Essay On Bureaucracy
Introduction:
Bureaucracy
stands for a governing body run by paid officials. It is to conduct its
functions at every section. Bureaucracy in its most general sense describes a
way of organizing the activities of any institution so that it functions
efficiently.
Its
functions: to function well every nation as well as a government
has three sections of its government; the executive, the legislative, and the
judiciary. The legislative is mainly comprised of politicians. The executive
has both the politicians and the civil servants or bureaucrats. The court
is purely a bureaucratic organization. So it is manifested that the bulk of the
government of a country comes from the
civil servants or bureaucrats. If this criterion of Bureaucracy was
implemented, a state would become a most ideal one. But most countries in the
world have a Bureaucracy which the people call the elephant, reprimanded for its
red-tape procrastination and lack of respect for its activities.
Various
theorists: there are many theorists of bureaucracy. Max Weber, the
most famous among the most other subsequent writers, characterized bureaucracy
by a set of basic organizational principles. According to Weber, the
officeholders or bureaucrats in an institution are placed in a clear hierarchy.
This hierarchy represents the strict chain of command. The bureaucrats are
salaried officials. Their only reward comes from their salary and not directly
from their office. Their authorities stem entirely from their role and not from
some private status. The authority of a bureaucracy exists only in, and as far
as it is needed to carry out its role. The appointments to bureaucratic
positions are determined by tests of status or patronage. Strict rules exist on
the basis on which bureaucrats make their decisions so that personal discretion
is minimized. The bureaucratic institutions collect detailed records and
operate on the basis of a technical exercise. The above criteria of bureaucracy
describe the finest set of rules for bureaucrats. Max Weber saw bureaucracy as
a necessary development of the modern world. His bureaucracy is developed along
with shifting from a traditional towards a predominately rational-legal
orientation in all aspects of social life. Institutions, churches, legal
systems, etc. are bureaucratized in the West, as well as the government
department and large-scale industrial concerns. He thought socialism with its
planned economy to be essentially bureaucratic. He expected a form of what we
would now call state capitalism to become dominant over the developed world.
Since Weber’s day, it has become increasingly clear that this ideal type of
bureaucracy seldom exists and is not necessarily more efficient than others
when it does. However, Weber is still the best characterization of how
large-scale institutions operate much of the time.
A
disapproving sense: the disapproving sense of bureaucracy describes the
institutions full of small-minded time servers. These people are indifferent to
the public and incapable of taking initiative. The corruption in bureaucracy
largely relies on the political part of the government. During the cold war, in
many Asian, African, And Latin American countries, the military took over the state
power. The inexperienced military had to compromise with the bureaucracy. Such
symbolism of the military and civil bureaucrats degenerates corruption,
nepotism, and lack of transparency in state affairs. When the military returned to these countries' barracks, politicians superseded them. These
politicians were experts at street movements, protests, and violence but lacked the
essential education, courage, and vision to provide good governance for their
people. Such politicians have to depend on bureaucrats in key policy-making
decisions. So it is obvious that it is bureaucrats who really pull the strings
in such governments.
Conclusion: bureaucracy is run by the
rules set by specialists in statecraft and social science efficiently. They tend
to ignore its disapproving sense and refer to it only as a corrupted manifestation
of a useful general principle for organizations of human interaction.
