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Bureaucracy is a system of administration characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and hierarchy of authority. Bureaucracies are most commonly associated with governments, but can exist within corporations, universities, hospitals, labor unions or any other large institution. Organized record-keeping is central to the management of a bureaucracy, and the term originally referred to the "bureaus" in which these files were kept.

Since its inception, the word "bureaucracy" has had negative connotations. Bureaucracies are criticized for their complexity, their inefficiency, and their inflexibility. The dehumanizing effects of excessive bureaucracy were a major theme in the work of Franz Kafka, and were central to his masterpiece The Trial. The elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy is a key concept in modern managerial theory, and has been a central issue in numerous political campaigns.

Others have defended the existence of bureaucracies. The sociologist Max Weber argued that bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which human activity can be organized, and that bureaucracies were necessary to eliminate favoritism and individual privilege.

Word Origin

The term "bureaucracy" is French in origin, and combines the French word "bureau" – desk or office – with the Greek word κράτος kratos – rule or political power. It was coined sometime in the mid-1700s by the French economist Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay, and was a satirical perjorative from the outset. Gournay never wrote the term down, but was later quoted at length in a letter from a contemporary:

The late M. de Gournay...sometimes used to say: "We have an illness in France which bids fair to play havoc with us; this illness is called bureaumania." Sometimes he used to invent a fourth or fifth form of government under the heading of "bureaucracy."

— Baron von Grimm

The first known English-language use was in 1818.

History

Although the term "bureaucracy" was not coined until the mid-1700s, the idea of rule-bound administrative systems is much older. The development of writing (ca. 3500 BCE) and the use of documents was critical to the administration of this system, and the first definitive emergence of bureaucracy is in ancient Sumer, where an emergent class of scribes administered the harvest and allocated its spoils. Ancient Egypt also had a hereditary class of scribes that administered the civil service bureaucracy. Much of what is known today of these cultures comes from the writing of the scribes.

Ancient Rome was administered by a hierarchy of regional proconsuls and their deputies. The reforms of Diocletian doubled the number of administrative districts and led to a large-scale expansion in Roman bureaucracy. In one of the earliest-recorded criticisms of bureaucracy, the early Christian author Lactantius claimed that Diocletian's actions had led to widespread economic stagnation, and that there were now more men using tax money than paying it. After the Empire split, the Byzantine Empire became notorious for its inscrutable bureaucracy, and the term "byzantine" came to refer to highly-complicated bureaucratic structures.

In Ancient China, the scholar Confucius had established a complex system of rigorous procedures governing relationships in family, religion and politics. Confucius sought to construct an organized state free from corruption. Throughout several successive Chinese dynasties, Confucius' mandates were interpreted and administered by a class of Scholar-bureaucrats who reached their station through a series of rigorous standardized examinations. Called "Mandarins" by the visiting Europeans, this class was responsible for the record-keeping and administration of the Chinese bureaucratic state. Chinese system was theoretically the first meritocratic civil service, although in practice the system could be inefficient and corrupt.

In 18th-century France, the role and function of government expanded dramatically. The rise of the French civil service led to "bureaumania," and the development of the complex systems of bureaucracy which de Gournay criticized. 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, this led to even further growth of the bureaucracy.

By the early 19th century, bureaucratic forms of administration were firmly in place across continental Europe, North America and much of Asia. 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 the bureaucracy, and by the late 19th century bureaucratic forms had begun their spread from government to other large-scale institutions.

In the modern era, practically all organized institutions rely on bureaucracy to process records and administer complex systems of rules.

Theories of Bureaucracy

Writing in the late 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 believed bureaucracies had certain advantages, most importantly the accumulation of experience in those who actually conduct the affairs. Nevertheless, he thought bureaucracy as a 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."

Weberian bureaucracy has its origin in the works by Max Weber (1864-1920), a notable German sociologist, political economist, and administrative scholar who contributed to the study of bureaucracy and administrative discourses and literatures during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Weber essentially argues that bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and (formally) rational way in which human activity can be organized, and that it is indispensable to the modern world. Weber also feels that bureaucracy represents a threat to humanity, and that entrepreneurs and politicians may constitute a counter-balance to its power.

Max Weber belongs to the Scientific School of Thought, who discussed such topics as specialization of job-scope, merit system, uniform principles, structure and hierarchy. His contemporaries include Frederick Taylor (1856-1915), Henri Fayol (1841-1925), Elton Mayo (1880-1949), and later scholars, such as Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001), Dwight Waldo (1913-2000), and others.

Weber described many ideal types of public administration and government in his magnum opus Economy and Society (1922). His critical study of the bureaucratisation of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work. It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularization of this term. Many aspects of modern public administration go back to him, and a classic, hierarchically organized civil service of the Continental type is called "Weberian civil service". As the most efficient and rational way of organizing, bureaucratization for Weber was the key part of the rational-legal authority, and furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing rationalization of the Western society.

Weber listed several precondititions for the emergence of bureaucracy. The growth in space and population being administered, the growth in complexity of the administrative tasks being carried out, and the existence of a monetary economy requires a more efficient administrative system. Development of communication and transportation technologies makes more efficient administration possible but also in popular demand, and democratization and rationalization of culture resulted in demands that the new system treats everybody equally.

Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterized by hierarchical organization, delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, action taken on the basis of and recorded in written rules, bureaucratic officials need expert training, rules are implemented by neutral officials, career advancement depends on technical qualifications judged by organization, not individuals.

The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organization

— Max Weber

While recognizing bureaucracy as the most efficient form of organization, and even indispensable for the modern state, Weber also saw it as a threat to individual freedoms, and the ongoing bureaucratization as leading to a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in the aforementioned "iron cage" of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control. In order to counteract bureaucrats, the system needs entrepreneurs and politicians.

Bureaucracy in culture

Bureaucracy emphasizes procedure at the expense of the individual, and the attendant feelings of alienation have generated a large body of literature. Additionally the often absurd outcomes of bureaucratic process are a rich target for satire.

Franz Kafka is famous for his investigation of the dehumanizing effects of bureaucracy, most notably in his work The Trial (original titled Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help).) The term Kafkaesque later became synonymous with particularly bleak bureaucratic experiences.

Other writers have taken a comic approach to bureaucracy. Charles Dickens' Bleak House portrays the absurdity of Chancery Court in 19th-century Britain, where probate battles take decades and frequently overwhelm the entire value of the estate with legal bills. Joseph Heller famously satirized military bureaucracy in Catch-22, where an emphasis on paperwork and pleasing the chain of command subsumes the humanity of the airmen.

More recently, popular works like the movie Office Space and the comic strip Dilbert portray futile struggles against corporate bureaucracy.

See also

• Adhocracy – The opposite of bureaucracy
• Bureaucrat
• Max Weber
• Michel Crozier
• Public administration
• Rationalization
• Red tape
• State (polity)
• Technocracy – An alternative to bureaucracy and adhocracy

References

1. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bureaucracy
2. http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/TheoryWeb/readings/WeberBurform.html
3. http://books.google.com/books?id=3iSkH1Qf6xsC&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142
4. http://books.google.com/books?id=3iSkH1Qf6xsC&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142
5. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1289575?uid=3739832&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101256148001
6. http://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2007/12/the-lectern-jack-welch-says-death-to-bureaucracy.aspx
7. http://www.library.eiu.edu/ersvdocs/4367.pdf
8. http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/TheoryWeb/readings/WeberBurform.html
9. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucracy
10. http://books.google.com/books?id=3iSkH1Qf6xsC&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142
11. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucracy
12. http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/50501/5.htm
13. http://people.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/lactant/lactpers.html#VII
14. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/byzantine
15. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/confucius/
16. http://books.google.com/books?id=3iSkH1Qf6xsC&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142
17. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5669/pg5669.txt
18. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5669/pg5669.txt
19. The Max Weber Dictionary - http://books.google.ca/books?id=_c3Mcnh8hCgC&pg=PA19&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
20. Jeong Chun Hai @Ibrahim. (2007). Fundamental of Development Administration. Selangor: Scholar Press. ISBN 978-967-5-04508-0
21. ^ Richard Swedberg; Ola Agevall (2005). The Max Weber dictionary: key words and central concepts. Stanford University Press. pp. 18–21. ISBN 978-0-8047-5095-0. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
22. ^ George Ritzer (29 September 2009). Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics. McGraw-Hill. pp. 38–42. ISBN 978-0-07-340438-7. Retrieved 22 March 2011.
23. Marshall Sashkin; Molly G. Sashkin (28 January 2003). Leadership that matters: the critical factors for making a difference in people's lives and organizations' success. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-57675-193-0. Retrieved 22 March 2011.
24. ^ Liesbet Hooghe (2001). The European Commission and the integration of Europe: images of governance. Cambridge University Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-521-00143-4. Retrieved 23 March 2011. Cite error: The named reference "Hooghe2001" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
25. ^ Kenneth Allan; Kenneth D. Allan (2 November 2005). Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory: Seeing the Social Worl. Pine Forge Press. pp. 172–176. ISBN ]. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
26. George Ritzer, Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption, Pine Forge Press, 2004, ISBN 0-7619-8819-X, Google Print, p.55

Further reading

• Albrow, Martin. Bureaucracy. London: Macmillan, 1970.
• On Karl Marx: Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Volume 1: State and Bureaucracy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979.
• Marx comments on the state bureaucracy in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and Engels discusses the origins of the state in Origins of the Family.
• Ernest Mandel, Power and Money: A Marxist Theory of Bureaucracy. London: Verso, 1992.
• On Weber: Watson, Tony J. (1980). Sociology, Work and Industry. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-32165-4. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Neil Garston (ed.), Bureaucracy: Three Paradigms. Boston: Kluwer, 1993.
• Chowdhury, Faizul Latif (2006), Corrupt Bureaucracy and Privatization of Tax Enforcement. Dhaka: Pathak Samabesh, ISBN 984-8120-62-9.
• Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy, Yale University Press, 1962. Liberty Fund (2007), ISBN 978-0-86597-663-4
• Weber, Max. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1947.
• Wilson, James Q. (1989). Bureaucracy. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-00785--6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

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