Bureaucracy, Democracy, and Public Administration: Editor’s Brief Introduction to the Symposium

Abstract

The twin subjects of bureaucracy and democracy have captured a heightened attention of people all over the world, especially scholars of political science, public administration, and sociology, for the last 30 years or so. Although a long debated issue raised by philosophers and political thinkers for centuries, if not millennia, the contemporary debate on the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy began with concentrated and prolific scholarship since after World War II. Those arguing for a stronger democracy with a weak bureaucracy controlled by democratic processes and elected officials have endured in their crusade against unelected administrative officials performing government functions on professional and mainly meritorious bases. Their bureaucracy-bashing of the last few decades has reached its commanding height. They have prevailed for the most part in at least partially dismantling the professional administrative state, privatizing and outsourcing the public sector functions of governments to private sector contractors, mostly large corporations. Corporate globalization of the world has, by the virtue of the sheer size and politicoeconomic power global corporations possess and exercise, has transformed the role of governments into mere instruments of providing security and safe heaven for corporations to reign in freely and without constraints. Obviously, such a transformation has had and will continue to have serious impacts on and consequences for public governance, administration, and bureaucracy that serves both processes. Critics of globalization and of the conservative right approach to governance and administration see this transformation a danger to environment, quality of public life, service delivery, and above all to accountability in public governance and administration. Public Organiz Rev (2010) 10:205–207 DOI 10.1007/s11115-010-0139-y