Abstract
The idea of bureaucracy arose out of a concern for the proper place of the official in modern government. We have seen, in particular, how the nineteenth-century writers contrasted bureaucracy with democracy. They discerned numerous ways in which the use and usages of public officials subverted democratic values. In other words, the phenomena which were held to constitute bureaucracy were defined as significant topics for analysis by their relation to the values of democracy, and, because of their conflict with those values, were held to be problems requiring solution. Similarly, the remedies which were suggested for bureaucracy were designed to realize the very values which defined the nature of the disease. It follows that as the values of democracy were reformulated so the concept of bureaucracy was recast.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
“Critics of ‘Bureaucracy’”, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 60, 1945, p. 105.
The whole of the preceding discussion owes much to Max Weber’s exposition of the relation between facts and values in social science, which is to be found in his essays published as The Methodology of the Social Sciences, translated and edited by E. A. Shils and H.A. Finch, 1949.
See J. Djordeyic, “Local Self-Government in Yugoslavia”, American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 12, 1953.
Thus Lasswell and Kaplan’s typology of types of rule is formulated in neutral terms and excludes the category of democracy, preferring ‘demosocracy’. See Power and Society, p. 207.
A useful account of delegated legislation in Britain is contained in G. A. Campbell’s, The Civil Service in Britain, 1955, pp. 102–24.
J. M. Beck, op. cit., p. 23.
See C. K. Allen, Bureaucracy Triumphant, 1931; G. W. Keeton, The Passing of Parliament, 1952; L. Sullivan, The Dead Hand of Bureaucracy, 1940, and Bureaucracy Runs Amuck, 1944, in which the author finds the British Fabian socialists influencing the American Office of Price Administration, p. 176.
See Herman Finer, “Administrative Responsibility in Democratic Government”, Public Administration Review, Vol. 1, 1941.
C. J. Friedrich, “Public Policy and the Nature of Administrative Responsibility”, in Public Policy, edited by C. J. Friedrich and E. S. Mason, 1940. Both this essay and the one by Herman Finer are reprinted in Bureaucratic Power in National Politics, edited by F. E. Rourke, 1965.
As does W. W. Boyer, Bureaucracy on Trial: Policy Making by Government Agencies, 1964, p. 169.
A useful analysis of the Friedrich-Finer dispute is R. F. Bunn’s “Notes on the Control and Responsibility of the Bureaucrat”, South Western Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 41, 1961.
For an example of emphasis being placed on professionalism in civil services see P. Monypenny, “Professional Organizations and Bureaucratic Government”, South Western Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 32, 1952. For stress on public contact see F. Morstein Marx, “Bureaucracy and Consultation”, Review of Politics, Vol. 1, 1939.
J. D. Kingsley, op. cit., p. 269.
See Lord Attlee, “Civil Servants, Ministers, Parliament and the Public”, in W. A. Robson, ed., The Civil Service in Britain and France, 1956.
G. Sjöberg, R. A. Brymer and B. Farris, “Bureaucracy and the Lower Class”, Sociology and Social Research, Vol. 50, 1966.
For a general account of the activities of administrators designed to influence the political process see P. Woll, American Bureaucracy, 1963. For a journalist’s account of a British case see S. Brittan, The Treasury under the Tories, 1951–64, 1964. However, it should be noted that C. Wright Mills does not regard the American professional administrator as part of the power élite, and believes that party patronage has prevented the rise of an independent federal administration. See The Power Elite, 1956, Galaxy edn, 1959, pp. 237–41.
F. E. Rourke, “Secrecy in American Bureaucracy”, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 72, 1957; “Bureaucracy and Public Opinion” in Bureaucratic Power in National Politics, edited by F. E. Rourke, 1965.
See C. K. Allen, Bureaucracy Triumphant, 1931; A. Diamant, “French Council of State”, Journal of Politics, Vol. 13, 1951.
Both Harold Laski, Parliamentary Government in England, 1938, p. 151, and Sir Ivor Jennings, The British Constitution, 1941, pp. 131–4 regard the parliamentary question as effective in securing control throughout the civil service hierarchy. For a defence of congressional control of the American federal service see C. E. Gilbert and M. M. Kampelman, “Legislative Control of the Bureaucracy”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 292, 1954.
W. W. Boyer, op. cit., chapter 7, “Assuring Public Responsibility”.
Herman Finer, in F. E. Rourke, op. cit., p. 176.
Public Administration and the Public Interest, 1936, p. 22.
“Staff and Management Controls”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 292, 1954.
R. Bendix, Higher Civil Servants in American Society, 1949, sets out to show that there can be no such thing as neutral executors of legislative enactments.
C. J Friedrich and T. Cole, op. cit., p. 88.
C. J. Friedrich, “Public Policy and the Nature of Administrative Responsibility”, op. cit.
See N. E. Long, “Bureaucracy and Constitutionalism”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 46, 1952, and “Public Policy and Administration: the Goals of Rationality and Responsibility”, Public Administration Review, Vol. 14, 1954.
Decentralization of Authority in a Bureaucracy, 1961, p. 161.
For an examination of the possibility of professional isolation from the community see L. Urwick, “Bureaucracy and Democracy”, Public Administration, Vol. 14, 1936.
For instance by N. E. Long, op. cit., and by C. E. Jacob in Policy and Bureaucracy, 1966.
The Federal Government Service, edited by W. S. Sayre, 1965, pp. 1–6.
P. Woll, op. cit., p. 174.
“Public Policy and the Nature of Administrative Responsibility”, in F. E. Rourke, op. cit., p. 175.
P-380.
See above, Ch. 4, pp. 68–71.
Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 2, chapter XI, “Limits of the Province of Government”, p. 528.
G. Sjöberg, et al., op. cit., mention several examples of attempts to devise non-bureaucratic systems of organization. B. Coughlin, “Private Welfare in a Public Welfare Bureaucracy”, Social Service Review, Vol. 35, 1961, examines how private associations may retain their independence from public welfare agencies.
Copyright information
© 1970 Pall Mall Press Ltd
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Albrow, M. (1970). Bureaucracy and the Theorists of Democracy. In: Bureaucracy. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00916-9_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00916-9_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-11262-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-00916-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)