Weberian Bureaucracy Research Articles

Markets and Public Goods: Integrity, Trust, and Climate Change

Public goods are an anomaly in neoclassical economics, a form of ‘market failure’. They exist outside the efficient and equitable optimality of market exchange. It can be shown however that competitive markets are only efficient in short product cycles. Long-term objectives require social support. Corruption arises from the consequent private public interaction. Integrity, the absence of corruption, is a public good. Corruption has risen since the 1980s with privatization and outsourcing. How did European governments become honest in the first place? In the century after the 1770s, they moved from regarding public office as a form of private property to a conception of serving the public good. This integrity revolution was facilitated by Weberian bureaucracies, selected by academic merit and committed to impartiality by long-term incentives. The neoliberal revolution of the 1980s regarded bureaucracies as obstructive and slow. It admired the business corporation with its opaque procedures and charismatic leadership. Concurrently economics moved from neoclassical harmony theory to an asymmetric information model of ‘opportunism with guile’, providing doctrinal legitimacy for corruption. Corporate advertising is deliberately deceptive, and undermines the public good of trustworthiness. Digital platforms, powered by advertising, have subverted public discourse. Misinformation and disinformation have become prime risk factors for current societies. The practical operation of markets undermines the public goods of integrity and trustworthiness. The public good of a habitable climate cannot be achieved by market methods. For long-term payoffs, ‘free markets’ are a harmful delusion, inefficient, corrupt, impossible to achieve, and not sustainable.

Emotional bureaucrats: The paradox of Weberian bureaucracy and emotions in the Indian Railways

Emotional bureaucrats: The paradox of Weberian bureaucracy and emotions in the Indian Railways

Evaluation of Merit System Policy Implementation in the Selection for High Leadership Positions within the Riau Provincial Government

This article discusses the evaluation of merit system policies in the implementation of selection for High Leadership Positions in Regional Government Agencies. According to Law Number 5 of 2014 concerning State Civil Apparatus (ASN Law) has brought a new foundation in bureaucratic reform of apparatus resources. This law brings a breath of change to create an apparatus that is professional, has integrity, is neutral and free from political interests. This topic is important because, so far, research on JPT selection is still dominated by matters of administrative and procedural suitability. In fact, the merit system in the theory of meritocracy and Weberian bureaucracy emphasizes aspects of transparency and equal access for each candidate. Therefore, it is important to carry out research regarding studies of equality of access and career opportunities in JPT selection at the Regional Government Agency level. This research data was obtained through literature study in the form of a literature review. The author found that there are non-merit aspects in the JPT selection process in several Regional Government Agencies studied. The author recommends the need to develop a JPT selection model that prioritizes the merit aspect for better bureaucracy. The implementation of the JPT Pratama open selection within the Riau Provincial Government has been running in accordance with Perman PAN-RB Number 13 of 2014. However, the implementation of this policy has not fully met expectations, because ASN interest and motivation to take part in the selection is still low.

E-Government as a Development Strategy: The Case of Estonia

ABSTRACT This paper examines the role of e-government (EG) in fostering economic transition and development, focusing on the Estonian case. Positioned as a development strategy, EG utilizes information and communication technologies in the public sector to enhance competitiveness and well-being. Drawing from Weberian bureaucracy, it highlights two crucial institutions: secure property rights and governance rules emphasizing transparency, trust, and security (TTS). These institutions offer a comprehensive perspective on the positive impacts of EG. The paper suggests strategies for optimizing these effects, concluding with recommendations for EG implementation and proposing avenues for further research in developing country contexts.

Model for Post-Pandemic Bureaucracy in Indonesia: Is Post-Bureaucracy Relevant?

This research aims to investigate alternative post-pandemic bureaucratic models. This research contributes to the theoretical and practical knowledge of appropriate bureaucratic models during the pandemic and its aftermath. This research employed a qualitative method with a constructivist approach through a comprehensive literature review from credible sources, including scientific journals, books, and information from official government websites or international institutions. The results show that post-bureaucracy can be an antithesis and alternative to Indonesia's dominant Weberian bureaucratic paradigm. While the Weberian bureaucracy relies on rigid rules and structures, post-bureaucracy thrives on flexibility, citizencenteredness, open organizational boundaries, and a focus on people. These postbureaucratic characteristics are particularly relevant to the Indonesian context. The practical implication is that the Indonesian government needs to consider the postbureaucratic model to initiate a transformative change in bureaucracy in response to the evolving challenges posed by the pandemic and its aftermath.

