V.J. Chalupa

On Post-Modern Politics

CHAPTER 10

BUREAUCRACY

Means of Coercion and Implementation

The ownership alone of means of coercion and implementation does not ensure that they will in fact be utilized in accordance with the state's will, i.e., in accordance with the will of the state's normgiving organs. In addition to ownership it is necessary to ensure that those who have them in their actual possession will use them for implementation or enforcement of the will of the legislators, because legislative organs themselves are not suitable to do so -- this is the role of the executive and judicial powers. The creation of bureaucracy is the  way that modern society evolved to ensure that the instruments of power will be used by their possessors according to the will of their owners.

Purpose and Structure of Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is an institution whose purpose is the transmission of the will of an individual or a small group of people to larger groups through administrative activities of persons who for financial and other compensation during a fixed time implement the purposes of their employer rather than their own. The nature of a bureaucracy is determined by the nature of its employer and/or its normgiver: state, party, corporation, church. In his relationship to the employer, a bureaucrat is a subject of duty, i.e., subordinated, and the expression of the employer's will are for the bureaucrat a norm. In order to ensure the implementation of these norms, bureaucracy is organized hierarchically according to the demands of division of labor, centralization of control, requirement of expertise and other rational principles. Bureaucrats in lower positions are subordinates not only of their employer, but also of their superiors in the bureaucratic hierarchy. The uniformity of the acts of the bureaucracy is ensured by rules and regulations whose volume, specialization and complexity grow at least in proportion to the size and complexity of the institutions administered by the bureaucracy; usually they grow faster. As a consequence, individual segments of the bureaucracy lose the perspective of the employer's objective, and follow exactly ("blindly") the letter of the rules and regulations which describe their duties and competence. This gap between the normgiver and his executive power is wider as the position of an individual bureaucrat on the bureaucratic ladder is lower .

To belong to a bureaucracy induces a certain split in the bureaucrat's personality: during the time on the job, he strives to implement an extraneous, assigned (heterodox) purpose, and his own (autonomous) purposes derived from the goal of happiness are pushed aside or possibly suffer harm; a bureaucrat must, on his job, sometimes fulfil duties whose implementation he feels is unpleasant not only because it is burdensome, but also because he disagrees with its contents ("it is against his conscience"). The bureaucrat's employer therefore ensures his subordinates' loyalty  in two ways. (1) he tries to align to the greatest possible extent the personal objectives of the employees with his own. A state appeals to patriotism, others, i.e., private employers such as organizations, associations or corporations endeavor to create a feeling of solidarity in their bureaucrats by introducing common emblems, colors, slogans and songs, outings, meals, publications about the progress, growth and perspectives of the employer. (2) The employer strives to gain the loyalty of the bureaucrats by granting or offering them a larger amount of means for the achievement of their private interests, such as steeply increasing wages for the highest levels of the bureaucracy, combined (especially in enterprises) with special compensations for efficiency (sharing in profits and/or ownership of the enterprise), security, often dependent on the length of service, against illness, old age and death, and ways of meeting psychological demands of bureaucrats: prestige (size, location and equipment of the work place), comfort (utilization of the employer's cars or airplanes, dining and recreation facilities), power (expansion of jurisdiction, increase in number of subordinates, especially immediate subordinates such as secretaries, assistants, experts).

Because of the tension existing between the objectives a bureaucrat implements as an executive organ of his employer, and his goal of happiness, bureaucracy is vulnerable to bribes, corruption and protectionism; individual bureaucrats can be induced by an offer of individual advantages to put the interest of the bribing party before the interest of its employer they have the duty to pursue.

State Bureaucracy

Because of the concentration of power in the hands of the state, its bureaucracy is the most important one. It is the most convenient, indeed indispensable, instrument of administering the state, and because it confers much of its power to whomever controls it or its part, states take measures to isolate it from particular political or personal interests and confine it to implementing the will of the state. These measures include life-long security (job security and pensions) and prohibition of arbitrary transfers or demotions. In countries where bureaucrats identify with the state's ideology and interest, these measures contributed to the creation of a professional, impartial and efficient class of civil servants (England, Switzerland, Germany prior to the arrival of dictatorship). In other countries, on the contrary, the same measures became in the hands of bureaucracy, an instrument to oppose, modify and circumvent the will of the state when it contradicts the bureaucrats' convictions or interests.

A ramified and entrenched bureaucracy needed at present by all modern states, is the most powerful among all interest groups in society. By its inertia, solidarity and detailed network of rules and regulations it is able to survive, withstand and overcome deep changes in society, discoveries of science and advances in technology. Attempts to subdue and control bureaucracy have sofar failed in autocratic states (Stalin, Mao-tse-Tung) as well as in democratic states (deregulation and decentralization efforts of American presidents beginning with Nixon and ending with Reagan). In its functioning, bureaucracy has the tendency to deal with people not as persons, but as units, as numbers, to identify equality with uniformity and sameness, and to ignore and suppress differences between members of groups it administers: age, wealth, sex, religion, nationality, language, and other. In modern mass society, such simplification is often necessary, but is also often caused by bureaucracy for its convenience. Up-to-date technology -- computers and electronics -- combined with progress in biological sciences and concentration of welfare in its hands gives state bureaucracy the potential to mold human groups according to technocratic objectives even in disregard of the will of the legislative power.