What is a Bureaucracy?
A bureaucracy is a large administrative structure tasked with carrying out unnecessarily complicated procedures and rules to ‘facilitate’ duties of the entity. It consists of multiple bureaus, petty officers, “red tape” and excessive waste. Bureaucracies are most often associated with governmental bodies, particularly at state and federal levels, but any large entity, such as a corporation or school district, can be bureaucratic in nature. An “efficient bureaucracy” is an oxymoron.
A bureaucracy has a vertical pyramid-like power structure with many more offices, bureaus and employees located at the base than at the top. The impotent base of a bureaucracy interfaces with those it is intended to serve. Power here is diluted because each job within the bureaucracy is highly limited in scope, subject to strict rules and documenting procedures that are interdependent on relevant work of adjacent offices that rely in turn on the contributions of yet other offices. This non-localized power structure often frustrates those who are relying on the entity to respond quickly or efficiently to a need.
A bureaucracy makes it easy for those within the bureaucracy to “pass the buck,” blaming inefficiency on another office, failed communication between offices, or missing documentation, for example. In many cases excuses are all too true. These factors combine to ‘encourage’ laziness, with efficiency typically inversely proportional to the size of the bureaucracy. In other words, the bigger the bureaucracy, the slower and more inefficient it’s likely to be.
While the base of a bureaucracy exercises little power and less sway, the top of the power pyramid is quite different in nature. These seats are typically filled with appointees who carry political or financial influence within the government or entity, or they directly serve and answer to those who do. Nepotism, corruption, ideological influences and oligarchy are just some of the possible ways a bureaucracy can be abused from the top down.
Within present-day industrialized capitalistic nations, bureaucracies might seem a must. However, there are those who believe a more efficient model could be had by shrinking big government and allocating more power to states and citizens’ advocacy groups for smaller, more efficient, semi-autonomous organizational structures. In the meantime, as populations skyrocket, bureaucracies bloat with the extra charge, becoming even less efficient. In the United States, one example of a glaring bureaucratic failure was the lack of response to the Gulf Coast in the flooding aftermath of the August 2005 Katrina storm that wiped out New Orleans and resulted in the deaths of over 1,800 people.
Written by R. Kayne
