BUREAUCRACY

Bureaucracy’
1. Entire government office > or
known as bureau > permanent
office deliver public function >
regardless of changes of
political leaders
2. Entire public officers > persons
who carry out the day to day
administration of the state.

Hence, bureaucracy could be known

with various names; civil service,
public servants, public service, civil
servants, government service,
government servants, officials of
government, officials, permanent
executive and non-political
executive
 • Bureaucracy is the collective organizational, procedures,
protocols, and set of regulations in place to manage activity,
usually in large organizations and government.

• a concept in sociology and

political science referring to the
way that the administrative
execution and enforcement of
legal rules are socially organized.
 • constitutes the permanent and

Bureaucracy
professional part of the executive
organ of government.
• usually described as the non-political
or politically neutral, permanent,
and professionally trained civil
service.
• the administration of the state
according to the policies and laws of
the government political executive.
• qualities and efficiency of
bureaucracy depends the quality and
efficiency of the state administration,
including leadership and control of
the Political Executive.
BUREAUCRACY

• The administrative system of a country or its national bureaucracy

refers to agencies, bureaus, units, organizations, departments,
ministries, or appointed committees of the public sector.
• In large governments, these units employ thousands and,
collectively, millions of public employees.
• They initiate, influence, interpret, and implement the authoritative
policies and laws of the state and its political subunits.
BUREAUCRACY

• A close examination of the national bureaucracy also helps to bring

out and to define crucial relations with the political order.
• Interdependence of the administrative and the political systems
largely shapes the structure and defines the formal functions of
bureaucracy.
• Studies of comparative national bureaucracy and comparative
politics converge or overlap on various aspects.
BUREAUCRACY

• A major purpose of CPA is to improve understanding of national

administrative systems across countries by studying institutions that
are central to governance and, at the same time, constitute suitable
units for comparative research.
• The focus, is international rather than confined to a select few
systems.
BUREAUCRACY

• Term bureaucracy is used to denote national administration,

as in the classic conceptions, and subsequent changes and
adaptations that followed.
• A country’s bureaucracy is its national administrative system
in its present form and function.
• What a bureaucracy does in a particular country, and how it
is doing it, are not assumptions to be made but empirical
questions to be answered through empirical investigation
and research
 CLASSIC BUREAUCRATIC MODEL

MAX WEBER (1864 –1920)

• A formal, hierarchical organization with many levels in which tasks,

responsibilities, and authority are delegated among individuals, offices, or
departments, held together by a central administration.
MAX WEBER
1. Fixed division of labor (official jurisdictional areas are
generally ordered by rules and laws)
2. Hierarchy of offices (firmly ordered system of superior-
subordinate authority)
3. Rational-legal authority
4. Creation of rules to govern performance (written
records and documents (files)
5. Separation of personal from official property and rights
6. Selection based on qualifications
7. Clear career paths (full working capacity)
Fixed division of labor
• areas are clearly specified, and each
area has a specific set of official
duties and rights
• cannot be changed at the whim of
the leader
• This division of labor should minimize
arbitrary assignments of duties
Hierarchy of offices
• should be controlled by a
higher ranking office.
• lower offices should
maintain a right to appeal
decisions made higher in
the hierarchy.
• replace a more traditional
system (power and
authority relations are
more diffuse, and not
based on a clear
hierarchical order. )
Rational-legal authority Creation of rules to govern performance
• "legality" of formal rules and • Rules should be specified to govern
hierarchies, and in the right of official decisions and actions.
those elevated in the hierarchy to • This should displace old systems
posses authority and issue
commands.
• Authority is given to officials based
on their skills, position and
authority placed formally in each
position.
• This should supplant earlier types
administrative systems, where
authority was legitimized based on
other, and more individual, aspects
of authority like wealth, position,
ownership, heritage etc.
Separation of personal from official
property and rights
• Personal property should be
separated from official property.
Selection based on qualifications
• Officials are recruited based on
qualifications, and are appointed,
not elected, to the office.
• People are compensated with a
salary, and are not compensated
with benefices such as rights to
land, power etc.
 Clear career paths

• Employment in the organizations should

be seen as a career for officials.
• An official is a full-time employee, and
anticipates a lifelong career.
• After an introduction period, the
employee is given tenure, which protects
the employee from arbitrary dismissal.
BUREAUCRACY

• The core elements of the model are specialization, hierarchy of

authority, impersonality, system of rules, written records, and
recruitment process based on merit (education, training, and skills).
• Weber’s emphasis on generalizable properties of bureaucracy tends
to challenge the claim that Western civilization and systems are
distinct, thus superior.
BUREAUCRACY

