- "Bureaucracy is a body of non-elected governing officials or an administrative policy-making group."
The role of government agencies and their influence on policy outcomes.
Definition of Bureaucracy: An introduction to what bureaucracy is, how it functions and its role in public policy.
Public Choice Theory: This is a framework used to study the decisions and actions of public officials in interacting with private citizens and interest groups.
The Weberian Model: A model of bureaucracy that includes the characteristics of hierarchy, specialization, and formalized decision-making.
Principal-Agent Theory: This theory explains the relationship between principals (e.g., elected officials) and agents (e.g., bureaucrats) who act on their behalf.
Bureaucratic discretion: The power of bureaucrats to use their personal judgment in making decisions about policies and programs.
Bureaucratic accountability: How bureaucrats are held accountable to the public and to elected officials.
Bureaucratic culture: An organizational culture where rules are strictly followed, and there is a focus on efficiency and hierarchy.
Bureaucratic politics: The political struggles within a bureaucracy, including conflicts between different agencies and interest groups.
Bureaucratic reform: The process of changing the structure and behavior of a bureaucracy to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and responsiveness.
Street-level bureaucracy: The concept that front-line bureaucrats have a significant impact on policy implementation, and may exercise considerable discretion in their work.
Bureaucratic pathologies: Examples of dysfunction within bureaucratic organizations, such as red tape, corruption, and bureaucratic capture.
Iron triangle: This refers to the relationships that exist between bureaucratic agencies, interest groups, and Congress, which can lead to a lack of accountability.
New Public Management: A model of bureaucracy that emphasizes performance-based management, customer service, and market-oriented approaches.
Regulatory capture: The process where regulatory agencies become dominated by the interests of the parties they are supposed to regulate.
Public-Private Partnerships: Collaborations between the government and private organizations for the delivery of public services, such as healthcare or transportation.
Weberian bureaucracy: This type of bureaucracy is a formal and rationalized structure where specific rules and procedures govern the organization's operation.
Professional bureaucracy: This type is characterized by a collection of highly qualified professionals with specialized knowledge and skills who perform tasks within a specific area of expertise.
Epistemic bureaucracy: This type is responsible for creating, maintaining, and disseminating knowledge on behalf of the organization.
Adhocracies: This type of bureaucracy is focused on creating short-term solutions, with a less formal and less hierarchical structure.
Political bureaucracy: This type of bureaucracy operates in a political environment, with an emphasis on policy, constituent service, and the provision of regulatory oversight.
- "Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected officials. Today, bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution, whether publicly owned or privately owned."
- "The public administration in many jurisdictions and sub-jurisdictions exemplifies bureaucracy, but so does any centralized hierarchical structure of an institution, e.g. hospitals, academic entities, business firms, professional societies, social clubs, etc."
- "The first dilemma revolves around whether bureaucrats should be autonomous or directly accountable to their political masters." - "The second dilemma revolves around bureaucrats' responsibility to follow procedure, regulation and law or the amount of latitude they may have to determine appropriate solutions for circumstances that may appear unaccounted for in advance."
- "The German sociologist Max Weber argued that bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which human activity can be organized and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies are necessary to maintain order, to maximize efficiency, and to eliminate favoritism."
- "On the other hand, Weber also saw unfettered bureaucracy as a threat to individual freedom, with the potential of trapping individuals in an impersonal 'iron cage' of rule-based, rational control."