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What is bureaucracy?

As soon as societies developed complex organizations, the state, churches, cities, they needed organizers and managers. Almost all activities, in fact, need some rules and administration. No games could be played, no arts performed, no knowledge transmitted, no products made if there were not rules and umpires, referees and teachers to administer them. Schools, hospitals, courts of law, libraries, universities, industrial firms, parliament, all need rules and all need bureaucracy. Unadulterated foodstuffs, uniform measures and standards, agreed rules about behaviour, all need supervision.

So bureaucracy is one of the great tools of civilization. Nowadays most organizations need an accountant, a lawyer, a secretary and an administrator. Our lives would collapse into disorder without bureaucracy.

As a form of government it has many things to commend it, especially when compared to its competitors. The aim of the bureaucrat is to apply uniform rules to uniform cases, to work by a recognized code. Favouritism, corruption, the emotional tugs of power, patronage, family ties should be rejected. Impersonal rules should be imposed. All of this is very commendable. In this letter, however, I shall concentrate on the negative side of bureaucracy, for this is less often noticed.

How do people keep order?

Under traditional authority, society is held together by rulers whom we obey because they represent the past, the ancestral and customary wisdom. Obedience is unquestioning, passed on from generation to generation by succession to offices of power vested with authority. A king, a chief, a priest, all have this source of authority.

From time to time such traditional authority is challenged and sometimes overthrown in a moment of creative chaos by the personal insights and dynamism of a single individual. Why such moments of ‘charismatic’ (literally meaning a laying...