• Similarities among bureaucratic systems in the West and

between these and other earlier and contemporary cultures
• Weber’s drive to make his theory of bureaucratic universal
dictated that he play down the cultural differences while
emphasizing the process, its rationality, and the need for its
institutionalization.
• The authority system dictates fundamental properties of the
administrative system.
• Weber identified three types of authority system
 three types of authority system

• 1) The legal-rational system of authority: bureaucracy operates within

• carefully prescribed rules and processes.
• A main feature of this system is that obedience is based on legal and impersonal
order.
• Offices, rather than persons, are the basis of authority.
• These offices are organized in a hierarchy, occupied by staff paid
• on a scale tied to their positions in this hierarchy, and according to their levels of
competence and expert knowledge.
• “The persons who exercise the power of command are typically superiors who are
appointed or elected by legally sanctioned
• procedures and are themselves oriented toward the maintenance of the legal order.
The persons subject to the commands are legal equals who obey ‘the law’ rather than
the persons implementing it” (Bendix 1962: 294).
three types of authority system

• 2) The traditional authority system, bases legitimacy on the

“sanctity of order.”
• Obedience is not to enacted rules, but to persons, who govern by
tradition and inherited status.
• “The persons subject to the command of the master are followers or
subjects in the literal sense—they obey out of personal loyalty to the
master or a pious regard for his time-honored status” (Bendix 1962:
295).
three types of authority system

• The administrative staff is usually recruited from among the

favorites of the chief and from those tied to him by purely
personal loyalties.
• Kinship, wealth, and family origin play an important role in
the selection of the staff.
• Consequently, in contrast to the legal rational model, the
staff of traditional administrative systems lacks defined
spheres of competence, rational ordering of offices, and
technical training as a regular requirement
three types of authority system

• 3) The charismatic authority system, is legitimized by the

superhuman qualities of the leader in power.
• Followers do not elect this leader; their duty is to recognize
the charisma and respond to it.
• The administrative staff consists of followers and disciples
chosen not in accordance with rules but, mainly, on the
basis of political loyalties.
• To be more than transitory, a system built on the charisma
of its leader has to routinize the line of succession (Diamant
1962).
 Role of bureaucracy
• part of modern government > serves as the principal tool in planning and
implementation of public policies and in the delivery of vital services to the people
• monitoring the overall policy implementation
• ensures coordination with other central ministries, federal agencies (i.e. national
line agencies) ie Economic Planning Unit
• significant role in the country’s development process
• Responsive to ruling party: 2 opinions
• To be partisan (responsive) to ruling politicians - Bureaucrats are servants to
ruling politicians and are expected to further the interest of the politicians
• To be neutral > to give equal service to whoever hold the political power of the
state
• respond to public demands promptly
• Accountable to the public - deliver crucial services such as government
administration, judicial, public security, national defence, health and education
BUREAUCRACY - LIMITATIONS &CRITICS
• Overspecialization
• Rigidity of procedures
• A phenomenon of group
thinking
• Disregard for dissenting
opinions due to extensive
rules and procedures
• Less use of common sense
• Subject to multiple political
and moral expectations
 CRITICISMS

• Criticisms may be called the colloquial view, which equates bureaucracy

with inefficiency, red tape, lengthy forms, lust for power, domination,
incompetence, and a host of similar scathing characterizations (Stillman
1998: 4; Goodsell 1994).
• Such images are often nurtured in popular stories, prejudicial journalistic
writings, and conservative political views that continually portray
bureaucracy as a pathological problem of modern society.
• Bureaucracy is a convenient scapegoat, which can be blamed with
impunity by political leaders for public policy shortcomings and failures
 CRITICISMS

• The significant concerns that dominated discussions on the subject of

bureaucratic defects and pathologies may be divided into four major
clusters of issues:
• 1. The power concern
• 2. Political development and bureaucratic influence
• 3. Change and innovation
• 4. The “ideal-type” concept
The power concern

• Bureaucracy is a powerful institution of modern society.

