Towards a Model of Philippine Bureaucracy

Abstract

AbstractThe Philippine civil service has attracted comparatively little scholarly attention, and such analyses as have been conducted are strongly influenced by the view that both the polity and bureaucracy lie at some distance from Weber’s bureaucratic ideals. The model of an emotional bureaucracy sketched in this paper collapses a number of dichotomies (such as the impersonal versus human and social, the emotional versus rational, and the formal versus informal) in Weberian analysis. In drawing attention to, and in attempting to accommodate, the bureaucracy’s emotional qualities and its dimensionality, the model may also encourage a broader and more intense debate on the Philippine civil service. The model comprises three interlocking cycles: instrumentalism and authoritarianism within organisations; a deepening affective sphere outside organisations and growing technical and emotional professionalism within organisations; and Puritanism and instrumentalism. These cycles do not describe stages of development, and they are not peculiar either to bureaucratic organisations or to the Philippines.