Bureaucracy

--Why do bureaucracies grow and how can they be controlled?

What is Bureaucracy?

* Bureaucracy is created with the emergence of country, is a long standing and complex social historical phenomenon.

* Management or administration marked by diffusion of authority among numerous offices and adherence to inflexible rules of operation.

* Red tape and formalism, subjectivism, authoritarianism* Bureaucracy is one of the great tools of civilization. * Bureaucracy is an often maligned term in the political world. It is reviled by those seeking office and cursed at by voters.

A set of 4 structural dimensions of an organization

• formalization • centralization • complexity • personnel ratios

Running From Bureaucracy 2000 John Holcroft (20th C./British)

Why do bureaucracies grow?

• The Growth of the Federal Bureaucracy The federal bureaucracy began with the three cabinet

departments established by George Washington in 1789. Since that time, not only have the number of departments in the cabinet more than tripled, but now there are also myriad agencies, bureaus, government corporations, authorities, and administrations that take care of the government's business.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION & THE RISE OF BUREAUCRACY

*Examples of modern government bureaucracies are the DMV, the IRS.  UPS is an example of a private bureaucracy.

* The Industrial Revolution began around 17

50 in England. Modern bureaucracy emerged around 1850. 

• It is a way to run large organizations. The

"need" for bureaucracy as a tool to run lar

ge organizations is illustrated by the conte

mporary comment of a railroad director.

THE TRUTH ABOUT BUREAUCRACY

Parkinson's Law A classic discussion of bureaucracy is C.

Northcote Parkinson's The Golden Rule (1957).

Parkinson's model of the growth of government bureaucracies is based on 2 assumptions:

• "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals."

• "Officials make work for each other."

The benefits of bureaucracy make it attractive to many. Increased efficiency can lead to better medical care, better traffic control, a better economy, and all sorts of benefits which make life run smoothly. Bureaucracy is a powerful bulwark against revolution, subversion and over-enthusiasm. It can protect scarce resources, allocate wealth more fairly and protect the weak from the strong.

The benefits of bureaucracy

• So there is very often a growing desire to control through administrative action, to use bureaucracies as an arm of government. The State holds the people together primarily through administrative centralization. As it seeks to extend its power, so it increases its chief tool of power, bureaucracy. There is a powerful pressure towards multiplying the number and control of bureaucrats.

The First Rule of Bureaucracy Club*

CONTROL OF THE BUREAUCRACY

• Regulate the use of a national system for institutional

• Leader is the KEY

• Understanding of the people, promote democracy

Choosing Strategies to Control the Bureaucracy: Statutory Constraints, Oversight, and the Committee System

Congress can exert control over regulatory agencies either through oversight or through statutory control provisions that establish agency structure and process. Each strategy has advantages and disadvantages, and each is employed in varying degress in different policy areas.

Cartoon about bureaucracy

• Although decisions about oversight and statutory control are separate, they are not independent. Plans to engage in ex post oversight make the benefits of statutory control less compelling and vice versa. In this sense, statutory control and oversight can be viewed as "substitutes" in the "production" of a controlled bureaucracy.

Considering the two types of control in a single model leads to the finding that legislators who are members of the committee with jurisdiction over the agency prefer a lower level of statutory control than nonmembers. The difference occurs because the costs of oversight are lower for committee members.

Pentagon Bureaucracy

If you want to get more information, please link to~

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx3hs-5gdEA

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSWSKXCFLe4&feature=fvsr

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCGlT6u-k8E

THE END

DAISY & VINCENT