#bureaucratization

Several Western countries have seen a surge in “populist” parties, leaders, and policies in recent years. This surge has elicited a forceful response from traditionally dominant elites. The situation also has led to tensions within governments and their bureaucracies. To cite just two examples: reports of White House officials actively assessing the possibility of ridding themselves of President Donald Trump; and Whitehall officials despairing of the “impossibility” of Brexit.

In short, democratic elections, and democratic decisions, do not always seem to command the respect they deserve. Should we be worried?

The short answer is: yes, we probably should.

The long answer is more nuanced, and it goes far beyond conspiracy theories of “Deep State” or “elite” interest. The fact of the matter is that we were told to expect this a hundred years ago by the German sociologist Max Weber.

Weber’s writings are practically inevitable as a point of reference when discussing modern public administration. (He called this bureaucracy, but I will use the term public administration interchangeably, as well as the terms officials or experts when speaking of bureaucrats.)

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In its ideal Weberian state, a bureaucracy is ordered and organized by laws and other rules, and adheres to a strict hierarchy. The rules rank successive bureaucratic superiors, one over the other, and ultimately empower a single person to direct the bureaucracy. This final chief of the bureaucracy is usually an elected or appointed official such as a Minister of State who is not himself a trained bureaucratic official. This highest chief constitutes the nexus where political power meets the soulless and rule-directed efficiency of the bureaucratic system. In sum, a bureaucracy is the most efficient system of social domination yet devised by man.

But that is a theoretical ideal. In social reality, the elected official is elected precisely because he or she is not a soulless expert. Politics is a game ultimately won and lost by charismatic leadership, not rules. Politicians are elected for their ability to lead, for the respect they command, for the favors they are able to call in. The logic of politics is therefore diametrically opposed to the logic of the bureaucracy: where the latter relies on files, routines and rules, the former relies on strength of personality, favors, and traditional leadership. There is, therefore, a latent clash of interest between the political and the bureaucratic sphere.

In this clash of interest, politics tends to hold the short end of the stick. Weber often points to the inherent advantage held by a trained and experienced expert over the ambitious amateur. He relates historical instances in which the bureaucracy simply ignored orders from its supposed political masters as the crazed ideas of dilettantes. Ultimately, says Weber, the political masters are at the mercy of their supposed subordinates. Confronted with technical lingo, and with the tacit knowledge of experts, the layman will find it difficult to hold his own.

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So, ironically, the more power becomes concentrated, the more it must be delegated. An absolute monarch must rely more on subalterns for decision making than must the chief of a single small office. Power that, on paper, is concentrated and focused at a single point, will, in reality, be spread across many different people. With the individual official as the real master of most decisions, they will develop their own policy, irrespective of who the formal masters are.

This is borne out in the empirical studies of the American political scientist Micheal Lipsky, who has studied street-level bureaucrats. To a very large extent, individual bureaucrats have a space of individual discretion that cannot be eliminated by rules. This may be experienced by the official as either a blessing or a curse. But the fact remains that the official not only will be able to shape policy, but will, in fact, be required to do so in order to achieve anything at all. To the extent officials wish to contravene the spirit of official policy on the level of rule application, they will usually be able to do so. If they are too blatant about it, superiors (prompted by the public, or by their formal political masters) may intervene, but if the street-level bureaucrat has any skill, organized objections can be prevented.

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At the end of the day, however, democracy, too, will need to rely on bureaucrats because no other system of conscious intervention in the course of social affairs is as efficient. Democracy will, therefore, tend to lose. The trained expert will win over the layman who cannot administer public affairs as efficiently. Nor will the layman be able to supervise all the decisions taken by officials.

The interests of the bureaucracy and of democracy will, therefore, tend to diverge. The cadre of expert officials that constitutes the bureaucracy will administer local policies and will have some sort of esprit de corps. The officials will tend to regard their own opinions as based on expertise, and those of the rest of the population as potentially benighted. Political masters who try to go against bureaucratic policy will often be told that their ideas are impossible or ill advised. If the politician insists, and the stakes are high enough, the bureaucracy will simply not implement political orders as intended, or will at least actively impede the implementation of undesirable political orders.

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So here we are.

Western States have, over the past 150 years, created bureaucracies without which much of what we all tend to take for granted would not work—or at least during a transitional period of uncertain length, would not work as smoothly and efficiently as we are used to. Bureaucracy ensures that there is at least some modicum of equality before the law. (In fact, it may be argued that the rule of law and bureaucracy are largely, if not entirely, the same). Bureaucracy thus provides the levelling of social status on which democracy depends and will be difficult indeed to do without it.

PC and the Bureaucratization of the Economy

By William L. Anderson

Mises Institute

July 12, 2018

  PC and the Bureaucratization of the Economy

  The recent incident at a Philadelphia Starbucks in which police arrested two black men who were waiting for a friend to join them has stirred a lot of controversy and brought bad publicity to the coffee chain. Facingdemonstrations accusing the company of racism, the Starbucks management even…

The Monopolization of America.  

Robert Reich takes a take an in-depth look at antitrust laws in the United States and explains how corporate giants have come to dominate the American economy and politics.

David Graeber, "Anthropology and the rise of the professional-managerial class", HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

At our series of meetings we discussed our grievance, you the supporters, and possible solutions, with Donna Quan.

The results are in.

We have set in stone that over the next three years, standardized testing such as EQAO will be removed from schools. This is a major accomplishment for us as we see standardized testing as means of comparing students to one another.