Han-Wei-Zi 韓韋子: Bureaucratic Administration in Han Feizi 韓非子 and Max Weber (Wei Bo 韋伯)

Abstract: In this essay, Han Feizi is compared to Max Weber. It is argued that comparing the two enables us to see a distinctive aspect of Han Feizi's political thought. In particular, it is proposed that Weber's theory of the modern state (especially bureaucratic administration) can provide us with a helpful lens for understanding the structure, inner logic, and implications of Han Feizi's account of administration. Moreover, this comparison enables us to see clearly that the Han Feizi still has contemporary relevance. First Weber's account of political order and bureaucratic administration is explained. Next, Han Feizi and Weber are compared by focusing on six characteristics of Weberian bureaucracy. Then some differences between Han Feizi and Weber are considered. Finally some philosophical implications of this comparison are outlined for contemporary political philosophers.

CRITICISM ON WEBERIAN BUREAUCRATION: RADICAL SUBJECT PERSPECTIVE

The Weberian narrative has become ingrained in the Indonesian bureaucracy has an impact on the fact that the bureaucratic reform agenda is not yet actual, so that public disappointment with the performance of the bureaucracy is still a general finding. The performance of the bureaucracy in Indonesia is still ineffective. To overhaul this order, Zizek’s thoughts on the subject deserve to be placed as a critical activity in exploring the role of the state civil apparatus (SCA). This study aims to read the authentic potential of bureaucrats as agents of change in bureaucratic reform in Indonesia by borrowing the analysis of the Zizekian radical subject. This research method uses a desk study by collecting data and information based on information analysis and secondary data. The results showed that basically SCA has an authentic capacity as a radical subject, in this case the subject of reform which is able to overthrow the Weberian bureaucratic structure that has become the shackles of the Symbolic One. This can be done by organizing the subject of reform collectively which is continually breaking the Weberian bureaucracy. The important implication of this study is as an anchor for SCAs who believe in the importance of change in the bureaucratic environment and that their role is very important as agents of reform subjects who dare to risk themselves taking action towards better bureaucratic reform.

Examining the Indonesia Bureaucracy Response and Problem in Pandemic Times: A Preliminary Diagnostic Study

This investigation was prompted by the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, which created very rapid changes in the bureaucratic environment. This initial study is intended to explain how the Indonesian bureaucracy responds to changes due to the pandemic. A literature study is used to aggregate some of the findings of the latest research in Indonesia and official and accountable reports on bureaucratic governance. General results show that the bureaucracy in Indonesia is still stuttering in carrying out its functions. When the public requires quick and fair service, bureaucratic formalism, as an effect of Weberian bureaucracy, finds its contradiction. Still, the response required by the public does not accompany it. Further studies must be initiated to formulate an agile and public-centered bureaucratic model in the post-pandemic era.
 Keywords: bureaucracy, COVID-19, pandemic

Influence of Lean and Agile Management, Digital Transformation, and Transformational Leadership Toward Performance of Sumedang Government Apparatus

This investigation was prompted by the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, which created rapid changes in the bureaucratic environment. This initial study is intended to explain how the Indonesian bureaucracy responds to changes due to the pandemic. A literature study is used to aggregate some of the findings of the latest research in Indonesia and official and accountable reports on bureaucratic governance. General results showed that the bureaucracy in Indonesia is still very stuttering in carrying out its functions. Bureaucratic formalism, as an effect of the Weberian bureaucracy, finds its contradiction when the public needs fast and fair service. Still, the response required by the public does not accompany it. Further studies must be initiated to formulate an agile and public-centered bureaucratic model in the post-pandemic era.
 Keywords: bureaucracy, COVID-19, pandemic

Police In-Between Apoliticality and Politicality

The paper aims to construct a theoretical tool that allows for possible precise location of relations between the police and the ruling elite in a given country. Their relationship is between the ideal types of apoliticality and politicality. The five stages of the relationship between the ruling elite and the bureaucracy on a continuum between the ideal type of the apolitical Weberian bureaucracy and its antinomic ideal type of politicised system of patronage can be arranged as follows: self-regulation, personal independence, uncertainty, loyalty, and enhanced loyalty. The empirical usefulness test of these stages scheme consisting in the case study of one state characterised by a large range of autocratic and democratic regimes evolution (thus post-war Poland) was positive. Relations between the police, or more precisely: the Citizens’ Militia, in the period of the Polish People’s Republic can be defined as being at the stage of enhanced, double loyalty. In the period of the Third Polish Republic, relations between the police and the ruling elites can be placed at the fourth stage – loyalty. The few attempts to change this type of relationship and move to the stage of self-regulation or personal independence remained at the level of ineffective and temporary attempts at best.

