The Principles of Bureaucracy

According to Max Weber, the difference between a bureaucrat and a politician is that “a bureaucrat has no idea ‘why’, but only an idea of ‘how’. The only things a bureaucrat knows are rules, instructions and norms. The only thing he can be punished for is violating their instructions.” M. Weber, in the 4th volume of his work ‘Economy and Society’ begins his argument by describing bureaucracy as ‘the ideal type of organization for the institution of social management’. Bureaucracy is based on a strict system of formal principles and rules, embodied in impersonal forms– the filling of which depends on the scope of application of the bureaucratic model of governance.

1. Bureaucracy functions as a set of rules, administrative laws.
2. A strictly hierarchical system of power distribution within the system and a regulated procedure of exchange of official information between the levels of the bureaucratic hierarchy
3. The organizational form of the bureaucratic system, which is embodied in a dedicated office, away from the official’s private affairs and property of the official.
4. Due to the specific requirements that the bureaucratic system places on its employees, bureaucracy becomes a profession that requires systematic education and training.
5. The evolution of traditional and modern societies is accompanied by the formation of a new social class of bureaucracy.
6. In order to implement general rules– which must be stable and structured, appropriate to the situation and very public– it is necessary to train officials on the basis of jurisprudence and administrative management.

In general, the bureaucratic stratum in modern society is based on loyalty to the duty of governance. It has the opportunity to replenish itself on the basis of appropriate education and examinations. This is in contrast to the class society of the traditional type, where the function of governance belonged to the ruling class of feudal nobility. The replacement of traditional society’s theocentric principles by the technocratic processes of incipient capitalism allowed the formation of a stratum of officials. These triggering mechanisms of social mobility are one of the signs of modern society. Therefore, bureaucratization is one of the manifestations of the global process of rationalization. The bureaucratic system becomes the main form of rationalization of social processes or actions, according to Weber. He emphasizes the leading role of economics and technology in the emergence of the bureaucratic system as a form of a social management institution in an industrial society.

In this context the bureaucracy appears as a soulless mechanism, functioning according to the strict laws of efficiency of the classical scientific picture of the world, prone to biological and mechanistic reduction. The bureaucracy that we have today is the result of many factors: the rationalization of law, the importance of the phenomenon of mass, the increasing centralization associated with the great possibilities of communication and the concentration of enterprises, the increasing penetration of the state in the most diverse fields of human activity, and last but not least, the development of technology.