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“Bureaucracy” (1925)Excerpts from Max Weber’s Economy and Society

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Bureaucracy

Operating “[w]ithout regard for persons…bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is ‘dehumanized,’ the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation.” (Intro, 211)

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Characteristics of Modern Bureaucracy

I. Official jurisdictional areas

II. Official hierarchy and appeals process

III. Management based on written records – files or accounts

IV. Management requires training in a specialized field

V. Office demands “full working capacity” of official

VI. Management follows general rules, the knowledge of which represents technical expertise – jurisprudence, administrative or business management

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The Position of the Official within and Outside of Bureaucracy

I. Office Holding as a Vocation

II. The Social Position of the Official

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Office Holding as a Vocation

A vocation is “more than a job,” more than a way to “pay the bills,” it’s a “duty” Requires training, certification via examinations

Office holding is not considered ownership of a source of income, to be exploited for rents or fees in exchange for rendering services (as was the case under feudalism)

Entrance into office is considered an acceptance of a specific duty of loyalty to the purpose of the office “in return for the grant of a secure existence” Modern loyalty does not establish a relationship to a person (e.g., to a lord. as

under feudalism) but is devoted to impersonal and functional purposes

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The Social Position of the Official

A. Social esteem and status convention The modern official, in public or private office, strives for and usually attains elevated social esteem vis-à-vis the

governed

B. Appointment vs. election: Consequences for expertise Typically a bureaucratic official is appointed by a superior authority; an elected official is no longer a purely

bureaucratic figure

C. Tenure and the inverse relationship b/w judicial independence and social prestige Normally, the position of official is held for life

D. Rank as basis of regular salary The official receives monetary compensation in form of a salary, normally fixed, and the old age security provided

by a pension

Salary not measured like a wage in terms of work done, but according to “status,” i.e., rank and maybe length of service

E. Fixed career lines and status rigidity The official is set for a “career” within the hierarchical order of public service and expects salary levels

commensurate with “seniority”

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Technical superiority of bureaucratic organization over administration by Notables

“Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs – these are raised to the optimum point…”(216)

Discharge of business according to calculable rules and without “regard for persons” “calculability nexus”

Decline of Notables Notable: luminary, leading light, guiding light

Rise of experts and technocrats

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The Leveling of Social Differences

A. Administrative DemocratizationBureaucratic organization has usually come into power on the basis of a leveling of economic and social differences

B. Mass Parties and the Bureaucratic Consequences of Democratization

Leveling applies not only to state but also to mass parties

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Objective and Subjective Bases of Bureaucratic Perpetuity

Once established, bureaucracy is among the hardest social structures to destroy

Bureaucracy is a power instrument for one who controls the bureaucratic apparatus

The professional bureaucrat is “chained to his activity in his entire economic and ideological existence…”

Increasingly all order in public and private organizations is dependent on a system of files and the discipline of officialdom

it becomes our normal “orientation”

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Bureaucratic Perpetuity (cont’d) – Revolution becomes “more and more impossible”

The indispensability and impersonal character of bureaucratic apparatus works for anyone who is able to get control over it Doesn’t depend on personality of leaders

Bureaucratic apparatus, due to control over means of communication (telegraph, etc.) and its increasingly rationalized structure, impedes “revolution”

Coups d’etat take the place of revolutions coup: sudden, illegal deposition of a government,[usually by a small group of the existing

state establishment—typically the military—to replace deposed gov’t with another body