Bureaucracy and Development Administration

273 Pages·2009·9.36 MB·English

by  S.L. Das

Bureaucracy
and
Development Administration

BUREAUCRACY
AND
DEVEWPMENf
ADMINISTRATION
Dr. (Mrs.) S.L. Das
SWASTIK
SWASTIK PUBLICATIONS
DELHI (India)
BUREAUCRA.CY AND DEVEWPMENT ADMINISTRATION
© Reserved
First Published 2010
ISBN-978-93-80 1 ~8-1 0-7
[No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
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Published in India by
SWASTIKPUBLICATIONS
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Printed at: Deepak Offset Press, Delhi.
Preface
Bureaucracy represents political organisation, reflecting its
very system and its philosophy. It might well be one of the
most important if not the most important criteria against
which examination of the political organisation could be
made. Also, it could serve to examine "politics in action"
or in other words political change. While some of the
inherent characteristics of bureaucracy would be its political
orientation, it does not automatically go the other way
around. That is, it would not be necessary that bureaucratic
phenomena should characterise every political organisation.
It seems, however, highly likely that they would play an
important role in political change. In many cases they would
reflect the motivational drives of the political organisation
and its structural restraints.
Most bureaucracy promises new forms of strategic action
which will assume a more creative and open form.
Comment on hybrid political regimes and democratic
hierarchies is centred on the long-standing question of how
organisations combine centralised control and co-ordination
of resources with the need for more flexible forms. The
notion of organisational hybridity has a particular relevance
for public sector organisations, where calls to reduce
bureaucracy have been manifested in attempts to simulate
market disciplines within the organisation. Two aspects of
the post bureaucracy debate are of particular significance
for the present study.
Bureaucracy is not as many critics assume a simple
singularity. Rather, whatever singularity it is deemed to
possess is multiple, not monolithic to be more precise
bureaucracy has turned out to be less a hard and fast
transhistorical model, but rather what we may describe as
a many sided, evolving, diversified organizational device.
-Dr. (Mrs.) S.L. Das
Contents
Preface v
1. Bureaucracy, Organisation & Political Change 1
2. The Management of Change at the Bureaucracy 25
3. The Great Wall of Bureaucracy 41
4. Political Culture, Development Administration 45
5.
The Bureaucracy and Governance in
Developing Countries 50
6. Leading the Future of the Public Sector 80
7. The Challenge of Governance in a
Large Bureaucracy 103
8. Governance and Public Bureaucracy 107
9. Coercive and Enabling Bureaucracy 123
10. The Mother of All Bureaucracy 138
11. Perfection of Meritocracy or Ritual of
Bureaucracy 150
12. Bureaucrats or Politicians 190
13. The Future of Bureaucracy 217
14. The Revolution is Today:
Bureaucracy is Forever 257
Bibliography 261
Index 263

1
Bureaucracy, Organisation &
Political Change: A Critical
Analysis
It is of rather common agreement that organisation, at least
originally, was formed in order to pursue the common
interests of specific groups. It is far from being agreed,
however, what roles are played by various sorts of internal
organisational structures, especially when somehow related
to political change.
Weber, for example, perceived politics in terms of
dispositions over weapons and over means of
administration. This implies the existence of overt or covert
political classification. The key to such a classification would
be a certain formula by which organisational structure
would be determined. It might resemble the supposed
Marxist classifi,cation of economic epochs and the
"economic" classes that feature in this type of classification.
A question thus might arise. Why would Weber have to
follow Marx in essence but still differ in as much as he chose
to change the keys for classification.
One, perhaps oversimplified, possible answer is that
Weber simply does not see anything attractive in socialism.
This is what Gerth and Mills had suggested, maybe because
it was them who found socialism so unattractive. But as it