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"Weberian Bureaucracy" published on by Oxford University Press.

This review presents new perspectives on the anthropology of bureaucracy. Since Weber's account of the importance of this organizational mode to the functioning of contemporary socioeconomic systems, the inescapability of bureaucracy has been repeatedly theorized to show its good and ill effects. Yet anthropologists retain an ambivalent relation to this topic and can struggle to move beyond critique. I consider this ambivalence, suggesting that it reflects a frustrated desire for better governance, and offer neglected topics as potentially productive ways to tackle bureaucracy as an omnipresent yet difficult-to-pinpoint cultural form. Finally, the review makes the case for an impenitently anthropological approach to the fullness of bureaucracy, including testing the ethnographer's founding categories of thought, over a position of pure denunciation or evaluation.

Max Weber believed that bureaucracy could be understood by analysing its ideal-typical characteristics, and that these characteristics would become more pervasive as the modern age advanced. Weber's horizontal account of bureaucracy can be criticised on various grounds, including its unrealistic notion of bureaucratic rationality. An alternative view is proposed, namely, that the development of state bureaucracies is driven by the trajectory of the highpower politics in which they are nested. This claim is examined in the light of historical examples of the evolution of bureaucracies – in Prussia, Britain, the USA and Japan. In analysing these cases, the paper examines the original visions behind different institutional designs in different countries, and discusses how the vision was formed and how durable it proved to be. In contrast to sociological and historical explanations, the analytical contribution of new institutional economists to understanding the problems of bureaucratic evolution is assessed. Then, moving from positive to normative, it is asked why there is an evaluative ambiguity in the idea of modern bureaucracy. In other words, why is it at the same time regarded as an essential requirement of a developmental state, and as a pathological aspect of the state's executive action? Five common complaints about bureaucracy are discussed in the light of Peter Evans's 'hybridity model' of public action, leading to the conclusion that some of these problems are quite deep-seated and likely to be unyielding to recent attempts at reform. – bureaucracy ; institutional economics ; public action ; Max Weber

Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Beyond Bureaucracy -- I Bureaucracy And Democracy -- Being Human and Being Organized -- The Superior Person -- The Trouble with Democratic Management -- Gray Flannel Unionist -- II Motivation -- How Much Woney Do Executives Want -- III Conflict -- Conflict in the Executive Suite -- IV Succession -- Taking Over -- V Innovation And Change -- Practical Problems and the Uses of Science -- How Scientific Management Thwarts Innovation -- A Symposium: The Innovating Organization -- Post Bureaucratic Leadership

The performance of a bad bureaucracy indicates a bureaucracy is riddled with problems; a pathology which arose not always coming from outside the bureaucratic body, but pathology that has been flourishing and will be exerting influence when the bureaucracy is unhealthy. This research article would like to give an overview of the incidence of the pathological bureaucracy which argumentation pathology can prevent. The phenomenon occurs that the bureaucracy could not deliver good public services and bureaucracy is a den of disease. The specific purpose of this research is focused on finding ways of preventing the pathology of the bureaucracy that comes from a variety of scientific literature. The method in this research article is systematic reviews technique that tries to identify all the written evidence exists regarding research themes. The results of this study reveal that the pathology of the bureaucracy is something to be prevented if we want the bureaucracy to run the task properly, one of the ways that can be done is to do a bureaucratic innovation (an innovation on structure, systems, culture). The innovation of bureaucracy will not only make changes to the organization to prevent the pathology of the bureaucracy but also as an ingredient to do discretion for a government policy especially regional government.

Sociological concern with the social and educational origins of higher civil servants is interpreted on the basis of various explicit and implicit theses guiding such studies. The author shows that all such approaches rest on two unexamined assumptions- that pre-occupational socialization is vital for the later attitudes of higher civil servants and that it is possible to modify the social and educational origins of this group. Presenting comparative information and historical data on the British situation to show that such modification is unlikely without a radical transformation of values guiding a public bureaucracy, the author argues that research on organizational structures and on the influence of pre-occupational and post-occupational experience are essential for a sound discussion of the theses outlined, and for any future discussions of the responsiveness of public bureaucracies.