Over the last twenty years, wildlife biologists and transportation planners have worked with environmental groups and state and tribal governments to mitigate the effects of human transportation arteries on animal habitats and movements. This paper draws connections between this growing field of road ecology and feminist science studies in order to accomplish two things. First, it aims to highlight the often unacknowledged roots that the interdisciplinary field of animal studies has in feminist theory. Second, it seeks to contribute to conversations (...) in the humanities and social sciences on roadkill and on wildlife biology by steering us into a world of practice that foregrounds mundane details. I approach this topic through interdisciplinary methods, including interviews with tribal and state wildlife biologists and participation in fieldwork on a western painted turtle tagging project. Although engaging in science and formulating policy are often understandably regarded by nonspecialists as practices that distance observers from their topic, in the world of roadkill prevention, I argue that the opposite is the case. What I call “intimate bureaucracies” are formed: arrangements of papers, policies, and people that bring a world of counting, and accountability, into being. (shrink)

Given present criticisms of contemporary education and leadership practices, this article investigates the ways in which the basic concepts of state freedom and bureaucracy stifle ethics and social justice in educational leadership practices through the philosophical framework of Emmanuel Levinas. By investigating Levinas’ ‘an-archy’, the definition of ethics and justice in school leadership can be reframed towards responsibility to otherness rather than individual freedom. The anarchical ethic of pure responsibility to the Other suggests that educational leaders should prioritize specific (...) acts of responsibility over general actions based on the assumptions of traditional state education. Aspects of transactional, transformational, and social justice leadership are critiqued from this perspective. (shrink)

Weber's discussion of bureaucracy is generally taken as descriptive of organized social structure within a rational-legal society. This is understandable; yet elsewhere in Weber's sociology he cautions against precisely this kind of analysis. His counsel against reification, his emphasis upon subjective ideas standing behind social action, his characterization of "society" as subjective orientation to legitimacy, his discussion of organization and social relationships as probabilities of behavior in accordance with subjective belief in their existence, and his tendency to describe the (...) wide range of world views within the vocabularies of those who subscribe to them-all mitigate against viewing his description of bureaucratic standardization as Weber's own world view, much less as his sociology. Rather the discussion can be understood as a description of bureaucracy from within the bureaucratic setting and as a set of ideas subjectively held to as a basis of legitimacy, ideas whose truth value are largely irrelevant for Weberian analysis. This qualification of bureaucracy as a mentality supplements the more widely acknowledged ideal-type qualification and provides a basis for increased Weberian insight. Such insight dovetails with post-functionalist sociological theory, explains the origins and consequences of functionalist theory, and provides new understandings of recent findings in empirically based research. Moreover, it helps to focus current research away from bureaucracy as an existent entity and toward a phenomenon Weber identifies as the central process of Western civilization: the rationalization (bureaucratization) of human behavior, a process both unfulfillable and unstoppable. (shrink)

In his book, Democratic Autonomy: Public Reasoning about the Ends of Policy, Henry Richardson suggests a process-based objection to bureaucracy – that is, an objection to bureaucracy that does not refer primarily to results, but rather to an ethical flaw that is inherent to bureaucratic procedures. Richardson’s worry is that, while large and complex societies rely on bureaucratic agencies to implement policies, there is a threat of those within bureaucratic institutions having more power than the average citizen when (...) it comes to making specific decisions about how to enact policy, and that this inequality in decision making power may be unjustified because undemocratic. If such inequality in decision making power is indeed a real threat, it will turn out that bureaucratic organisations, while being largely motivated by considerations of procedural fairness, may in fact constitute quite unfair procedures. Richardson proposes some institutional reforms that he thinks will enable us to avoid being dominated by bureaucracies, while retaining bureaucratic agencies, which he believes are necessary in modern societies. In what follows, I illustrate Richardson’s worry about bureaucratic domination and his proposed solution to the problem with a simplified, concrete example. If we compare Richardson’s proposed institutional reforms with Max Weber’s analysis of the concept of bureaucracy, however, I argue that it becomes apparent that bureaucracy is in fact incompatible with the sort of democracy that Richardson favours. If I am correct, this means that to the extent that we adopt Richardson’s proposed reforms, we will be replacing bureaucracies with something else. (shrink)

