Analysts have observed an increase among the electorate in both apathy and disaffection toward all levels of government. People have always complained about the bureaucracy they have to face when they have business with the government. They have always criticized programs which did not work and spending they feel is misdirected. They have also always been aware of governmental corruption and at times have been more or less willing to accept it as a given if not to tolerate it. In recent years, though, ethical questions have become more important as the public has become fed up with lapses in their bureaucratic structure. The perception is that government is beset by gridlock, incompetence, and corruption, and people have little patience with the corruption in particular. What is sought is a model of "bureaucratic responsibility" to deal with this issue and to set in place mechanisms which will guard against ethical lapses and cope with those that are found. The budgetary process is one area where the bureaucracy stands out clearly as a bureaucracy, with all departments vying for favor and attempting to prove their worth in order to garner financial support for the coming year. The budgetary process can serve as a way of testing for a model of bureaucratic responsibility.
The basic conception of the bureaucracy was developed by Max Weber. Weber's key work is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930), written at a pivotal period in Weber's intellectual career when he was recovering from an illness after being away from the academic world for about four years. Before he became ill, Weber had conducted technical researches in economic history, economics, and jurisprudence. In part, these derived from the "historical school" of economics which stressed the need to examine economic life within the context of the historical development of culture as a whole, and Weber remained indebted to this point of view. Web...