• Its performance can drastically assist or hinder the state’s capacity for effective
governance.
• Weber repeatedly indicated that his model is an “ideal type” that does not exist
in a pure form but as a mixture of various characteristics.
• In practice, however, a principal basis of this power is expertise, elevated by
good training and superior technical skills of those who join the bureaucracy
(Gerth and Mills 1946: 228). A
• high degree of specialization creates a need for coordination at a higher level of
authority as well as through processes of work.
• The purpose of such structural articulation is to reach higher efficiency of
performance.
• But the combination of the bureaucratic processes often generates excessive
power in the hands of such a disciplined institution.
Political development and bureaucratic influence
• Effective political systems and effective administrative systems often
coexist in mutually reinforcing capacities rather than in a zero sum game
of competition.
• The primacy of political control over administration is not in doubt,
irrespective of the level of effectiveness in exercising it.
• Evidence from the Arab states, for example, indicates that political
leaders have kept very tight rein on all powers of the state, particularly
those related to public funds and military control.
• In reality, the political features of the state allowed the administrative
process many of its current attributes: highly centralized, beset by
nepotism and political patronage, and burdened by its own weight of
swelled ranks of poorly trained public employees (Jreisat 1997: 227).
Political development and bureaucratic
influence
• Under these political forms and processes, professional
management with neutral competence is hard to sustain.
• Similarly, programs of administrative reform falter primarily for lack
of political support and incongruities with political regime values.
• Thus, the capacity for action by both of the political and the
administrative systems is weakened as is common in many
developing countries
Political development and bureaucratic
influence
• The challenge for comparative research, then, is to define links with the
political order that really matter, regardless whether such links
strengthen or hinder opportunities for administrative reform.
• Political authority and political values not only determine the
boundaries of administrative change but also shape bureaucratic
attitudes in the conduct of state affairs, particularly towards citizens.
• For too long, consultants and researchers on reform have focused on
issues of centralization, technical skills, civil service procedures, and
bureaucratic behavior.
• While these are important elements of the administrative capacity
building of any system, they must not overshadow crucial
considerations such as the form and the behavior of the political
regime
Political development and bureaucratic
influence
• In developing countries, administrative change questions are linked to
attitudes of the political leaders.
• To what limit does the political authority support reform?
• What elements of the bureaucracy may be changed?
• How much citizens’ participation is allowed in public decision making,
and how different opinions are dealt with?
• Who is to benefit by the change?
• Beyond studying regime types, it is essential to define under what
conditions regime’s support is possible.
• If not, the alternative could be a waste of huge budgets and extensive
efforts to a change that is incompatible with existing political
authority, hence with little chance of implementation
Change and innovation

• Critics assume that bureaucracy as a systems is rigid, unable

to change, and cannot be innovative.
• Conventional wisdom has it that bureaucracy is conformist,
seeks standardization and routinization of work,  causes
inflexibility and resistance to change in managing public
organizations.
• Even training in administrative skills, considered appropriate
under most conditions, may result in serious
maladjustments such as greater standardization and
rigidities in the application of newly acquired skills.
• In a bureaucratic system, change must be universalistic,
encompassing the entire organization (Crozier, 1964)
• In fact, change may even lead to further centralization and
further safeguarding of impersonality of the system.
• Because of the necessary long delays, because of the
amplitude of the scope it must attain, and because of the
resistance it must overcome, change in bureaucratic
organizations is a deeply felt crisis (Crozier 1964: 196)
• In the industrial countries, however, responses to bureaucratic rigidities,
over-conformance to rules and regulations, and unsatisfactory
responsiveness to community needs and to policy objectives, took
different shapes and offered different alternatives:
• 1) Promises of a free form of organizational setting and a relativist
entrepreneurial leadership seem to offer options other than the known
bureaucratic hierarchical structure.
• The purge of the classic bureaucratic edifice that dominating Total Quality
Management (TQM), reinvention, and reengineering are some of the examples
suggested as substitutes or alternatives to the bureaucratic model.
• Some of these crucial attributes are its commitment to customer-driven quality,
employee participation in quality improvement, commitment to continuous
improvement and to actions based on facts and analysis (Berman 1997: 282).
• A general assumption in a contemporary management literature is that the
attributed rigidity, and other negative characteristics of the bureaucratic model,
justify or require abandonment of the model and expediting search for
discovery of a better alternative.
• 2) Political motives foster continual search by political leaders to escape from the
responsibility for budget deficits, incurring huge public debts, and retreating on the
front of social welfare policies.
• These political attitudes find bureaucracy an irresistible target for redirecting
citizens’ dissatisfaction or rationalizing failures of their policies.
• Big government is the explanation for this camp, even when the ratio of public
employees to citizens is in decline.
• Increasing poverty, rising crime levels, and deteriorating social conditions are
connected to bureaucratic mismanagement or poor administrative performance.
• Rarely, we encounter political leaders who would consider their policies and their
lack of support to professional public management as a contributing factor to
governance problems.
• When faced with evidence, politicians have perfected methods of ducking issues
altogether.
The “ideal-type” concept

• Ideal or perfect bureaucracy is never achieved.

