Max Weber
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According to Max Weber, an intimate interrelationship exists between bureaucracy and democracy. For Weber, an effective democracy cannot exist without an effective bureaucracy, not only in terms of the day-to-day administrative requirements of a modern economy and political system, but also in terms of safeguarding the nation from unbridled corruption and abuse of power by democratically-elected officials and their appointees, as in the case of the Watergate scandal. However, toward the end of his career, Weber had backed away somewhat from his appreciation of the bureaucracy, fearing it could become a government in itself in which order would the only remaining value or ideal. For most of his career, Weber did view the bureaucracy as a dialectical helpmate of democracy. Broom and Selznick write that Weber takes a generally positive view of a branch of government which is too often denigrated by public and politicians alike for what is seen as its role in preventing speedy and effective government action. In fact, however, as Weber argues, the bureaucracy serves a vital function in any government which seeks to operate effectively and rationally: Bureaucracy has a positive connotation when it is considered as a rational way of organizing complex activities. This point of view is associated with the writings of Weber, who saw the rise of modern bureaucracy as part of a larger social process--the rational reconstruction of human institutions (Broom and Selznick 205).
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sees as the perfect individual bureaucrat in a democracy. A democracy is ideally a system in which all are treated equally without regard to emotion or status. For Weber, the ideal bureaucrat presents
a spirit of formalistic impersonality, . . . without hatred or passion, and hence without affection or enthusiasm. The dominant norms are concepts of straightforward duty without regard to personal considerations. Everyone is subject to formal equality of treatment. . . . The development of bureaucracy greatly favors the levelling of social classes (Weber Theory 340).
Weber's tendency toward a desire for control, order and rationality leads him to accept forces in democracy which democratic purists would criticize or even try to eliminate. As Gerth and Mills write,
the key focus of Weber's experience of America was upon the role of bureaucracy in a democracy. He saw that 'machine politics' were indispensable in modern 'mass democracy,' unless a 'leaderless democracy' and a confusion of tongues were to prevail. Machine politics, however, mean the management of politics by professionals. . . . The whole process tends towards increasing rational efficiency and therewith bureaucratic machines: party, municipal, federal (Gerth and
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Approximate Word count = 1701
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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