Over recent decades, one can identify two key narratives associated with changes in university organization and governance. The first narrative focuses on the administrative consequences of an off-loading state relinquishing direct control over some of universities’ internal operations while at the same time driving bureaucratization at the institutional level. The second narrative focuses on the emergence of an increasingly competitive and uncertain environment driving universities to transform into strategically managed organizations. In this paper, we argue that while the organizational logics (...) associated with these two narratives imply differently accentuated forms of legitimation, they converge and combine with respect to key dimensions of universities’ internal organizing, ultimately giving rise to a hybrid form of organizational governance we label ‘strategic bureaucracy’. Such strategic bureaucracy, we illustrate, is characterized by a strong focus on strategic leadership and the associated management techniques while also intensifying organizational features traditionally associated with bureaucratic governance such as formalization and hierarchical authority. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Hegel gave the bureaucracy a distinctively corporatist and collegiate structure and insulated it from legislative control. The close match between these features of the Philosophy or Right and the structure of the Prussian bureaucracy, which had been used by reformers to insulate progressive decisions from Junker resistance, suggests that Hegel, too, wanted the bureaucracy to spearhead reform within a hostile environment.

Time is money. According to E.P. Thompson, this saying lies at the core of the logic of capitalism. And yet, in the vast literature on state-capital relations, the strategic value of time has remained relatively neglected compared to rent distribution and monetary exchanges. Elaborating on the recruitment of migrants by employers and their intermediaries in Mauritius, this article explores the role of bureaucratic time and delays in businesses’ access to the fundamental resource for economic accumulation: labour. It reveals a bifurcated (...) bureaucratic pathway, a two-speed logic in the Mauritian bureaucracy of migration. On one side is the lengthy and unpredictable process of administering the authorisations to recruit foreign workers; on the other appear what I term the “shortcuts through the red tape”, the exemptions to the bureaucratic procedures and delays that benefit politically connected actors. Drawing on this case study, I contend that the politics of waiting, inherent to bureaucratic routine, matters in the relations between business and the state. (shrink)

This article offers a revision of the history of Vincent de Gournay’s neologism bureaucracy. The author shows that it was designed as a polemical tool against a tendency to multiply customs, tax-collecting and controlling bureaus, which “strangled commerce” in France. The origin of the term had more to do with the pre-physiocratic theory of liberal economy than with political philosophy. More than just a pun, it emerged in the wake of a long tradition of anti-office discourse and formed part (...) of a new rhetorical strategy aimed at legitimizing the merchant estate, which suffered from a lack of prestige in France. (shrink)

Selected papers on OCD, Bureaucracy, and Psychopathy. Table of Contents: What are Some Characteristics of OCD in Children? The Failure of Political Philosophy to Engage Reality OCD and Philosophy How to Get Rid of OCD What are Some Characteristics of OCD in Children? OCD: The Philosopher’s Illness The Obsessive-compulsive Must Accept his Own Sadistic Sexuality Institutional Psychopathy The Psychology of the Bureaucrat Psychopaths are Rogue Bureaucrats And Bureaucrats are Non-rogue Psychopaths How Double-think is Possible Bureaucratic Bloat Responsible for OCD-spike (...) Submitting to Feminism Makes It More Psychopathic What is the Prognosis for People with OCD? The Way to Beat OCD is to Have a Purpose in Life Is OCD a Disease? Social Anxiety is about Rage Structural Therapy Effective Therapists Must Have and Project Inner Strength Reading-related Difficulties in People with OCD The Limitations of CBT in the Treatment of OCD Turn OCD Against Itself How do I get over my OCD? Intrusive Thoughts ​ Why People with OCD Have Them Physical vs. Mental Illness How to Treat Compulsions that are not Accompanied by Obsessions? Why Psychopaths Overachieve ​​ The Therapeutic Significance of a Healthy Sex Life Autism as Pseudo-self-containment The Two Ways in which Intellectual Activity Promotes Intelligence How Mental Illness Differs from Physical Illness Psychiatric Munchausen’s by Proxy What is the Prognosis for People with OCD? How is Rationalization Different from Auto-hypnosis? (shrink)

There are two kinds of bureaucracies: those that serve some non-bureaucratic purpose, albeit in a bureaucratic way, and those whose only purpose is to create more bureaucracy.

