Weberian Bureaucracy and the Military Model

Abstract

IT IS NOW OBVIOUS that few students of public administration have been moved to heed the periodic cries that the military organization be considered an integral part of their field of study. Despite the importance of the military today, more scholarly care seems to have been lavished on mosquito abatement districts. In the literature of public administration, there are neither sufficient theoretical foundations nor adequate empirical data available to enable us to comprehend the intricacies of operating this massive consumer of public energy and wealth. Such indifference has not been shared by other academics, and, of late, they have not been reluctant about offering advice on the conduct of military affairs. It is still too early to evaluate the outcome of this invasion, especially by the economists, but one can speculate that perhaps future historians of our turbulent times will judge it to have been a national disaster. Rather than repeat the futile pleas of the past for a revision of research priorities within public administration, this article takes a more subtle approach. Perhaps scholars need to be shaken out of the complacent assumption that they already know enough about military administration, having learned their lessons directly from a churlish first sergeant or indirectly from literature fairly hostile to all aspects of military life. Perhaps they might be enticed to reexamine the phenomenon more thoroughly if it could be demonstrated that military theories of administration are far more compli-