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292 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1954)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0292 and id is 1 raw text is: How Bureaucracies Develop and Function By ARNOLD BRECHT IS it necessary to define bureaucracy? Everybody seems to know what the term implies. Bureaucracy is a state of affairs where too much power is in the hands of appointed employees. This is twice ambiguous, however, be- cause power has several meanings, and what type or amount of it is too much? Closer analysis will spare us a great deal of confusion. Power may designate the constitu- tional or legal right to give or to en- force orders, as when the Constitution says, The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes. For this sort of power I shall use the symbol P here- after. Or power may mean the actual power to get things done or to pre- vent their being done. This will be designated by the symbol H, the Greek equivalent of P. P-powers and H-powers may co- incide, or overlap, or be entirely sepa- rate. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR has the P-power to pass laws, but not the H-power to determine what laws will be passed; that power lies entirely with the party leadership. The same situa- tion existed with Hitler's one-party Reichstag in Germany. The United States Congress had the P-power, to- gether with the legislatures of three- fourths of the states, to forbid the manufacture and sale of alcoholic bev- erages, but not the H-power to carry the prohibition through. The people in a democracy have the P-power to elect their representatives, but bosses may have the H-power to deliver the vote. Likewise, party juntas, pressure groups, or the press may, or may not, have the H-power to make Congress use its P- powers in some specific manner. DEFINITIONS OF BUREAUCRACY Applying these distinctions, we find that appointed employees may wield either P-powers or H-powers, or both, and that their powers may extend either to the entire sphere of public business or only to sections of it. It follows that we must distinguish 'at least four possible definitions, or types, of bu- reaucracy, namely: B-1, where appointed employees hold all the P-powers of government; B-2, where they hold some P-powers, though not all; B-3, where they wield H-powers over the entire sphere of government; B-4, where they do so only over some sections of governmental activities. In each of these four social patterns we may speak of government by offi- cials, and therefore of a bureaucracy, irrespective of the good or bad use made by the officials of their powers. We may, however, use the term bureaucracy also in a more limited sense, namely: B-5 to B-8, only in such cases of the types B-1 to B-4 where the powers are exercised improperly. Yet what is an improper use? Are officials acting improperly (a) only when in excess of legal powers; or (b) also when, though staying within these powers, they act in conflict with the general welfare; or (c) even when their action is both legitimate and objec- tively sound, if it antagonizes the mo- mentary desires of the people, or of some people, or of the people's repre- sentatives? Different answers are pos- sible in different situations. In view of the elusive vagueness of the criterion improper it is advisable 1

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