The states strive to manage the affairs of the country – the ones related to the services for the public – are administered through an administrative setup. In an administrative setup bureaucracy plays a vital role. It through a rigid structure and rules and regulations try to achieve its objectives. However, in practice bureaucracy has not always been efficient and there have always been many controversies regarding its structure and its way of functioning.
Bureaucracy is the collective organizational structure, procedure, protocols and set of regulation in place to manage activity, usually in large organizations and government. As opposed to adhocracy, it is represented by standardized procedure that dictates the execution of most or all processes within the body, formal division of powers, hierarchy, and relationships intended to anticipate needs and improve efficiency. In practice the interpretation and execution of policy can led to informal influence.
Bureaucracy is a concept in sociology and political science referring to the way that the administrative execution and enforcement of legal rules are socially organized. Four structural concepts are central to any formation of bureaucracy; a well-defined division of administrative labor among persons and offices; a personnel system with consistent patterns of recruitment and stable linear careers; a hierarchy among offices, such that the authority and status are differentially distributed among actors; and formal and informal networks that connect organizational actors to one another through flows of information and patterns of cooperation. Examples of everyday bureaucracies include governments, armed forces, corporations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), hospitals, courts, ministries, social clubs, sports leagues, professional associations and academic institutions.
While the concept as such existed at least from the early forms of nationhood in ancient times, the word ‘bureaucracy’ itself stems from the word ‘bureau’ used from the early 18th century in Western Europe not just to refer to a writing desk, but to an office, i.e. a workplace, where officials worked. The original French meaning of the word bureau was the baize used to cover desks. The term bureaucracy came into use shortly before the French Revolution of 1789 and from there rapidly spread to other countries. The Greek suffix – kratia or kratos – means ‘power’ or ‘rule’.
Perhaps the early example of a bureaucrat is the scribe, who first arose as a professional on the early cities of Sumer. The Sumerian script was so complicated that it required specialists who had trained for their entire lives in the discipline of writing to manipulate it. These scribes could wield significant power, as they had a total monopoly on the keeping of records and creation of inscriptions on monuments of kings.
In later, larger empires like Achaemenid Persia, bureaucracies quickly expanded as government expanded and increased its functions. In the Persian Empire, the central government was divided into administrative provinces led by satraps. The satraps were appointed by the Shah to control the provinces. In addition, a general and a royal secretary were stationed in each province to supervise troop recruitment and keep records, respectively. The Achaemenid Great Kings also sent royal inspectors to tour the empire and report on local conditions.
The most modern of all ancient bureaucracies, however, was the Chinese bureaucracy. During the chaos of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States. Confucius recognized the need for a stable system of administrators to lend good governance even when the leaders were inept. Chinese bureaucracy, first implemented during the Qin dynasty but under more Confucian lines under the Han, calls for the appointment of bureaucratic positions based on merit via a system of examinations. Although the power of the Chinese bureaucrats waxed and waned throughout China’s long history, the imperial examination system lasted as late as 1905 and modern China still employs a formidable bureaucracy in its daily workings.
Modern bureaucracies arose as the government of states grew larger during the modern period and especially following the Industrial Revolution. As the authors David Osborne and Ted Gaebler point out, “It is hard to imagine today, but a hundred years ago bureaucracy meant something positive. It connoted a rational, efficient method of organization – something to take the place of the arbitrary exercise of power by authoritarian regimes. Bureaucracy brought the same logic to government work that the assembly line brought to the factory. With the hierarchal authority and functional specialization, they made possible the efficient undertaking of large complex tasks.”
Though bureaucracy has been playing a dominant role in today’s administrative setups, there are some intellectuals who have critically examined it. Among them Crozier’s analysis is very important. He examined bureaucracy as a form of organization that evokes “the slowness, the ponderousness, the routine, the complication of procedures and the maladapted responses of the bureaucratic organization to the needs which they should satisfy.” He also believes that “a bureaucratic organization is an organization that cannot correct its behavior by learning from its errors… not only a system that does not correct its behavior in view of its errors; it is also too rigid to adjust, without crises, to the transformations that the accelerated evolution of the industrial society makes more and more imperative.”
It is really important to analyze the view of Crozier and the functioning of different organizations in different states; mostly the organizations that are functioning in third world countries and within the countries where the systems are very much centralized and rigid. Moreover, it is also easy to see many common people suffering from the dysfunction of bureaucracy in our own country. There are hundreds of people waiting for their various problems to be solved within the government organizations, but their issues are stuck somewhere in the hierarchal quagmires of the rigid bureaucracy.
The administrative setup in our country definitely needs to improve the bureaucratic setup and make it flexible and functional. A great help and support can be taken from the modern concepts of management and the proper care can be taken to facilitate the public as much as possible, as it is for the service of the public that the administrative setup has been maintained.