fiable in the realm of public administration. That suggestion is made by Humel (1994), who has maintained a rather consistent negative view toward bureaucracy and public administration. In his seminal work on the bureaucratic experience, he "seeks to dig deeper into the human condition in modernity (p. viii) and gives a good example of the bureaucratic decision making process:
Thinking by analogy is always reasoning by comparison. In it, one thing or event is compared and found to be similar to another. The logic of this comparison does not simply say that each event or thing in a pair is equal in importance to the other. In analogy, one thing is always phrased in terms of being 'analogous to.' 'Analogous to' implies that a lesser thing is similar to a greater thing, a thing we are more certain of or know better...in bureaucratic analogous reasoning...a lesser thing is referred upward to a greater thing. The referent point is always the abstract and general model of the program being administered, not the concrete and particular needs of people in reality (Hummel, 1994, p. 159).
The implications of this argument are far-reaching. In Hummel's worldview, the idea of problem solving is to obfuscate and establish a hierarchy of obfuscation. Bureaucratic language (whatever that is, since there is no specific definition to turn to), says Hummel, is based upon one-directionality (speaking without listening) and a ca
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