• Yet, ideal-type theoretical construct serves useful analytical
purposes such as guiding research, specifying relationships,
and clarifying basic characteristics.
• The critics contend that idealizing a condition defies testing
or verification in a systematic research and, therefore,
cannot be elevated to the standing of a scientific knowledge.
• This is a major criticism of the classic bureaucratic model
The “ideal-type” concept

• In doing their jobs, administrators will always have a measure of

discretionary power that allows a varying latitude in modifying the form
and the process necessary to reach their objectives.
• This discretion or latitude may be narrowly or broadly defined,
depending on many administrative and contextual factors.
• Administrative literature, (Chester Barnard’s The Functions of the
Executive), has accepted the idea of an informal organization often
coexisting along with the formal one.
• To maintain its claims of efficiency, the bureaucratic model allows for
variation and flexibility in application.
• Indeed, informal relations and unofficial practices often contribute to
efficient operations (Blau and Meyer 1971: 26).
The “ideal-type” concept

• The negative perspectives seem to accumulate the

dysfunctions and unanticipated consequences of the
Weberian formulation of bureaucracy
• This is like a case of mistaken identity where a growing
distrust of governance for failure and for corruption of
politics has been misdirected to blame bureaucracy and
civil service.
• “Diminished trust and confidence in government brought
with it an onslaught of attacks on civil servants that called
into question the motivations of civil servants and the
control systems that direct them” (Perry and Hondeghem
2008: 2).
RATIONALE FACTORS FOCUSING ON
BUREAUCRACY IN CPA
• 1)Bureaucracy provides a framework that focuses on the administrative
system in a realistic way.
• It is more practical to observe, investigate, and evaluate bureaucratic
performance than to attempt managing grand abstract models, seeking to
incorporate prominent visions and characterizations with low operational
applicability.
• This is a contrast to critics’ views that assume all comparative public
administration studies are preoccupied with abstract grand modeling,
which would squeeze the universe to fit its mold.
• Incidentally, the choice of the national bureaucracy as the unit of analysis is
not a determination of the ultimate merit but a choice of the most
appropriate level of analysis for the CPA.
RATIONALE FACTORS FOCUSING ON
BUREAUCRACY IN CPA
• 2. Bureaucracy is a prevalent institution, operating in almost all
countries, albeit with different competencies and accomplishments.
• It is hard to imagine governance of the state without the institution of
bureaucracy that brings necessary insights and knowledge not only for
delivery of public services, but also for the greater domain of policy
making and policy implementation.
• Thus, more information is usually available on bureaucracy in different
contexts because of institutional visibility, concrete structures and
actions, and having identifiable membership, definable objectives, and
measurable levels of performance (Heady 2001).
RATIONALE FACTORS FOCUSING ON
BUREAUCRACY IN CPA
• 3) To be sure, bureaucracy may be a small or a large institution,
depending on the size of the country and the type of government.
• But bureaucracy has always been a manageable unit for study and
analysis.
• Utilizing bureaucracy as the unit of analysis, therefore, means
improved ability to generate middle-range hypotheses for testing
within one or more countries.
RATIONALE FACTORS FOCUSING
ON BUREAUCRACY IN CPA
• National bureaucracy operates within a web of relations and shares in the
stewardship for public policy.
• But bureaucracy is only one part of governance, an inclusive concept that
involves many structures and functions. In complex processes of interactions,
each of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers maintains autonomy but
also shares responsibilities and powers.
• Thus, the functioning of national bureaucracy has to be viewed in a broader
understanding of governance.
• A balanced consideration of all institutions and processes of decision making and
their consequences is essential for effective conduct of comparative analysis.
• As the classic model of bureaucracy stipulates, the proper functioning of
bureaucracy is not separate from its legal-rational political context or in
today’s terms a civil society with supremacy of the law.
CONCLUSION

• Bureaucracy is a key institution of national as well as local governance.

• Today’s bureaucracy, however, has largely been customized and
profoundly adapted to fit the conditions of its context.
• Also, within the national bureaucracy (administration), each
organization is distinct in its practices and proficiency.
• Much advancement in knowledge of human behavior over the past
several decades has resulted in modifications of Weber’s classic
formulations.
• The impact of change in managerial concepts and practices as a result of
new approaches such as Human Relations School, Team Building, and
Total Quality Management has been profoundly manifested.