THE THEORY OF BUREAUCRACY
Contemporary thinking along these lines begins with the work of the brilliant German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920). His analysis of bureaucracy, first published in 1922 after his death, is still the main point of departure for all further analyses on the subject. Drawing on studies of ancient bureau- cracies in Egypt, Rome, China, and the Byzantine Empire, as well as on the more modern ones emerg- ing in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Weber used an “ideal-type” approach to extrapolate from the real world the central core of features characteristic of the most fully developed bureaucratic form of organization. Weber’s “Bureaucracy,” reprinted here, is neither a description of reality nor a statement of normative preference. It is merely an identification of the major variables or features that characterize bureaucracies. The fact that such features might not be fully present in a
THE THEORY OF BUREAUCRACYContemporary thinking along these lines begins with the work of the brilliant German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920). His analysis of bureaucracy, first published in 1922 after his death, is still the main point of departure for all further analyses on the subject. Drawing on studies of ancient bureau- cracies in Egypt, Rome, China, and the Byzantine Empire, as well as on the more modern ones emerg- ing in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Weber used an “ideal-type” approach to extrapolate from the real world the central core of features characteristic of the most fully developed bureaucratic form of organization. Weber’s “Bureaucracy,” reprinted here, is neither a description of reality nor a statement of normative preference. It is merely an identification of the major variables or features that characterize bureaucracies. The fact that such features might not be fully present in a
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