Bureaucracy Meets Digital Reality: The unfolding of urban platforms in European municipal governments

The rise of digital technologies provides an opportunity to study smart cities as new organizational forms. We ask whether and how digital platforms and ecosystems affect the bureaucratic governance of municipal governments. To this end, we offer a multiple case analysis based on rich empirical, longitudinal data of seven European smart cities. We find that the contradicting logic of platform governance creates organizational tensions within the bureaucratic municipal government and at the interface between the municipal government and its external partners. We distil a process that describes how these tensions are resolved through a temporary shift to a non-bureaucratic work mode, and the subsequent formalization and institutionalization of those practices as new bureaucratic rules. We make three contributions. First, we contribute to the smart-city literature by outlining an overarching process of how data-driven technologies affect bureaucratic municipal governments. Second, we contribute to the ongoing conversation about the changing nature of Weberian bureaucracy showing how bureaucracy preserves its core while simultaneously adapting to and shaping its environment. Third, we highlight the role of lower-echelon bureaucrats as change agents who devise rules at the intersection of technological and societal development.

Two logics of democracy in collaborative governance: a mapping of clashes and compromises

ABSTRACT Collaborative governance is a promising supplement to traditional Weberian bureaucracy and New Public Management. However, the legitimacy and accountability of collaborative governance processes and outcomes is questionable. Based on a comprehensive mapping of the scholarly literature, we show that the sweeping multiplicity of accountability and legitimacy conceptions, types and critiques is structured by two democratic logics: an electoral one revolving around the territorial state and a stakeholder one focused on the collaborative network. The article provides the first attempt to position the conceptions, types and critiques of the accountability and legitimacy of collaborative governance in one map.

Trust Fund Families: Elite Family Bureaucratization and the Persistence of Wealth Inequality

How do wealthy families sustain economic privilege across generations? A historic peak in wealth inequality in the United States has inspired research on how markets, tax rates, and political influence sustain elite wealth. However, such explanations tend to focus on economic elites as individual households, whereas the behaviors through which elite families sustain wealth across multiple generations are less understood. Using six months of ethnographic observations at an office that manages the wealth of top 0.1% wealthy families, as well as interviews with the office’s clients and a wider sample of wealth managers, I argue that family bureaucratization is a central tool for intergenerational wealth preservation. Specifically, financial managers help wealthy families adopt the characteristics of a Weberian bureaucracy—norms, specialized training, and an organizational structure—in order to use legal entities such as trusts and foundation to sustain elite wealth not only within individual households but also across multiple generations. Wealth inequality should thus be understood not merely as a point-in-time disparity between households but as an enduring multigenerational structure that engages extended family members.

Introduction to the Symposium Issue on Reappraising Bureaucracy in the 21st Century

Abstract This essay introduces the special symposium issue Reappraising Bureaucracy in the 21st Century in Perspectives on Public Management and Governance. The symposium seeks to place Weberian bureaucracy in the context of contemporary public administration and evaluate its relevance to modern-day concerns.

Gender Ramifications of a Weberian Bureaucracy: A Feminist Appraisal of the United States Department of Agriculture

AbstractIn the field of public administration, a feminist appraisal of Weber’s bureaucracy has transpired gradually. In this article, we examine the gender ramifications of Weberian bureaucracy, with a specific focus on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Using the feminist critique of the field at large, and the framework of bureau men and settlement women in particular, we critically analyze Weber’s ideas of an ideal bureaucracy. Our central contribution is intermeshing Stiver’s critical perspectives with the theoretical frames of feminist phenomenology and feminist standpoint theory to craft a feminist model for appraising the agricultural bureaucracy in the United States. In doing so, we demonstrate how women farmers’ and landowners’ approach to agriculture and farm management is fundamentally different in values and orientation than the USDA’s Weberian bureaucratic approach which dictates the design and implementation of agricultural policy.

Complementary Bureaucracy: Reimagining Weberian Impersonalism with Indigenous Relationality

AbstractWeber’s ideal-type bureaucracy demands impersonalism premised on assumptions regarding egalitarianism and polity scale, explaining why it is able to excel with large-scale population policymaking. Transport, national infrastructure, taxation, and defense are classic success examples of what is called the actions of government that are done “to” and “for” the polity. However, government fails in important areas of action done “with” citizens and communities, such as health, education, and justice, which do not fit one-size-fits-all approaches. Calls to personalize policy delivery chafe at Weberian bureaucracy and inevitably will do so until form change is recognized as necessary. One way forward may be found in Indigenous worldviews and clan governance concepts of relationality. This article uses William Ouchi\'s organizational form arguments that privilege clans alongside markets and hierarchies, as well as illustrative examples of Indigenous public service leadership, to propose a new conceptual approach—complementary bureaucracy—to demonstrate clan approaches that provide rich practical and theoretical opportunities to engage in bureaucratic personalism. Taking the best of impersonalism and relationality helps meet modern societal needs, building off the wisdom of governance practices that have served this planet’s oldest enduring civilizations.

