Lecture 12/13 Flashcards
The State & Modern Bureaucracy
Concept of modern bureaucracy (Weber)
- Hierarchical organization with carefully defined division of tasks
- Career-based personnel recruited on the basis of merit (bureaucrats are hired based on their qualifications and competences)
- Impersonal application of rules (bureaucrats conduct their business on the basis of rules rather on their political preferences)
Promise of Weberian Bureaucracy
- Effectiveness (things get done: lifelong employment attracts qualified people)
- Efficiency (things get done at a low cost)
- Equal treatment of citizens
Problems with modern bureaucracy
- Dictatorship of the official (bureaucrats become the masters of the politicians)
- Fragmentation (many different agents that are trying to solve the same problem)
- Proliferation (difficult to measure bureaucracy and make them accountable)
Increase politicization
- Spoils system: whenever a new president of the US gets elected, everyone from the bureaucracy leaves
- Clientelism: state jobs are distributed on basis of political loyalty
- Nomenklatura: group of people who do exactly what the politicians want them to do
Merit system
Bureaucrats are hired based on their professional qualifications and competence and are not hired for political reasons
Political (patronage) system
Bureaucrats are hired based on a support of a political party
Introduce new institutions and policies
- Ombudsmen: to make concerns to
- Affirmative action: recruiting under-represented groups in bureaucracy
New public management
Based on the idea that a market-oriented approach would make it more efficient
1. Competition (rather than hierarchy)
2. Performance-based recruitment (recruitment to civil service should be based on performance)
3. Managerial administrative conduct (clearly defined performance targets to work towards and is what they are being judged on)
“No longer to protect society from the market demands, but to protect market from the society’s demands)
