Webers Bureaucracy Theory and Civil Service System - Literature review Example

The balance between the public and the private is often very strenuous in a modern society. Weber’s theory of bureaucracy must not be understood negatively in light of the post-world war II world, but in the light of the danger it may pose to the civil system in the US, which by its impersonal laws in becoming bureaucratic in a way that leaves no space for the idiosyncratic individual or any place for uniqueness – only extreme rationalization, universal treatment and impersonalization of everything. The inclination towards bureaucratic system of functioning is generally to function more effectively and smoothly, which cannot identify anything other than what has already been defined and accepted by the system – anything outside it will not be accepted. However, if rules have to be customized and adjusted for every individual then bureaucracies become cumbersome and inefficient. However, the idea of a bureaucracy as proposed by Weber must first be delineated before plunging into the criticism of the civil service system and how it works as an impersonal body of law. Weber’s idea of bureaucracy is dependent on historicism, which depends on the evolution of bureaucracy from the historical experiences of other lesser-developed forms of social structure. For Weber, bureaucracies are the superior version of the social organization from traditional to more rationalistic and impersonal bases of social order. Before a society becomes bureaucratic, it must be sufficiently powerful in its economy, tax its people to raise more revenue, have increased connectivity or communication and coordination among its agencies. This again requires technical superiority and impartiality of all decision-making bodies. Therefore with the evolution of a society, bureaucracy and the bureaucratic order become a necessity or are inevitable. Bureaucracy brings about mass democracy, which again necessitates a capitalist state that treats its people as equal and where all economic and social differences do not exist. Bureaucracy and bureaucratization of the economy becomes an ideal form of capitalism, which Weber puts in his own words, saying, “Today capitalism sets the pace for bureaucratization of the economy.” 1 Bureaucracy cannot remain without certain key characteristics that must be an instrument to keep the order in place - a hierarchical order of authority, which will enable various distinctive level of work order by virtue its complexity and importance, all of which will be strictly governed by impersonal and thereby rational policies. All work will be well documented and each work will be filed or saved in a certain process-oriented manner. Each level of bureaucrat will be qualified through credentials and will be given specific training for their own discipline or office, and they will conduct their work in such a manner that it will allow no personal intervention of the underlying rules and policies of the system and therefore their responsibilities demand their full commitment. Ultimately, bureaucracy is indestructible2 and permanent as one system of bureaucracy will only get replaced by another and so on, while the country will always continue to operate as smoothly as before. Technical knowledge shrouded in secrecy or rather confidentiality is the key to the power of Bureaucracy. On the contrary the danger remains that it invites hierarchical influence from people or body of intelligence in power of that confidential knowledge to act in a manner that may breach its supposed neutrality. Thus a bureaucratic order may house its people like slaves who are not even aware of their slavery, that has also been rightly pointed out by theorists like Althusser or Foucault. Thus the state will become the all-knowing, invisible but influential element in everybody’s life that would control our future and keep us within our achievable limit. People would be able to work wherever the bureaucrats assigned them, and lose their power to move up the economic or social ladder. Weber stated the historical inevitability of such power coming to dominate mankind, and when combined with rationality and impersonal decision-making, it will totally strip variety or uniqueness and innovation from our life (Weber 1978) 3. Contemplating a future where the elements of bureaucracy permeate the civil system in the US, it may face similar problems that Weber had raised4. Firstly, Weber questions whether the liberty of occupational movement may be somehow salvaged or this momentum may be stopped? Blau5 further says that in bureaucratic organizations, playing by the rules can upset the balance and tended lead to over-accumulation of power in certain people’s hands. Thus power will always shift from general organizational leaders and nominal leaders who may not know how to play by the rules, to those who know how to do so. While questioning this, he also defines this aspect of power further by saying if somehow the power vested upon the bureaucrats who are higher up the order of hierarchy, may be curbed. Thus, comes the question of defining or limiting the power of the bureaucrats, so that they do not become despots. Ironically, democracy has a natural affinity towards bureaucracy and how can it eventually protect itself against it, as all democracies are inherently bureaucratic in nature. Weber still maintains that the efficiency of a bureaucratic body far excels that of any other traditional organizational body – the US civil system is bureaucratic in terms of its efficiency and impersonal law implementation. However, there is the danger of alienation of both the civil system and that of the individual as both becomes part of an objective methodical practiced relationship that remains to be executed or shared between the two parties. Thus, civil service system become prone to lesser creativity (take competitive exams for instance), humanity or even individuality and demand uniformity and total disintegration of personal traits – only broader and universal types exists – it comes to embrace conservatism as it sets certain standards or stereotype or sample standards for acceptable behavior. Also, the civil service system is divided into many independent body, where there is an emphasis on delegating authority to the sub-units and achieving the goal set for those sub-units, which creates problem for the overall goal of the organization or power system and there is total alienation within the system – everything becomes divided into objective units delegating and executing orders like automated organisms, lacking human emotions and controlling everything with reason. Thus, the specialized civil service system officials become part of the sub-units that exert high importance to the execution of the short-term or smaller sub-unit level goal, while the generalist officers become the large-scale authorities who dominate over the specialists. Selznick called this phenomenon the ‘suboptimization’ in bureaucracies, where the delegation of