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Max Weber extolled the hierarchic-bureaucratic mode of organization: "Experience" - he claimed - "tends universally to show that the purely bureaucratic type of administrative organization. is, from a purely technical point of view, capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency" (Weber, 1947, p. 337). Since Weber's time business and government bureaucracy has flourished. Between 1900 and 1950 the ratio of administrative personnel to production workers in U.S. industry grew from 10 per cent to 20 per cent (Bendix, 1956, p. 214)1. By 1983 it reached 48 per cent (Meyer, 1985, p. 37). The proportion of government employees (most of whom are bureaucrats) in the civilian labor force rose in the post-World War II period from 10 to 16 per cent (Meyer 1985 p. 37). A similar trend is noted throughout the industrialized world. Yet, far for being admired, bureaucrats - especially those working for the government- are looked upon as "permanently bungling and inefficient individuals or, alternately, [as] individuals who carry out only those decisions that serve their own interests, rather than those of their superiors" (Breton and Wintrobe, 1982, pp. 6-7) But, "however much people complain about the 'evils of bureaucracy' it would be sheer illusion to think for a moment that continuous administrative work can be carried out in any field except by means of officials working in offices. The whole pattern of everyday life is cut to fit this framework" (Weber, 1947, p. 337). Out of power politicians pledge that, if elected, they will curb the bureaucracy, but, when in office they seem unwilling or incapable to carry out their promise. Our goal is to reconcile Weber's claims in favor of bureaucracy with the arguments of the critics. The discussion is organized as follows. In Section 1 we present Weber's case in favor of a bureaucratic mode of organization Section 2 gives a brief description of major inquiries into the functioning of hierarchies. In Section 3 we present a simple model of an efficient Weberian bureaucracy. The Principal - Agent problem confronting profit-oriented enterprises is discussed in Section 4; section 5 discusses the additional difficulties confronting public sector Bureaus. Niskanen's hypothesis of a bureau-maximizing bureaucracy, and of bureaucracy-maximizing politicians is examined in Section 6. The seventh section is devoted to the issue of efficiency vs. loyalty of bureaucratic employees. The last section contains a brief summary of the major conclusions.

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