Lesson 2 - The Bureaucracy

Specific Objectives:

At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to:

1. Describe a typical bureaucracy, the Philippine bureaucracy;

2. Analyze how each of these characteristics of the Philippine bureaucracy affects the
effective management of national and local government agencies; and
3. Demonstrate awareness on the Filipino values that have effects on the effective
management of national and local government agencies

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BUREAUCRACY

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 definition of bureaucracy:

1. a well-defined division of administrative labor among persons and offices,

2. a personnel system with consistent patterns of recruitment and stable linear careers,
3. a hierarchy among offices, such that the authority and status are differentially distributed
among actors, and
4. formal and informal networks that connect organizational actors to one another through
flows of information and patterns of cooperation

Origin of the concept

The word "bureaucracy" 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".

In a letter of July 1, 1790, the German Baron von Grimm declared: "We are obsessed by the idea of
regulation, and our Masters of Requests refuse to understand that there is an infinity of things in a
great state with which a government should not concern itself." Jean Claude Marie Vincent de
Gournay sometimes used to say, "We have an illness in France which bids fair to play havoc with us;
this illness is called bureaumania." Sometimes he used to invent a fourth or fifth form of government
under the heading of "bureaucracy".

In another letter of July 15, 1765 Baron Grimm wrote also, "The real spirit of the laws in France is that
bureaucracy of which the late Monsieur de Gournay used to complain so greatly; here the offices,
clerks, secretaries, inspectors and intendants are not appointed to benefit the public interest, indeed
the public interest appears to have been established so that offices might exist."

This quote refers to a traditional controversy about bureaucracy, namely the perversion of means and
ends so that means become ends in themselves, and the greater good is lost sight of; as a corollary,
the substitution of sectional interests for the general interest. The suggestion here is that, left
uncontrolled, the bureaucracy will become increasingly self-serving and corrupt, rather than serving
society.
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Development of Bureaucracy

Perhaps the early example of a bureaucrat is the scribe, who first arose as a professional in 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 to 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 modernesque 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. Tax collectors, perhaps the most reviled of all
bureaucrats, became increasingly necessary as states began to take in more and more revenue, while
the role of administrators increased as the functions of government multiplied. Along with this
expansion, though, came the recognition of the corruption and nepotism often inherent within the
managerial system, leading to civil service reform on a large scale in many countries towards the end
of the 19th century.

Karl Marx and bureaucracy

In Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels's theory of historical materialism, the historical origin of
bureaucracy is to be found in four sources: religion, the formation of the state, commerce and
technology.

Thus, the earliest bureaucracies consisted of castes of religious clergy, officials and scribes operating
various rituals, and armed functionaries specifically delegated to keep order. In the historical
transition from primitive egalitarian communities to a civil society divided into social classes and
estates, beginning from about 10,000 years ago, authority is increasingly centralized in, and enforced
by a state apparatus existing separately from society. This state formulates, imposes and enforces
laws, and levies taxes, giving rise to an officialdom enacting these functions. Thus, the state mediates
in conflicts among the people and keeps those conflicts within acceptable bounds; it also organizes
the defense of territory. Most importantly, the right of ordinary people to carry and use weapons of
force becomes increasingly restricted; in civil society, forcing other people to do things becomes
increasingly the legal right of the state authorities only.

But the growth of trade and commerce adds a new, distinctive dimension to bureaucracy, insofar as
it requires the keeping of accounts and the processing/recording of transactions, as well as the
enforcement of legal rules governing trade. If resources are increasingly distributed by prices in
markets, this requires extensive and complex systems of record-keeping, management and
calculation, conforming to legal standards. Eventually, this means that the total amount of work
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involved in commercial administration outgrows the total amount of work involved in government
administration. In modern capitalist society, private sector bureaucracy is larger than government
bureaucracy, if measured by the number of administrative workers in the division of labor as a whole.
Some corporations nowadays have a turnover larger than the national income of whole countries,
with large administrations supervising operations.

A fourth source of bureaucracy Marxists have commented on inheres in the technologies of mass
production, which require many standardized routines and procedures to be performed. Even if
mechanization replaces people with machinery, people are still necessary to design, control, supervise
and operate the machinery. The technologies chosen may not be the ones that are best for everybody,
but which create incomes for a particular class of people or maintain their power. This type of
bureaucracy is nowadays often called a technocracy, which owes its power to control over specialized
technical knowledge or control over critical information.

In Marx's theory, bureaucracy rarely creates new wealth by itself, but rather controls, co-ordinates
and governs the production, distribution and consumption of wealth. The bureaucracy as a social
stratum derives its income from the appropriation of part of the social surplus product of human labor.
Wealth is appropriated by the bureaucracy by law through fees, taxes, levies, tributes, licensing etc.

Bureaucracy is therefore always a cost to society, but this cost may be accepted insofar as it makes
social order possible, and maintains it by enforcing the rule of law. Nevertheless there are constant
conflicts about this cost, because it has the big effect on the distribution of incomes; all producers will
try to get the maximum return from what they produce, and minimize administrative costs. Typically,
in epochs of strong economic growth, bureaucracies proliferate; when economic growth declines, a
fight breaks out to cut back bureaucratic costs.

Whether or not a bureaucracy as a social stratum can become a genuine ruling class depends greatly
on the prevailing property relations and the mode of production of wealth. In capitalist society, the
state typically lacks an independent economic base, finances many activities on credit, and is heavily
dependent on levying taxes as a source of income. Therefore, its power is limited by the costs which
private owners of the productive assets will tolerate. If, however, the state owns the means of
production itself, defended by military power, the state bureaucracy can become much more
powerful, and act as a ruling class or power elite. Because in that case, it directly controls the sources
of new wealth, and manages or distributes the social product. This is the subject of Marxist theories
of bureaucratic collectivism.

