when, for instance, people strive for advancement in social status and for emphasis upon status differentiation. As we argued in Chapter 2, social stratification will occur in societies where people no longer know everyone else. However, the group will operate as one when threatened by the out- side world, each member recognizing that altruistic behavior will protect the group. In fact, altruistic behavior is needed when pursuing territorial expansion. In that effort, some individuals may lose their life, but the continued existence of the group is assured.
The power-political reason for the emergence of bureaucracies is that in socially stratified communities those in power will not be able to monitor the behavior of all members. In order to maintain some degree of control they need a support structure, a bureaucracy with people who do their bidding. These premodern bureaucracies are extractive organi- zations; they basically exploit the natural resources (produce, labor) of their populations to benefit the ruler(s) and the ruling class. Premodern bureaucracies are generally not service providers in the way that modern bureaucracies are. They serve as a“loyal and personally ascribed cadre of supporters”of the ruler or the ruling class, not as servants of the people (Yoffee, 2005, p. 140).
The more complex of these premodern bureaucracies were problem creators rather than problem solvers (Paynter, 1989). That is, the adaptive capability of any political-administrative system comes under stress once the political leadership, through a top-heavy bureaucracy, makes impossible demands upon the productive sector (Butzer, 1980). Indeed, civilizations declined because their governments became too demanding. In early modern Europe, discontent with government was generally fueled by unreasonable and extraordinary taxes, leading to tax riots and—sometimes—revolution (such as the American and French Revolutions).
Millennia of experience with a ruler-oriented bureaucracy fed the characterization that bureaucrats are only interested in advancing their own power, security, and comforts as long as that happens within the orbit of the ruler. In other words, those working in bureaucracy created selective benefits for themselves (Masters, 1986, p. 156). In the middle of the nineteenth century, Countess Bettina von Arnim (1785–1859), a politically active author in Prussia, wrote that high-level court advisers and ministers shielded the king from hearing about the plights of the people, and advised that government bureaucracy and corruption could only be countered by a people’s monarch (Hallihan, 2005, pp. 58 and 94).
It is premodern bureaucratic behavior that is reflected in the stereo- types that people still hold and that is found in novels of administrative
fiction. An early example of a discussion about public servants in English novels is provided by Humbert Wolfe (1885–1940; a poet, and a civil servant who rose to high rank in the Ministry of Labor), who describes Charles Dickens’s portrayal of those working in “The Circumlocution Office” in Little Dorrit as so cartoonesque that “whether he was misin- formed or not, he has presented a picture of red tape, of callous indifference to justice and honour, of ignorance, of nepotism, of sheer overwhelming machine-like stupidity that has not been erased from the canvas of the Civil Service in the sixty odd years since it was written.”
(Wolfe, 1924, p. 44) Can it be that, no matter how well civil servants today do their work, it is simply very hard to shake off the image of bureaucracy handed down from the past and that became a stereotype? It does not take much for the stereotype to be confirmed. Wolfe concludes that two main types can be found infictional work: the“mandarin-parasite”(such as the one Von Arnim described) and the“slave”who is destined to servitude for life (Wolfe, 1924, p. 41; see also Goodsell and Murray, 1995, p. 8; Samier, 2007, p. 8). To be sure, the mandarin-bureaucrat was always a member of the societal elites, the patricians, who regarded the populace as plebeians.
From among these plebeians the bureaucrat-slaves were recruited to perform lowly tasks and functions with no access to policy and decision making. Bureaucrat-mandarins and bureaucrat-slaves can be found in numerous countries, but in democracies with highly professionalized bureaucracies they are less likely to abound. Unfortunately, we will find people in any organization, whether public, nonprofit, or private, who pursue their own goals rather than serve the public and organiza- tion’s interest and who violate the intent of one or more of the dimensions of Weber’s ideal type. No type of organization or set of rules can be developed that will constrain the few tempted to abuse the system. We suggest that modern public bureaucracies in Western societies have come closest to constraining the chance that individual interests trump those of the public at large. With regard to bureaucracies in the private sector, it has proven to be more difficult to constrain individual interests and then especially at the higher levels in companies and corporations (Khurana, 2007). Sadly, there are plenty of examples in the United States alone (see
“After Enron, the Deluge.”).
It is in the course of the nineteenth century that bureaucracies no longer only serve a ruler or a ruling class, but serve a citizenry and their government.
Also, government bureaucracies no longer only extract resources from the population, they also provide many services. Bureaucracy today is very different from its historical counterpart. It will continue to do its work,
irrespective of the political party or parties elected into executive office. And it can continue to do its work because, in a democracy, it is almost impossible that one or a few career civil servants can acquire the power of a dictator with the exception perhaps of those in a military capacity. We reiterate that in democracy it is more difficult for those in power to use bureaucracy toward their own ends; in other words, bureaucracy is the “scaffold” that makes democracy work.
It has been suggested that democracy has biological, organic roots as well. Just like apes, people accept subordination when it is the only available alternative to being isolated from the group. But democracy is different.
Consider the following:“If everyone really wouldliketo be omnipotent and therefore the one dominant individual, and if really no one can be omnipotent, then people would rather compromise by being equal than by beingsubordinate.If the opposite were true—if people and/or monkeys preferred to be subordinate than to be equal—then there would be no morefights for top or middle positions.”(Davies, 1986, p. 360; emphasis in original) The desire for democratic government is based on the premise that all people are created equal, and that it emerges when other and higher-priority needs can be satisfied without accepting subordination to a ruler. This intertwinement of democracy and bureaucracy is characteristic for modern societal culture, and we saw already in Chapter 5 and shall see again later that bureaucracy has more exploitative features when it is operated in a less or nondemocratic environment.