Bureaucracy and the Public Sector

            The people who make decisions on a government are bureaucracies. A bureaucracy is people who have the charge of making policies and decision making. A great deal of the government is make policies for the common people have a better standard of living. Yet not everyone agrees with their task since in a state it is hard to please the majority of people. Bureaucrats don’t have much power, and it tends to be illegal for them to participate in political activities since it influences over advantages in political parties. Bureaucracies have had several reforms and adjustments since there have been times in which some bureaucrats have abused of their power. A government is very unlikely to be perfectly efficient since most governments face the problem of injustice and lack of equality.

            Some parts of policy making are done by such large number of people poses something of a problem for the state. Public administrators as a group have significant governmental power, yet they are too numerous and individually too unimportant to be controlled effectively. Therefore, a significant part of the governmental power of any state is necessarily not under close political control.

            The way in which we organize our public administration should aim to help us maximize some desirable traits. They are the following: honest, accurate translation of political leaders’ decisions into more specifically designed policies. Flexibility in dealing with special cases at the point of delivery; while administrators should be obedient to directions from above, they should not be slavishly obedient. This flexibility should be used arbitrarily, meaning that even if the public officer is not from same political party they work efficient.

            Bureaucracy is one way to organize the public administration. The word “bureaucracy” is often used in common languages to mean the public administration, usually with a concentration of distaste. However, social sciences have precise meaning for it: a particular model of administrative organization that was developed as a reform in the nineteenth century and spread widely to be the most generally used mode today.

            As noted previously, there is no ideal way to organize administration. Of the various things that may be desirable in public administration, bureaucracy is particularly strong, on the accurate translation of leaders’ decisions and on preventing arbitrary behavior. Believe it or not, it is also rather efficient.

            A problem with bureaucratic organization stems from a combination of two factors: 1. the difficulty in public administration, as compared with private business, of evaluating how well a person has performed a job, 2. the requirement in a bureaucracy that administrators be shielded from direct political pressure, usually by a system of tenure. In a private business, a standard yardstick is available to evaluate how well a person has done in a job. It profits have gone up in the person’s sector, if sales have been high, or whatever, if a person has made money from a company, then the job has been done well.

            Although bureaucracy is only one way to organize the public administration, it is the dominant mode of organization across the world, as we have seen. Indeed it is so dominant that the world bureaucracy has become almost a synonym for public administration, in much the way that “Kleenex” has become to be a synonymous with facial tissues.

Stereotype of what Bureaucrats do.        

    In various parts of the world, adjustments have evolved or have been invented that can soften bureaucracy when it is excessively “bureaucratic.” Among these are the office of ombudsman, provision for opening government files for inspection, informal interference in the bureaucracy by political leaders, and pressure from public opinion. There are four adjustments to bureaucracy that are taken into account in a state: the office of ombudsman is a Swedish invention. An ombudsman is a government office whose primary duty is to seek out citizens complaints of abuse by public administrators and to negotiate changes in the offending practices. The second is the freedom of information law have been passed in many countries, and the US has been a pioneer n this direction. The third adjustment is “Interference” in administration by political leaders may act as safety valve to help correct abuses. The fourth adjustment is pressure from public opinion can help to correct bureaucratic sluggishness and abuse.

The members of the public administration pose a dilemma for a state’s political party leaders. They are too numerous and individually too minor to control effectively, yet collectively they have a major impact on policies. We have discussed in previous articles various way by which the state may address its dilemmas, establishment of the bureaucratic model, adjustments to the bureaucratic model, attempts to achieve “representative bureaucracy”, but none of these can be fully successful. This is a problem of politics in which “half a loaf” may be the best one can hope for. As it is seen in most governments around the world the biggest problem tends to be the inefficient way in which a government runs. A government runs well has an appropriate administration, its citizens will be happy, therefore the government will have followers who support them.