The Ups and Downs of Bureaucratic Organization

Why do democracies give birth to bureaucracies and bureaucrats? How and why has a seemingly undesirable and unviable organizational form weathered relentless criticism over many years, and why do some see it experiencing a renaissance? Normative democratic theory, theories of formal organizations, and Weber's ideas are used in this essay to explore debureaucratization efforts since the late 1970s and the rediscovery of bureaucracy since the mid 1990s. One conclusion is that there has not been a monotonic development toward bureaucratization, as argued by Weber, or debureaucratization, as argued by his critics. Several normative and organizational components have coexisted; the significance of each component and their relationships has varied over time. Although elements of a theoretical framework are suggested, no great optimism for a comprehensive theory of bureaucratization and debureaucratization is offered. Institutions, agency, and macro forces all matter, but there is no agreement regarding the conditions under which one factor matters more than the others.