Impact of Weber on Public Administration - Bureaucracy - Research Paper Example

As governments can be generally characterized to have the four characteristics that both Weber and Henslin had emphasized, it can be argued that the influence of Weber on public administration is clear. The 1947 work of Weber in Henslin’s bibliography was the book, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, first published in 1913 but republished in 1947.

According to Kenneth Allan, Weber pointed out in 1968 that there are six preconditions for bureaucracy: the preconditions involve increases in size and space of the population being organized, the complexity of tasks, use of markets and money economy, communication and transportation technologies, use of mass democracy, and volume of complicated and rationalized culture. Allan emphasized that there has been a “historical shift” to bureaucratic organizations consistent with Weberian prescriptions, implying that this is also the case for public administration. Allan also quoted Weber to have said in 1968 that the “pervasive presence of bureaucratic organization has forced people to rationally control life” as well as become specialists.

The views of Max Weber on bureaucracy and the public in the 21st century continue to be influential such that in June 2010, the Quality of Government Institute based in the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, designed a cross-national study on public administration based on the theories of Max Weber. The University of Gothenburg study measured the public administration performance of 58 countries “according to their degree of Weberianism.” In the study, Dahlstrom et al. concluded that in the 58 countries included in their study sample, “institutional designers and policymakers interested in meritocratic bureaucracies tend to follow the standard view of Weberianism.”

In a 34-page work on what the author described as a “comprehensive outline” of Weber’s work on administration” and to advocate “Weberian Public Administration,” Eugenie Samier pointed out that Weber’s contributions to public administration are in three dimensions: history, values, and the use of authority or the use of a combination of three forms of authority. Read More