A distinction between �consensual� and �critical� Conservatism would seem to provide a useful framework for analysing the intellectual approaches of conservative thinkers to the question of bureaucracy in Britain in the modern period. It is suggested here that, although in the nineteenth century there quickly emerged a dominant, liberal/conservative consensual approach to bureaucracy, there has also been a lively, countervailing and critical set of conservative ideas and concerns. This critical approach itself contains many strands; it has contributed to (...) the vitality of conservative ideas on the subject and many of the concerns of contemporary right wing critics of bureaucracy have their antecedents far back in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ideas. (shrink)

This article examines the role bureaucracy has in enhancing the social diversity of judiciaries. It does so by analyzing the Israeli judiciary and its reforms over the last three decades, and the interaction of these reforms with the appearance of intersectional judges—Arab women, Jewish women of Orthodox background, and Jewish women from geographic and economic peripheries—into the Israeli judiciary. Based on an original empirical study, the article shows that the career paths of intersectional judges include administrative roles in the (...) judiciary more often than non-intersectional judges. The article further demonstrates how these administrative career paths were shaped by bureaucratic-minded reforms. The Israeli case study thus shows how the bureaucratic design of the judiciary can accommodate diversity efforts, sometimes unintendedly, and discusses the merits, boundaries, and drawbacks of such bureaucratic design. (shrink)

The “Fourth International Conference on the Comparative, Historical and Critical Analysis of Bureaucracy” was held in Vancouver, B.C., September 2-6,1985. Focusing on the relations between “Bureaucracy and Culture,” the conference program promised to have sections on intellectuals, the labor movement, prisons, mass culture, the new class, state terrorism, etc. As is usually the case in even the best organized conferences, however, most speakers paid only lip service to their assigned theme and chose to discuss instead whatever they happened (...) to be working on. The predictable result, of course, was that when these various Leibnizian monads were forced by the collective discussion to focus on the issues at hand, they simply fell back on recycling well-worn political stances to confront specific questions with automatic easy answers. (shrink)

Bureaucracy has had few admirers, as a quick perusal of 20th-century political and social theory readily indicates. In recent years, several feminist theorists have also joined this vociferous anti-bureaucracy chorus, denouncing bureaucracy’s excessively hierarchical, impersonal, cold and controlling nature. The goal of this article is to review these charges and to show why the term ‘caring bureaucracy’ is not an oxymoron. In the first two sections, the author considers the various reasons why bureaucratic structures are said (...) to be bad both for the people who work in them and for those who deal with them. The author proposes to discuss these charges in light of some research on feminist organizations and street-level bureaucracy. The intention is not to offer a paean to street-level discretion or to the claims of ‘the heart’ in public service; it is, rather, to underscore at once the beauty and the danger of discretion. It is also noted that feminist theorists ought to be cautious when they call for ‘flattened hierarchies’ and for fewer rules in large institutions – for these might work against the best interests of women. The last part of the article offers the outline of a caring bureaucracy and suggests avenues to be explored in future care ethics research. (shrink)

Most accounts of Jeremy Bentham deal with him as a prophet of either utilitarianism or of liberal democracy. This book discusses a less familiar but very important aspect of his political thought: his theory of how government institutions should be organised in order to function as efficient and yet responsive guardians of the community's interests. It thus focuses on his programme for he executive and judicial branches of government rather than for the legislature and the electorate. Dr Hume suggests that (...) eighteenth-century political thought was richer in ideas about government that has usually been allowed, but that Bentham's special qualities of mind enabled him to widen and deepen those ideas much further than his contemporaries could have foreseen. (shrink)

Some feminists in the battered women's movement have been striving to develop egalitarian and participatory organizational structures for shelters. The Family Crisis Shelter offers a case study of a feminist shelter that is operating with a counterbureaucratic organizational structure. The shelter has a staff of nonprofessionals, makes all policy decisions through consensus, pays all staff the same wages, and imposes minimal regulations and restrictions on residents, who are encouraged to take initiative and make decisions. The article discusses the successes and (...) limitations of the nonbureaucratic structure for implementing the feminist goals of consensus and empowerment. (shrink)