Marx himself however never theorized this possibility in detail, and it has been the subject of much
controversy among Marxists. The core organizational issue in these disputes concerns the degree to
which the administrative allocation of resources by government authorities and the market allocation
of resources can achieve the social goal of creating a more free, just and prosperous society. Which
decisions should be made by whom, at what level, so that an optimal allocation of resources results?
This is just as much a moral-political issue as an economic issue.

Central to the Marxian concept of socialism is the idea of workers' self-management, which assumes
the internalization of a morality and self-discipline among people that would make bureaucratic
supervision and control redundant, together with a drastic reorganization of the division of labor in
society. Bureaucracies emerge to mediate conflicts of interest on the basis of laws, but if those
conflicts of interest disappear (because resources are allocated directly in a fair way), bureaucracies
would also be redundant.

Marx's critics are however skeptical of the feasibility of this kind of socialism, given the continuing
need for administration and the rule of law, as well as the propensity of people to put their own self-
interest before the communal interest. That is, the argument is that self-interest and the communal
interest might never coincide, or, at any rate, can always diverge significantly.
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Max Weber on bureaucracy

Max Weber has probably been one of the most influential users of the word in its social science sense.
He is well-known for his study of bureaucratization of society; many aspects of modern public
administration go back to him; a classic, hierarchically organized civil service of the continental type is
— if perhaps mistakenly — called "Weberian civil service".

However, contrary to popular belief, "bureaucracy" was an English word before Weber; the Oxford
English Dictionary cites usage in several different years between 1818 and 1860, prior to Weber's birth
in 1864.

Weber described the ideal type bureaucracy in positive terms, considering it to be a more rational and
efficient form of organization than the alternatives that preceded it, which he characterized as
charismatic domination and traditional domination. According to his terminology, bureaucracy is part
of legal domination. However, he also emphasized that bureaucracy becomes inefficient when a
decision must be adopted to an individual case.

According to Weber, the attributes of modern bureaucracy include its impersonality, concentration of
the means of administration, a leveling effect on social and economic differences and implementation
of a system of authority that is practically indestructible.

Weber's analysis of bureaucracy concerns:

 the historical and administrative reasons for the process of bureaucratization (especially in
the Western civilization)
 the impact of the rule of law upon the functioning of bureaucratic organizations
 the typical personal orientation and occupational position of a bureaucratic officials as a status
group
 the most important attributes and consequences of bureaucracy in the modern world

A bureaucratic organization is governed by the following seven principles:

1. official business is conducted on a continuous basis

2. official business is conducted with strict accordance to the following rules:
1. the duty of each official to do certain types of work is delimited in terms of impersonal
criteria
2. the official is given the authority necessary to carry out his assigned functions
3. the means of coercion at his disposal are strictly limited and conditions of their use
strictly defined
3. every official's responsibilities and authority are part of a vertical hierarchy of authority, with
respective rights of supervision and appeal
4. officials do not own the resources necessary for the performance of their assigned functions
but are accountable for their use of these resources
5. official and private business and income are strictly separated
6. offices cannot be appropriated by their incumbents (inherited, sold, etc.)
7. official business is conducted on the basis of written documents
A bureaucratic official:
 is personally free and appointed to his position on the basis of conduct
 exercises the authority delegated to him in accordance with impersonal rules, and his or her
loyalty is enlisted on behalf of the faithful execution of his official duties
 appointment and job placement are dependent upon his or her technical qualifications
 administrative work is a full-time occupation
 work is rewarded by a regular salary and prospects of advancement in a lifetime career

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An official must exercise his or her judgment and his or her skills, but his or her duty is to place these
at the service of a higher authority; ultimately he/she is responsible only for the impartial execution
of assigned tasks and must sacrifice his or her personal judgment if it runs counter to his or her official
duties.

CHARACTERISTICS OF BUREAUCRACY

1. Positions and offices are clearly defined. In principle, all positions and offices exist
independently of the incumbent. The incumbent performs the roles during official hours
according to the contract and are personally free to do as they wish after such hours.
2. The hierarchical arrangement of authority, rights and obligations are specifically drawn.
Levels of superordination and subordination with corresponding salaries and other privileges
and responsibilities are defined. Communication through channels or protocol are highly
regularized.
3. The personnel are selected on the basis of technical and professional qualifications.
Personnel are selected based on competence through competitive examination.
4. There are defined rules governing official behavior. There is standardization of action so as
to minimize personal prejudice, interest, preferences and subservience.
5. Security of tenure and the pursuit of career with promotion in the hierarchy are assured.
Promotions based on seniority and merit to maintain morale and competent performance.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PHILIPPINE BUREAUCRACY (According to Onofre D. Corpuz)

1. Vulnerability to nepotism.
2. Perpetuation of spoils system
3. Apathetic (Unconcerned) public reactions to bureaucratic misconduct
4. Availability of external peaceful means of correcting bureaucratic weaknesses. Devices such
as constitutional rights and privileges – freedom of speech, press, assembly, civic actions –
have been used to rectify the defects and misdeeds of the bureaucracy.
5. Survival of historical experience. The Phil. Bureaucracy was administered according to a civil
law system which the Spanish bureaucracy prescribed. Filipinos have used the Spanish
political bureaucracy as the scapegoat for all the weaknesses of the Phil. Political bureaucracy.
6. Non-special typing of bureaucrats. Filipino bureaucrats do not comprise a clear cut social
class.
7. Lack of interdependence from politics
8. Essential instrument of social change. In spite of the weaknesses, the Phil. Bureaucracy’s
function in nation-building will be as big, as complicated and as demanding as the functions
of the whole society itself.

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