Reading Time: 4 minutes According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Vincent de Gournay coined the term Bureaucracy in the 1700s. The word is derived from the French word for table. So now we know why a Bureau is a Bureau and there is, in fact, a connection between the two seemingly non relatable terms. It meant the governance from the table. This, opposed to governance from the throne, from the sword, or from the people as the other forms known to man.
Almost 3 million years ago, Humans existed as groups where we would congregate around fires, share food, warmth and plan. Coordination is how we expanded and became the spacefaring civilization that could wipe out the planet with the push of a button. We first existed as tribes and the first King was the tribal chief. The clan leader was smarter, stronger, faster and was the “Alpha” of the tribe.
Compared to the earlier forms of human organization and coordination, Bureaucracy is quite a modern way than most others. Bureaucracy, apart from being an obnoxiously difficulty word to spell, is also very complicated to talk about. The term is universally hated and thought to be a highly inefficient and slow mode of conducting any kind of organization, government, public or private. There is heated discussion as to the conducting of any kind of Bureaucracy and managing one is a herculean task in of itself.
A Dictator is solely responsible for the decisions they make. A king can fumble and stumble and toppled and replaced. A politician can be voted out if they are no longer popular.
But with a multi-layered complex structure of a Bureaucracy, it is much more difficult to ascertain responsibility and assign blame. It is much more opaque than any other form of administration, but it is also in theory the best and only way of running a country or institution in a sustainable and long-running manner. Where a King is flimsy, and a mob is impulsive, a bureaucracy is almost inhuman in its cold and slow manner of conducting business. In theory, that is.
But what exactly does a Bureaucracy mean and why is it so prevalent throughout the world? Why is it that it is so hated in popular culture? And is it possible to create a kind of Bureaucracy that reaches its state of utilitarian efficiency in executing its goals as it said on the box it came in?
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Vincent de Gournay coined the term Bureaucracy in the 1700s.
The word is derived from the French word for table. So now we know why a Bureau is a Bureau and there is, in fact, a connection between the two seemingly non relatable terms. It meant the governance from the table. This, opposed to governance from the throne, from the sword, or from the people as the other forms known to man.
It is a specific form of organization defined by complexity, division of labor, permanence, professional management, hierarchical coordination and control, strict chain of command, and legal authority. It is commonly referring to a body of nonelected government officials or an administrative policy-making group.
The idea of an organized and consistent system of organizational administration has been in practice for quite a long time. Both ancient Egypt, and ancient Sumer have been proven to use bureaucracy as a form of governance on varying scales. A bureaucracy is run via a transfer of information between non-elected officials with authority following certain rules. Thus it is different from an Oligarchy.
The use of writing tablets and papyrus meant that the first real forms of transferring information came to being. The Ancient Sumerians for example are attributed to first use bureaucracy for resource allocation. The harvest of the summer grain was allocated by a class of scribes.
Ancient Egypt also had a system of administration where scribes and servants put the will of the Pharaoh into play through the arm of a Bureaucratic system. Though in both of these cases there are not enough sources of information available for us to answer any modern questions that we have related to modern forms of bureaucracy. These scribes in the ancient civil services of Egypt and Sumer came into office through nepotism, where the class of scribes inherited the profession and office from their fathers and mentors as was needed by the ruler.
The more modern form of Bureaucracy came into being in China in the third century BCE. The Qin dynasty was able to unify China under the Legalist system. Feudalism was abandoned in favor of a more meritocratic Bureaucratic system under a centralized federal government. This system encouraged the emergence of administrators that were good at lower level jobs to be promoted to get a larger role in the government of the country. This then evolved over time.
The Han dynasty later came in and implemented an exam system to recruit promising individuals. This system was based on the teachings of Confucianism. Thus the basis of the modern system of bureaucracy came into being.
Max Weber, a German sociologist is the foremost theorist on Bureaucracy. Where the legal aspects of Bureaucracy is quite simple, following certain rules made by someone else to a competent degree. This is basically turning a human system into a computer to enact the laws and processes decided upon by the state. Weber compared it to non-legal forms of authority that were inherently fickle, short-term, and weak. Bureaucracy was determined by him to be technically proficient, stronger, could be continuous, and offer up a united front.
According to Weber, a system solely governed by rationality and impersonality was the only way a system of government grounded in law could really function.
However, a system solely governed through laws where similar cases are judged via similar rules also entails that it will be slower and more complex. Human beings are quick to judge, impulsive, governed by mood and irrational. A bureaucracy is impersonal and can be seen to be cruel and cold. If not, it is still slow. Furthermore, any form of organization that is slow and complex based on explicit or implicit rules and culture is deathly slow to change and adapt.
So we should basically face it. The only way for a state to run is through a strong bureaucracy in the modern era. It also means that it is slow to change and it cannot be overhauled at the snap of a finger. The culture of an organization is slow to change or adapt can only change from the inside.
It is up to the upstanding, morally certain, and self-sacrificing individuals to work to become part of the system and then change it from within. That is how the organizational culture can be changed. The non-legal and case by case system can be changed into a better form thus. The law or “code” of the system, thankfully, is available to change through democracy. If the common man elects the right people to change these laws, then perhaps such a momentous system can be pushed in the right direction.
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