Weberian Bureaucracy and Contemporary Governance

Abstract Max Weber’s role as a founder of the study of administration is often in much dispute, but he is important for two things: he captured the essence of bureaucracy and he connected it to the role of business in the economy. Weber points us toward the argument that businesses seek profits, that the key to maximizing their profits is certainty in their environment, and that the “iron cage” of bureaucracy plays an important role in reducing uncertainty. Since his contribution to bureaucratic theory in 1922, however, the ground has shifted underneath his argument, especially in its deep connections to public administration. Although policymakers, the media, and the public still tend to view government organizations in Weberian terms, the actual operation of government, in the United States and around the world, has become distinctly less Weberian. The increasing gap between theory and practice raises profound problems for government’s expertise and accountability, and that poses one of the biggest challenges facing public administration in the twenty-first thinking. A fresh model incorporating the complexity of social problems, the complexity of governmental strategies, and the structures of public law provide a way forward in the second century of the grand Weberian tradition

Institutional Divergence of Digital Item Bank Management in Bureaucratic Hybridization: An Application of SSM Based Multi-Method.

This study aims to analyze institutional divergence of Beckert (2010) by measuring the reframing of three constitutive principles of Digital Weberian Bureaucracy (DWB). In contrast to the studies by Gaus et al. (2017), Sofyani et al. (2018), Muellerleile and Robertson (2018), Turner et al. (2019), and Meilani and Hardjosoekarto (2020), this study explores normative and mimetic mechanisms resulting in the mixed pattern of public administration (Traditional Public Administration (TPA), New Public Management (NPM), and Post NPM), focusing on the transformation of Digital Era Governance (DEG). Employing Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) by Reynolds and Holwell (2010), combined with Text Network Analysis (TNA) by Segev (2020) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) by Borgatti et al. (2014), this study shows the micro dynamics of relationships between actors, the meso dynamics of organizations, and the absence of regulations at the macro level, all of which lead to institutional divergence in the form of fully hybrid governance (as proposed by De Waele et al. (2015)) that is also caused by normative and mimetic mechanisms. Complementing the study of DWB, this study suggests that computer literacy and programming languages are essential to be improved by future bureaucrats as social actors to achieve the success of digital transformation.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11213-021-09579-4.

A formal model of street-level bureaucracy

Different from a classic Weberian bureaucracy, public service bureaucrats directly interact with citizens at the frontlines of government. These first responders use their discretion to meet some citizens’ needs but deliberately overlook the other clients. What lies beneath the street-level bureaucrats’ behavior in their contacts with citizens? This study develops a model to explain how street-level bureaucrats are motivated to move toward the public and the extent to which they are engaged in helping their citizens. The model is driven by costs and benefits of behavior based on the assumption that street-level bureaucrats are rational actors trying to maximize their utility. However, utility here is defined as more than self-interest; it is the set of outcomes valued by the bureaucrats such as reducing job-related stress, pursuing work-generated ends, serving needy citizens, and implementing good public policy.

Bureaucracy and Policy Implementation in Democratic Governance: A Focus on Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

ABSTRACT The study investigated the roles of bureaucracy in Nigeria and its inadequacies in adhering to the Weberian model of policy implementation in the Nigeria democratic governance. The study adopted a survey research design and utilized primary data obtained through the administration of questionnaires to a purposively selected 220 respondents comprising senior bureaucrats and CSOs, and conduct of the in-depth interview. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis with the aid of SPSS. The study revealed that even though, bureaucrats are not necessarily the primary makers of the policy. They play an active role in policy implementation in Nigeria. However, factors such as political pressure, inadequate budgetary allocation, over politicization of the appointment into governmental offices leading to inadequate professionalism, and environmental variables hinder the effective implementation of policy in Nigeria. It was equally established that as ideal as the Weberian model of bureaucracy is, there are inevitable lacuna and inadequacies in its application to Nigeria, due to factors such as socio-cultural forces, collectivism as against individualism, and absolute formalism. The study concluded that, although Weberian bureaucracy could be ideal and applicable to large-scale economy, its model is inadequate in addressing all the needs and circumstances of Nigeria. Hence, the need to restructure or readjust the bureaucracy to adapt to new and complex problems becomes apparent.