This article follows shorebirds—migratory animals that have gone from game to nongame animals over the course of the past century in North America—as a way to track modern field biology, bureaucratic institutions, and the valuation of wildlife. Doing so allows me to make interrelated arguments about the history of wildlife management and science. The first is to note the endurance of observation-based natural history methods in field biology over the long twentieth century and the importance of these methods for the (...) persistent contribution of amateurs. The second major line of argument advances the historical significance of scientific, government bureaucracies as sites of natural knowledge production. Historians of biology and ecology have tended to stress scientists with institutional homes in universities, museums, and at land-grant field stations—particularly as various forms of field biology became professionalized over the twentieth century. In contrast, migratory animals like shorebirds, whether under the auspices of the US Biological Survey or the contemporary Fish and Wildlife Service, were primarily studied and conserved by biologists in bureaucratic agencies. Mid- to low-level bureaucrats, along with avocational birders, have mainly been responsible for developing what we know about shorebird migration, behavior, and life history. And third, shorebirds foreground the importance of bureaucratic context for the valuation of nature, from their economic value to agriculture in the early twentieth century to their value as rare, endangered species in the twentyfirst. (shrink)

“Disenchantment” has been a popular trope in the social sciences since Max Weber's appropriation of the term nearly a century ago. In recent years, however, scholars have come to argue that, in contrast to the standard modernization story of unabated rationalization, organizations have long been subject to countervailing forces. In this essay, David Diehl uses modern reinterpretations of the “disenchantment” thesis to suggest that the structure of contemporary schooling is the product of ongoing cultural efforts to re-enchant public life by (...) infusing rational bureaucracy with Romantic impulses in order to combat alienation and social fragmentation. Moreover, Diehl argues that the changing relationship between rationality and Romanticism has taken a unique form in the contemporary period and that recognizing this helps us to better understand the paradoxical modern push for schools to achieve seemingly incompatible goals such as diversity and standardization, community and accountability, and creativity and efficiency. (shrink)

I argue that bureaucracies, as described by Max Weber, have essential characteristics that clash with basic educational values. On the one hand, bureaucracies, because of their divisions of labor, inevitably narrow all those who participate. Bureaucracies also, because of the need for impartiality, inevitably dehumanize all who participate. On the other hand, education aims to broaden and humanize those who participate in it. This tension between bureaucracy and education makes bureaucracy an unsuitable mechanism for delivering an education. Bureaucracies (...) are often the best ways to accomplish large tasks involving many people; however, the task of educating all humanity is not one of those tasks. Problems in education can only be exacerbated by “fixing” the bureaucracy, because efficiency, the greatest bureaucratic virtue, is harmful to education. While I offer no solution, I share some thoughts about how a humanizing, broadening, and suitably inefficient education might look. (shrink)

Several prominent analysts, including Heilbroner, Ophuls, and Passmore, have drawn bleak conclusions regarding the implications of contemporary environmental realities for the future of democracy. I establish, however, that the day-to-day practice of environmental politics has often had an opposite effect: democratic processes have been enhanced. I conclude that the resolution of environmental problems may weIl be more promising within a political context which is more rather than less democratic.

The LBS National Academy of Administration, Government of India, had invited the authors to present before 30 officers of the Indian Administrative Service their views regarding the role of ethics in public administration as part of a five-day training programme on the subject. The participants' experience ranged from 12 to 31 years. The paper seeks to bring home to administrators that for carrying out the responsibilities that the Constitution of India has entrusted to the civil services there is no option (...) but to subscribe to a sound ethical framework of reference. (shrink)

(1990). Science, technology and bureaucracy: From the discourse of power to the power of discourse. World Futures: Vol. 28, Cross-Cultural Dialogue, pp. 183-201.

In ‘Bureaucratic respectful equality’, Christopher Nathan puts forward two challenges for the author’s claim that basic equality can be grounded in a form of ‘opacity respect’ appropriately shown b...

