BUREAUCRACY AS A FORM OF GOVERNMENT
25TH OF MAY, 2021
BY: CHIEF MIKE OZEKHOME, SAN, OFR, FCIArb, LL.M, Ph. D, LL.D
INTRODUCTION
MEANING
Bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution,
whether publicly owned or privately owned. It is a centralized form of
management and tends to be differentiated from adhocracy, in which
management is decentralized.
Some have argued that bureaucracy constitutes efficient and rational way
in which human activity can be organized and that systematic processes
and organized hierarchies are necessary to maintain order, maximize
efficiency, and eliminate favoritism. On the other hand, others have seen
bureaucracy as a threat to individual freedom, with the potential of trapping
individuals in an impersonal “iron cage” of rule-based, rational control.
MODERN BUREAUCRACY MEANING
Modern bureaucracy has been defined as comprising four features:
hierarchy (clearly defined spheres of competence and divisions of labor),
continuity (a structure where administrators have a full-time salary and
advance within the structure), impersonality (prescribed rules and
operating rules rather than arbitrary actions), and expertise (officials are
chosen according to merit, have been trained, and hold access to
knowledge).
HISTORY
Although the term “bureaucracy” first originated in the mid-18th Century,
organized and consistent administrative systems existed much earlier. The development of writing (c. 3500 BC) and the use of documents was critical
to the administration of this system, and the first definitive emergence of
bureaucracy occurred in ancient Sumer, where an emergent class of
scribes used clay tablets to administer the harvest and to allocate its spoils.
Ancient Egypt also had a hereditary class of scribes that administered the
civil-service bureaucracy.
A hierarchy of regional proconsuls and their deputies administered the
Roman Empire. The reforms of Diocletian (Emperor from 284 to 305)
doubled the number of administrative districts and led to a large-scale
expansion of Roman bureaucracy. The early Christian Author Lactantius (c.
250 – c. 325) claimed that Diocletian’s reforms led to widespread economic
stagnation, since the provinces were divided into minute portions, and
many presidents and a multitude of inferior officers lay heavy on each
territory. After the Empire split, the Byzantine Empire developed a
notoriously complicated administrative hierarchy, and in the 20th century
the term “Byzantine” came to refer to any complex bureaucratic structure.
In China, when the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) unified China under the
Legalist system, the Emperor assigned administration to dedicated officials
rather than nobility, ending feudalism in China, replacing it with a
centralized, bureaucratic government. The form of government created by
the first emperor and his advisors was used by later dynasties to structure
their own government. Under this system, the government thrived, as
talented individuals could be more easily identified in the transformed
society. The Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) established a complicated
bureaucracy based on the teachings of Confucius, who emphasized the
importance of ritual in a family, in relationships, and in politics. With each
subsequent dynasty, the bureaucracy evolved. In 165 BC, Emperor Wen
introduced the first method of recruitment to civil service through
examinations, while Emperor Wu (r. 141–87 BC), cemented the ideology of
Confucius into mainstream governance installed a system of
recommendation and nomination in government service known as xiaolian,
and a national academy whereby officials would select candidates to take
part in an examination of the Confucian classics, from which Emperor Wu
would select officials. In the Sui dynasty (581–618) and the subsequent
Tang dynasty (618–907) the shi class would begin to present itself by
means of the fully standardized civil service examination system, of partial
recruitment of those who passed standard exams and earned an official
degree. Yet recruitment by recommendations to office was still prominent in both dynasties. It was not until the Song dynasty (960–1279) that the
recruitment of those who passed the exams and earned degrees was given
greater emphasis and significantly expanded. During the Song dynasty
(960–1279) the bureaucracy became meritocratic. Following the Song
reforms, competitive examinations took place to determine which
candidates qualified to hold given positions. The imperial examination
system lasted until 1905, six years before the Qing dynasty collapsed,
marking the end of China’s traditional bureaucratic system.
JURISDICTIONS WHERE BUREACRACY ONCE EXISTED
ASHANTI EMPIRE
The government of the Ashanti Empire was built upon a sophisticated
bureaucracy in Kumasi, with separate ministries which saw to the handling
of state affairs. Ashanti’s Foreign Office was based in Kumasi. Despite the
small size of the office, it allowed the state to pursue complex negotiations
with foreign powers. The Office was divided into departments that handled
Ashanti relations separately with the British, French, Dutch, and Arabs.
Scholars of Ashanti history, such as Larry Yarak and Ivor Wilkes, disagree
over the power of this sophisticated bureaucracy in comparison to the
Asantehene. However, both scholars agree that it was a sign of a highly
developed government with a complex system of checks and balances.
