Public administration as an activity possesses in large degree the formal attributes of secular collective ritual, e.g., repetition, role playing, stylization, order, staging, and creation of meaning. Three types of administrative ritual can be identified: explicit rites, such as ceremonies and regularized events; formalistic processes, like budgeting and auditing; and expressive programs, exemplified by anti-drug campaigns and rural free delivery. Rituals constructed inside organizations tend to use specialized language and involve active participation; those directed to outsiders employ lay language and dramatic forms. Ritual in administration is unavoidable, and it affects different observers differently. If excessively compelling, it could be dangerous, but within proper constraints it helps to state collective purpose and reinforces common bonds. Administration can be understood, at least in substantial part, as ritual. It is argued here that a ritualistic interpretation of administrative life provides important insights otherwise not attained. This interpretation also suggests that the significance of public administration to society is perhaps even more fundamental than has been assumed. For example, contemplate the following scenes: … Queen Elizabeth, by a touch of her sword in the Queen's Audience Room at Buckingham Palace, designates Casper Weinberg, former United States Secretary of Defense, as Knight Grand Cross in the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, permitting him to add the letters “G.B.E.” to the end of his name. … The U.S. State Department, following expulsion of American diplomats in the U.S. embassy in Managua, declares the Nicaraguan Ambassador to Washington to be persona non grata, forcing him to make a genteel exodus to Mexico. … The uniformed immigration officer, after carefully scrutinizing the foreign visitor at a major port of entry, searches the computer screen for damaging information and then stamps the passport with a flourishing blow that expresses an air of emphatic authority. … The federal bureau chief, testifying before a House congressional appropriations subcommittee, blandly supports the President's budget while artfully making it clear that the bureau could use much more money to finance several new programs vital to certain congressional districts. These settings all involve public administrators; they all pertain to the ongoing life of the world of public administration; yet, they all have characteristics not always associated with the world of public administration. Consider, for example, that they do not show undivided attention to the usual public administration virtues of economy, efficiency, and rationality. Award ceremonies are, financially speaking, nonproductive and can be costly. Automatic diplomatic retaliation does not permit time for research and analysis. Flourishing a passport stamp with an emphatic gesture would probably contradict the findings of time-and-motion studies. Executive testimony that hints at the need for more spending projects undercuts the executive budget. The four illustrations also have in common a lack of simple spontaneity and materialist practicality. A certain amount of staged gaming is encountered in each instance: the tradition-soaked knighting ceremony, the stylized diplomatic tit-for-tat, the overdramatic passport stamping, the deceitful appropriations testimony. In other words, what is encountered in these instances of administrative life is not the sheer instrumentalism and dull pragmatism of an entirely profane world, but activity and behavior that have meaning beyond mere production values and that are “set up” in a calculating manner and performed in scripted form. Although the organization culture movement has of late greatly expanded the discussion of symbols, myths, and rites in organizations, no one has attempted systematically to conceptualize administration in ritualistic terms. In the management literature Moch and Huff have carefully analyzed language-based rituals that managers use to “chew out” malingering subordinates.(1) Trice and Beyer have developed a typology of organizational rites based on their social consequences, for example, rites of passage and rites of degradation.(2) In the international relations literature Cohen has dissected nonverbal rituals of diplomatic signalling. (3) In political science generally, rumination about political rituals has transpired, centering around the notion of symbol. Thurman Arnold's classic The Symbols of Government and Murray Edelman's several books are the finest of this genre.(4) As for public administration, Edel-man conceived of the administrative system as having ritual content,(5) and Stull and associates analyzed state reorganization as ritual.(6) Heymann recently argued that government must be seen as an expresser of public ideas, a notion that is highly compatible with the views expressed here, even though his approach does not explicitly employ ritual theory.(7)
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Apr 1, 2005
Sonit Bafna 
Open Access