The growth of public and private bureaucracies

Abstract

Bureaucratization is a pervasive fact of modern life. Not only have strong central governments emerged over the last century (and more recently in the United States), but large centrally administered firms have become the dominant economic actors in modern societies. The facts of bureaucratic growth are indisputable. By any measure, the size and influence of government have increased almost continuously to the present time. And whether measured by the intensity of supervision or the intensity of administration, bureaucratic growth in private enterprises has also occurred, in some instances more rapidly than in government.' These developments are hardly surprising, and they have not passed unnoticed. Governmental bureaucracy is regularly disparaged by the political right. The left has been more sensitive to increased concentration of productive capacity in giant corporate bureaucracies. Rhetoric aside, however, the causes of bureaucratic growth have not been sufficiently understood, and its consequences have not been sufficiently anticipated. One of the most fundamental social transformations of the last century, and one fraught with economic as well as political consequences, has been all but ignored by the social sciences.