Understanding Bureaucracy

Characteristics of Bureaucracy

• Modern officialdom operates with fixed jurisdictional areas, typically ordered by rules, laws, or administrative regulations.
• Regular activities are assigned as official duties within the governed structure.
• Authority to command is stably distributed and delimited by coercive rules.
• Methodical provisions ensure continuous duty fulfillment, employing qualified personnel.
• Public and lawful governments use these three elements to create "bureaucratic authority".
• Private economic domination relies on the same factors for bureaucratic "management".
• Bureaucracy is fully developed in political and ecclesiastical communities in the modern state and advanced capitalist institutions.
• Permanent public office authority with jurisdiction is the exception rather than the rule, historically.
• Rulers often used personal trustees or court servants for important measures instead of established offices.
• Commissions and authority were not precisely defined but were temporarily assigned.

Principles of Office Hierarchy and Authority

• A firmly ordered system exists with supervision of lower offices by higher ones.
• Governed individuals can appeal decisions to higher authorities in a regulated manner.
• The office hierarchy is monocratically organized when bureaucracy is fully developed.
• Hierarchical office authority exists in state, ecclesiastical structures, party organizations, and private enterprises.
• Bureaucratic character is not changed based on if the authority is "private" or "public".
• Hierarchical subordination doesn't authorize higher authorities to take over lower office business when jurisdictional competency is fully implemented.
• Offices tend to continue and be held by others after fulfilling their initial tasks.

Modern Office Management

• Based on written documents ("the files") preserved in their original or draft form.
• Involves staff or subaltern officials and scribes, while the body of officials in a "public" office, along with materials and files, makes up a "bureau".
• Private enterprises usually call the "bureau" as the "office".
• Civil service separates the bureau from the official's private residence and segregates official activity from private life.
• Public funds and equipment are separate from an official's private property.
• Executive office is separate from the household, business from private correspondence, and business assets from private fortunes.
• Modern entrepreneurs act as the "first official" of their enterprise.
• The concept of the state's bureau activities differing from private economic offices is a continental European idea, foreign to the American system.
• Specialized office management requires thorough and expert training.
• This applies to private enterprise executives and employees and state officials.
• Fully developed offices demand the official's full working capacity, potentially with firmly delimited obligatory time.
• Management follows general, stable, and exhaustive rules that can be learned.

Office Management Rules

• Knowledge represents technical learning involving jurisprudence, administrative or business management.
• Reduction of modern office management to rules is rooted in its nature.
• Public administration theory assumes authority to order by decree doesn't entitle the bureau to regulate matters by commands for each case, but to regulate it abstractly.
• This contrasts regulating relationships through individual privileges, which dominates in patrimonialism unless fixed by sacred tradition.

Position of the Official

• Office holding is a "vocation" demanding training and examinations
• The official position is a duty, legally and actually.
• Office holding shouldn't be exploited for rents or usual service exchanges.
• Entering an office means accepting faithful management duties for a secure existence.
• Modern loyalty to an office doesn't relate to a person but impersonal purposes, and replaces earthly masters with ideas like "state," "church," "community," "party," or "enterprise".
• Political officials are not the personal servants of a ruler.

Personal Position of the Official

• Strives for and often enjoys social esteem.
• Social position is guaranteed by rank rules and, for political officials, criminal code definitions protect against insults and contempt.
• Social position is highest with trained experts, social differentiation, or costly training.
• Educational certificates enhance social position.
• Status is explicitly recognized, requiring consent from the official body for aspirants.

Appointment of Officials

• Pure type of bureaucratic official is appointed by a superior authority.
• Formal elections don't always exclude appointments, especially by party chiefs.
• Firmly organized parties can turn free elections into acclamations of the party chief's candidate.
• Formally free elections become regulated fights for votes.
• Elections modify hierarchical subordination, giving elected officials autonomy.
• Elected officials don't derive positions "from above," but from powerful party members who control their careers.
• Appointed officials function more technically and functionally.
• Governing people can assess expertise only through experience.
• Parties prioritize services to the party boss over expertise.
• Conditions are similar where monarchs appoint, but followings are less controllable.
• Trained professionals' demand and public opinion's recognition render unqualified officials harmful to the ruling party.
• Elected administrative chiefs and officials may compromise expert qualifications of a bureaucratic mechanism.
• It also weakens officials' dependence upon the hierarchy which is harder to oversee in large administrative structures.

The Official's Tenure and Compensation

• Normally held for life, legally guaranteed against arbitrary dismissal.
• Legal guarantees ensure objective duty discharge, free from personal considerations.
• Officials seek civil-service laws for old age security and removal protection, but "right to the office" can hinder technical efficiency and career opportunities.
• Compensation includes a fixed salary and pension based on status and seniority.
• Income security and social esteem make offices sought-after, allowing low salaries in some nations.

Official Career Advancement

• The official is set for a "career" inside the hierarchical structure and desires fixed promotion conditions based on seniority or examination grades.
• Examinations establish the official's character and have lasting effects.
• Offices can be viewed as "prebends" for those with educational certificates.
• General qualifications consider the higher political offices, especially positions of "ministers," and are filled without educational certificates.