THE UNITED KINGDOM
The 18th Century Department of Excise developed a sophisticated
bureaucracy. Pictured, the Custom House in the City of London
Instead of the inefficient and often corrupt system of tax farming that
prevailed in absolutist states such as France, the Exchequer was able to
exert control over the entire system of tax revenue and government
expenditure. By the late 18th Century, the ratio of fiscal bureaucracy to
population in Britain was approximately 1 in 1300, almost four times larger
than the second most heavily bureaucratized nation, France. Thomas
Taylor Meadows, Britain’s consul in Guangzhou, argued in his Desultory
Notes on the Government and People of China (1847) that the long
duration of the Chinese Empire is solely and altogether owing to the good
government which consists in the advancement of men of talent and merit
only, and that the British must reform their civil service by making the
institution meritocratic. Influenced by the ancient Chinese imperial
examination, the Northcote–Trevelyan Report of 1854, recommended that
recruitment should be on the basis of merit determined through competitive
examination, candidates should have a solid general education to enable
inter-departmental transfers, and promotion should be through
achievement rather than preferment, patronage, or purchase. This led to
implementation of Her Majesty’s Civil Service as a systematic, meritocratic
civil service bureaucracy.
In the British civil service, just as it was in China, entrance to the civil
service was usually based on a general education in ancient classics,
which similarly gave bureaucrats greater prestige. The Cambridge-Oxford
ideal of the civil service was identical to the Confucian ideal of a general
education in world affairs through humanism.
FRANCE
Like the British, the development of French bureaucracy was influenced by
the Chinese system. Under Louis XIV of France, the old nobility had neither
power nor political influence, their only privilege being exemption from
taxes. The dis-satisfied noblemen complained about this “unnatural” state
of affairs, and discovered similarities between absolute monarchy and
bureaucratic despotism. With the translation of Confucian texts during the
enlightenment, the concept of a meritocracy reached intellectuals in the
West, who saw it as an alternative to the traditional ancient regime of
Europe. Western perception of China even in the 18th Century admired the
Chinese bureaucratic system as favourable over European governments
for its seeming meritocracy.
Napoleonic France adopted this meritocracy system and soon saw a rapid
and dramatic expansion of government, accompanied by the rise of the
French civil service and its complex systems of bureaucracy. This
phenomenon became known as “bureaumania”. In the early 19th century,
Napoleon attempted to reform the bureaucracies of France and other territories under his control by the imposition of the standardized
Napoleonic Code. But paradoxically, that led to even further growth of the
bureaucracy.
French Civil Service examinations adopted in the late 19th Century were
also heavily based on general cultural studies. These features have been
likened to the earlier Chinese model.
OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS
By the mid-19th Century, bureaucratic forms of administration were firmly in
place across the industrialized world. Thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Karl
Marx began to theorize about the economic functions and power-structures
of bureaucracy in contemporary life. Max Weber was the first to endorse
bureaucracy as a necessary feature of modernity, and by the late 19th
century bureaucratic forms had begun their spread from government to
other large-scale institutions.
The trend toward increased bureaucratization continued in the 20th
Century, with the public sector employing over 5% of the workforce in many
Western countries. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc
nations, a powerful class of bureaucratic administrators termed
nomenklatura governed nearly all aspects of public life.
The 1980s brought a backlash against perceptions of “big government” and
the associated bureaucracy. Politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald
Reagan gained power by promising to eliminate government regulatory
bureaucracies, which they saw as overbearing, and return economic
production to a more purely capitalistic mode, which they saw as more
efficient. In the business world, managers like Jack Welch gained fortune
and renown by eliminating bureaucratic structures inside corporations. Still,
in the modern world, most organized institutions rely on bureaucratic
systems to manage information, process records, and administer complex
systems, although the decline of paperwork and the widespread use of
electronic databases is transforming the way bureaucracies function.
VARIOUS THEORIES OF BUREAUCRACY
KARL MARX
Karl Marx theorized about the role and function of bureaucracy in his book,
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, published in 1843. In Philosophy of
Right, Hegel had supported the role of specialized officials in public
administration, although he never used the term “bureaucracy” himself. By
contrast, Marx was opposed to bureaucracy. Marx posited that while
corporate and government bureaucracy seem to operate in opposition, in
actuality they mutually rely on one another to exist. He wrote that “The
Corporation is civil society’s attempt to become state; but the bureaucracy
is the state which has really made itself into civil society.
JOHN STUART MILL
Writing in the early 1860s, political scientist John Stuart Mill theorized that
successful monarchies were essentially bureaucracies, and found evidence
of their existence in Imperial China, the Russian Empire, and the regimes
of Europe. Mill referred to bureaucracy as a distinct form of government,
separate from representative democracy. He believed bureaucracies had
certain advantages, most importantly the accumulation of experience in
those who actually conduct the affairs. Nevertheless, he believed this form
of governance compared poorly to representative government, as it relied
on appointment rather than direct election. Mill wrote that ultimately the
bureaucracy stifles the mind.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
“In any bureaucracy, there’s a natural tendency to let the system become
an excuse for inaction.” (Chris Fussell).
LAST LINE
Fellow Nigerians, synergise with me every week, to put our heads together
on how to retool Nigeria. Right here on “The Nigerian Project”, by Chief
Mike A. A. Ozekhome, SAN, OFR, FCIArb, LL.M, Ph.D, LL.D.