authority results in giving birth to organizational sub-units that pursue goals that ultimately become very different from the stated goals of the organization as a whole6. However, the ultimate idea of bureaucracy according to Weber is its neutrality and therefore it can be used by anyone who comes to possess the power. Therefore, if the ultimate aim of the civil service is to be neutral and impartial to its citizens, then by that definition it also is bureaucratic in some way so as to be able to maintain such a faceless yet influential characteristic – but how about the individual autonomy? If bureaucracy means legal dominion, then the non-interference of the civil service officers’ personal likes and dislikes seem welcoming to a citizen. However, the individual serving the system will always act on behalf of the system even when serving the citizen of the state, where lies the danger. That while the civil system relies on complete rationalization; it will never act against its own interest. Thereby, it will never accommodate any unique plea from the public, while it differs from its own interest. Thus, it may help to level social differences, but the central authority will always rule the civil service officers and they will be part of the hierarchy that will always be above the general citizen. Burns and Stalker7 explain that bureaucratic organizations that were highly efficient and are technologically advanced, were resistant to change or were incapable of encouraging change. Therefore a prevailing milieu of demarcated labor and hierarchy, rationalized or cold control, technical efficiency and predictability of all outcomes has embraced the civil service system where bureaucratic theory has permeated and this means that the organizational members favor or are made to favor self-continuity and will feel threatened by change or anything that do not add to the constancy of the system, which itself is bureaucratic in response. Thus the civil service will always remain at the danger of welcoming change or even embracing newer ideas, as innovation will mean an overall and massive change. In the realm of civil service system and ruling by impersonal law, Gouldner8 found that the culture of ‘govern according to rules’ that gives so much of credibility to the rational and efficient system in bureaucratic organizations, may unfortunately lead to certain consequence like the officers or members sticking or trying to follow the minimum possible rules so as to get past it. Therefore, there may be the risk of getting only a minimally acceptable consideration or attention span given to the citizen’s case by the members. Every case will be studied as poised against certain traits and may be treated without much original intellectual interference of an individual, but documented in a templetized pattern that do not allow further explanation or personal even critical opinion of a particular officer dealing with the case. The officers will keep on changing, while the case will be dealt only with impersonal detachment and objectification to its extreme level possible whose solution lies only if the answers have already been pre-determined in the bureaucratic database of law. Setting aside these general criticisms of bureaucracy that has permeated the civil service system, more specific aspect like poor decision-making, inefficiency, rigidity of impersonal law leading to failure in regional or unique contexts, low innovation, imagination or creativity, and other dysfunctions lead to processes that are highly inflexible and government information have to remain highly classified. This has made the civil service incapable and unresponsive to the particular needs of its citizens from time to time when such cases arise. Can the promotion of knowledge and sharing of information help government bureaucracies and its citizens from behaving like automatons and responding to external stimuli more efficiently and creatively. One instance where this happened was the report of the National Performance Review, by Vice-President Gore9 who suggested that government agencies should “re-engineer government activities, making full use of computer systems to revolutionize how we deliver services”. Inter-agency collaboration is also vital as it is the curse of bureaucracy to thus become more fragmented and become faceless as Marche and McNiven10 say that the way government handles accountability, it always is in the danger of encouraging the stove-piping of organizational procedures where “public administration has a general reputation of functional insularity” which can only increase the tendency to not integrate service provisioning across departments when responding to citizens’ needs (Marche and McNiven 2003). Innovations and more adjustability to newer systems or laws will always meet with resistance as it means that in a bureaucracy this calls for a new type of public servant, who is not motivated hierarchically and not constant in this career path that generally moves upward and not horizontally. Thus, whereas the impersonality of the civil service system upholds the modern concept of justice and fairness, it does not administer the practice of giving each individual an appropriate response – there is no personal involvement in the administration of the law – only involvement of efficiency. However, the civil service system also attempts to detail to take decision about an individual from a legal premise, which has been exhaustively detailed, and it has already by this action minimized the need for any personal decision-making. These impersonal laws also consist of centuries of compilation of laws formed from individual decision-making and thereby has been archived for future use and reference. However, impersonal laws or rules administered within the civil service system may cease to be bureaucratic when they become the very platform from where the individual starts to negotiate the case and begin personal bargaining with the system. Work Cited 1. The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, by Max Weber (New York: Verso, 1988), p. 365. 2. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); pp 956-57, 987 3. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); pp 225 4. Weber, “Parliament and Government in Germany,” p. 159. 5. Blau, P. Bureaucracy in Modern Society Random House, New York, 1956. 6. Selznick, P. TVA and the Grass Roots University of California Press, Berkeley, 1949. 7. Burns, T., and Stalker, G.M. The Management of Innovation, London, 1961. 8. Gouldner, A.W. Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy Free Press of Glencoe, Glencoe, Ill, 1954. 9. Gore, A. From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that works better and costs less: Reengineering through Information Technology, Accompanying Report of the National Performance Review, 1993. 10. Marche, S., and McNiven, J. "E-government and egovernance: the future isnt what it used to be," Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences (20:1) 2003, pp 74-86. Read More