. Through examining a case study of a major fluids modelling code, this paper charts two key properties of software as a material for building models. Scientific software development is characterized by piecemeal growth, and as a code expands, it begins to manifest frustrating properties that provide an important axis of motivation in the laboratory. The first such feature is a tendency towards brittleness. The second is an accumulation of supporting technologies that sometimes cause scientists to express a frustration with (...) the bureaucracy of highly regulated working practices. Both these features are important conditions for the pursuit of research through simulation. (shrink)

Many virtual communities that rely on user-generated content (such as social news sites, citizen journals, and encyclopedias in particular) offer unrestricted and immediate ‘write access’ to every contributor. It is argued that these communities do not just assume that the trust granted by that policy is well-placed; they have developed extensive mechanisms that underpin the trust involved (‘backgrounding’). These target contributors (stipulating legal terms of use and developing etiquette, both underscored by sanctions) as well as the contents contributed by them (...) (patrolling for illegal and/or vandalist content, variously performed by humans and bots; voting schemes). Backgrounding trust is argued to be important since it facilitates the avoidance of bureaucratic measures that may easily cause unrest among community members and chase them away. (shrink)

Bureaucratic selectivity mechanisms are the true colours of welfare states, stigmatising benefit recipients while hampering their trust in institutions and society at large. Universal policies such as the Universal Basic Income could protect recipients’ trust by circumventing selectivity paraphernalia. By analysing regressions on the Finnish UBI experiment’s survey data, we assess the links from policy selectivity to trust in the benefit-providing institution and generalised trust through the pathway of reduced bureaucratic experience. More specifically, we analyse whether receipt of UBI leads (...) to greater trust directly or while accompanied by an actual or perceived reduction in bureaucracy. According to our results, UBI is accompanied by greater trust, while selectivity does not necessarily lead to less trust or perception of less bureaucracy. However, in our analysis, policy selectivity did not directly correlate to recipients’ reported bureaucratic experiences, and their relationship with trust proved tricky: selectivity did not risk recipients’ trust in the policy-implementing institution, but generalised trust in other people was lowered. Thus, selective benefit recipients might be prone to self-inflicted stigma, hampering their trust in other people, regardless of actual bureaucratic experiences or trust in the welfare system. (shrink)

Bronze Age Bureaucracy: Writing and the Practice of Government in Assyria. By Nicholas Postgate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 484, illus. $99.

The reform movement in science is seemingly constructing a new moral economy of science around process and bureaucracy, in which a new scientific etiquette is emerging that prescribes the performance of reformed science as civilised, efficient and objective. Bureaucratic innovations were borne out of the reform movement that seek to prescribe specific research processes, including but not limited to preregistration and registered reports. This moral economy emerges in the form of a bureaucracy and its epistemic uniformity actively suppresses (...) scientific plurality. This paper argues that Eliasian drivers such as distinction, shame and disgust, act to pressure scientists into adopting this new etiquette. Even though the etiquette's appearance is quite new, it can be traced back to existing moral economies of science and their pursuit of efficiency and objectivity. (shrink)

Early reactions to the publication of Harold Garfinkel's Studies in Ethnomethodology, which have persisted over the passing decades, was that ethnomethodology could not address what sociology deemed to be socially significant matters such as 'power' and 'the state'. This, however, is not the case. How such matters enter into the practical everyday affairs of members is of equal interest to ethnomethodology when compared to how any matter enters into members' everyday life, and how they display that. It just does not (...) have more importance. Egon Bittner spelt this out with regard to Weber's interest in bureaucracy when he reminds sociology that when Weber talked about efficiency he was not referring to an objective standard but as something that is attuned to practical interests as they emerge in the context of everyday life. This paper examines some of the actions and interactions that were encountered in a Governmental Department in one of the European countries. It makes visible how characterisations of bureaucracy such as 'rational', and 'efficient' are achieved in the actions and interactions of Department employees, and some of the practices involved in that achievement. Garfinkel, and ethnomethodology in general, are not, in principle, to be found wanting where matters of overarching, primordial interest to sociology are concerned. (shrink)