across the industrialized world. Thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx began to theorize about the economic functions and power-structures of bureaucracy in contemporary life. Max Weber was the first to endorse bureaucracy as a necessary feature of modernity, and by the late 19th century bureaucratic forms had begun their spread from government to other large-scale institutions.
Theories
Karl Marx
Karl Marx theorized about the role and function of bureaucracy in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, published in 1843. In Philosophy of Right, Hegel had supported the role of specialized officials in public administration, although he never used the term bureaucracy himself. By contrast, Marx was opposed to bureaucracy. Marx posited that while corporation and government bureaucracy seem to operate in opposition, in actuality they mutually rely on one another to exist. He wrote that "The Corporation is civil society's attempt to become state; but the bureaucracy is the state which has really made itself into civil society."
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky developed a critical theory of the emerging Soviet bureaucracy during the early years of the Soviet Union. According to political scientist Thomas M. Twiss, Trotsky associated bureaucratism with authoritarianism, excessive centralism and conservatism. Social theorist Martin Krygier had noted the impact of Trotsky's post-1923 writings in shaping receptive views of bureaucracy among later Marxists and many non-Marxists. Twiss argued that Trotsky's theory of Soviet bureaucracy was essential for a study of Soviet history and understanding the process of capitalist restoration in Russia and Eastern Europe. Political scientist, Baruch Knei-Paz argued Trotsky had, above all others, written "to show the historical and social roots of Stalinism" as a bureaucratic system.
John Stuart Mill
Writing in the early 1860s, political scientist John Stuart Mill theorized that successful monarchies were essentially bureaucracies, and found evidence of their existence in Imperial China, the Russian Empire, and the regimes of Europe. Mill referred to bureaucracy as a distinct form of government, separate from representative democracy. He believed bureaucracies had certain advantages, most importantly the accumulation of experience in those who actually conduct the affairs. Nevertheless, he believed this form of governance compared poorly to representative government, as it relied on appointment rather than direct election. Mill wrote that ultimately the bureaucracy stifles the mind, and that "a bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy."
Max Weber
The German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) was the first to study bureaucracy formally, and his works led to the popularization of this term. In his essay Bureaucracy,Weber, 2015, pp. 73–127 in Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society, edited and translated by Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters, New York: Palgrave MacMillan published in his magnum opus, Economy and Society in 1921, Weber described many ideal type forms of public administration, government, and company. His ideal-typical bureaucracy, whether public or private, is characterized by:
Weber listed several preconditions for the emergence of bureaucracy, including an increase in the amount of space and population being administered, an increase in the complexity of the administrative tasks being carried out, and the existence of a monetary economy requiring a more efficient administrative system. Development of communication and transportation technologies make more efficient administration possible, and democratization and rationalization of culture results in demands for equal treatment.
Although he was not necessarily an admirer of bureaucracy, Weber saw bureaucratization as the most efficient and rational way of organizing human activity and therefore as the key to rational-legal authority, indispensable to the modern world. Max Weber (2015) extract, books.google.ca; accessed 30 August 2015. Furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing rationalization of Western society. Weber also saw bureaucracy, however, as a threat to individual freedoms, and ongoing bureaucratization as leading to a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in a soulless "iron cage" of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control. Weber's critical study of the bureaucratization of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work. Many aspects of modern public administration are based on his work, and a classic, hierarchically organized civil service of the Continental type is called a "Weberian civil service" or a "Weberian bureaucracy". Social scientists debate whether Weberian bureaucracy contributes to economic growth.
Political scientist Jan Vogler challenges Max Weber's characterization of modern bureaucracies. (2025). 9780197618608 ISBN 9780197618608 Whereas Weber describes bureaucracies as entailing strict merit recruitment, clearly delineated career-paths for bureaucrats, the full separation of bureaucratic operations from politics, and mutually exclusive spheres of competence for government agencies, Vogler argues that the overwhelming majority of existing public administrative systems are not like this. Instead, modern bureaucracies require only "minimal competence" from candidates for bureaucratic offices, leaving space for biases in recruitment processes that give preferential treatment to members of specific social, economic, or ethnic groups, which are observed in many real-world bureaucratic systems. Bureaucracies are also not strictly separated from politics.
Jaques argues and presents evidence that for the bureaucracy to provide a valuable contribution to the open society some of the following conditions must be met:
Although numerous ideals associated with democracy, such as equality, participation, and individuality, are in stark contrast to those associated with modern bureaucracy, specifically hierarchy, specialization, and impersonality, political theorists did not recognize bureaucracy as a threat to democracy. Yet, democratic theorists still have not developed an adequate response to the challenge posed by bureaucratic power within democratic governance."Bureaucracy and Democracy." Restoring Responsibility: Ethics in Government, Business, and Healthcare, by Dennis F. Thompson, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, pp. 50–70.
One approach to addressing this issue rejects the idea that bureaucracy has any role at all in a true democracy. Theorists who adopt this perspective typically understand that they must demonstrate that bureaucracy does not necessarily occur in every contemporary society; only in those they perceive to be non-democratic. Thus, 19th century British writers frequently referred to bureaucracy as the "Continental nuisance," because their democracy was resistant to it, in their point of view.
According to Marx and other socialist thinkers, the most advanced bureaucracies were those in France and Germany. However, they argued that bureaucracy was a symptom of the bourgeois state and would vanish along with capitalism, which gave rise to the bourgeois state. Though clearly not the democracies Marx had in mind, socialist societies ended up being more bureaucratic than the governments they replaced. Similarly, after capitalist economies developed the administrative systems required to support their extensive welfare states, the idea that bureaucracy exclusively exists in socialist governments could scarcely be maintained.
See also
Further reading
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