WEBER AND KAFKA: THE RATIONAL AND THE ENIGMATIC BUREAUCRACY

In: Public administration: an international journal, Band 90, Heft 1

Abstract

Max Weber's and Franz Kafka's respective understandings of bureaucracy are as different as night and day. Yet, Kafka's novel The Castle is best read with Max Weber at hand. In fact, Kafka relates systematically to all the dimensions in Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy and give us a much-contemplated parody, almost a counter-punctual ideal type, based on four key observations: bureaucratic excesses unfold in time and space; a "no error" ideology generates inescapable dilemmas; inscrutability is a life condition in bureaucracy; civil servants end up walking on the spot, just like the figures in Escher's painting: Ascending and Descending. Nevertheless, Weber and Kafka can both be right. While Kafka looks at the bureaucratic phenomenon through persons who are marginalized, Weber's perspective is historic-comparative and top-down. Are the observations of the one more correct than the other? The question is meaningless. As two opposite poles, Weber and Kafka "magnetize" each other. Adapted from the source document.