Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy

TLDR

Bureaucracy is one of several overlapping administrative forms in contemporary democracies, and revisiting Weber’s analysis helps deepen understanding of public administration. The article challenges the view that bureaucracy is obsolete and argues that contemporary democracies are still debating the desirability of bureaucratic, market, and network forms of administration. The authors analyze bureaucracy as an institution, contextualize empirical studies, and consider its political and normative environment. The article does not claim bureaucracy solves all public administration challenges.

Abstract

This article questions the fashionable ideas that bureaucratic organization is an obsolescent, undesirable, and non-viable form of administration and that there is an inevitable and irreversible paradigmatic shift towards market- or network-organization. In contrast, the paper argues that contemporary democracies are involved in another round in a perennial debate and ideological struggle over what are desirable forms of administration and government: that is, a struggle over institutional identities and institutional balances. The argument is not that bureaucratic organization is a panacea and the answer to all challenges of public administration. Rather, bureaucratic organization is part of a repertoire of overlapping, supplementary, and competing forms coexisting in contemporary democracies, and so are market-organization and network-organization. Rediscovering Weber's analysis of bureaucratic organization, then, enriches our understanding of public administration. This is in particular true when we (a) include bureaucracy as an institution, not only an instrument; (b) look at the empirical studies in their time and context, not only at Weber's ideal-types and predictions; and (c) take into account the political and normative order bureaucracy is part of, not only the internal characteristics of "the bureau."