The Scientific Study of Bureaucracy: An Overview

The study of bureaucracy is the analysis of how administrative agencies function as organizations within a governmental system. The study includes interinstitutional relationships with democratic institutions such as chief executives, legislatures, or the judiciary as well as intrainstitu-tional activities concerned with explaining the organizational structure and behavior of administrative agencies. Scientific inquiry pertains to the development of systematic, generalizable explanations and subsequent empirical tests of the " what, how, and why " of bureaucratic agencies. This book contains essays that emphasize theory building and empirical testing of theories, theories of interest to students of public administration within political science. Our primary concern is how public bureaucracies operate in a democracy. The study of bureaucracy within political science has an intellectual history that harkens back over a century. German sociologist Max Weber's (1947) notion that maintaining a " rational-legal authority " was the appropriate way to conduct the business of governance was both a norma-tive and an empirical theory. He advocated the basis for general explanations regarding how bureaucratic institutions should be designed, including the need for a division of labor, career personnel with specialized training and expertise, hierarchical formal organizational structures that do not duplicate other administrative units, and explicit rules and procedures to ensure clear lines of authority and accountability within the organization. This work has had a profound impact on our theoretical understanding of how superior-subordinate relationships within such or