Max Weber: Bureaucracy | Sociology Optional for UPSC (Notes) PDF Download

Bureaucracy

• Bureaucracy, like his many other concepts, is also linked to the Ideal Type construct and Weber associated it with the rising rationalization of society. It is an Ideal Type of organisation in which, structure  is based on  legal rational authority. According  to  Weber, bureaucracy  is a  type of organisation which suits  most of the modern societies where work  is done rationally. It is a hierarchical organisation, designed rationally to coordinate the work many individuals, in the pursuit of large scale administrative tasks and organizational goals.
• Capitalism, which is the basis of economy in the modern world also works on rational organisation and it requires bureaucratic organisations for its working. According to him, from a purely technical point of view, a bureaucracy is capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency, and is in this sense, formally the most rational known means of exercising authority over human beings. It is superior to any other form in precision, in stability, in the stringency of its discipline, and in its reliability. It thus, makes possible, a particularly high degree of calculability of results, for the heads of the organisation and for those acting in relation to it.
• According to Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters, in their Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society: New Translations m Politics, Bureaucracy, and Social Stratification, 2015, Weber specified certain typical, elements associated with the bureaucracy, like -
• Bureaucracy works on the basis of written legal rational rules. Activities of bureaucrats are in the form of official duty.
  • There is a hierarchy of officials in authority.
  • Work is specialized in bureaucracy and staff is trained accordingly.
  • Bureaucrats are permanent and paid and they may have to work overtime.
  • Office work is vocation for bureaucrats and they are expected to do their work honestly.
  • The incumbent is not allowed to appropriate the position. Position always remains a part of the organisation.
  • Administrative acts, decisions, and rules are formulated and recorded in writing.
• This Ideal Type bureaucracy is only approximated in reality, but Weber argues that bureaucracies of modern societies are slowly moving towards this pure type as this type of organisation has technical superiority over other types of organisations.
• Weber had certain skepticism also about bureaucracy and despite it being most efficient type of organisation, Weber foresaw it as a source of alienation of human being. He referred it as iron cage of rationality which makes human beings, slave of rationality, who cannot escape it as they get too addicted to it. His major fear was that the rationalization that dominates all aspects of bureaucratic life was a threat to  individual liberty and creativity. He described bureaucracies as escape proof, practically unshatterable and among the hardest institutions to destroy once they are established. Unlike Marx, he didn’t see future in terms of dictatorship of proletariat, but in terms of dictatorship of officials.
•  Criticism: Weber’s concept of bureaucracy attracted wide criticism. Roberto Michels, in his Political Parti es, 1911, said that bureaucracy becomes so dominating in democracy, that it reduces a democracy into an oligarchy. Bureaucratic institutions were criticised for reducing human beings as simply cogs in the organizational machines. Others also claimed that this conception of pure legal rational institutions was utopian as humans cannot be totally rational. Organisations need flexible behaviour to deal with uncertain events and bureaucratic structures cannot provide such flexibility.