Given present criticisms of contemporary education and leadership practices, this article investigates the ways in which the basic concepts of state freedom and bureaucracy stifle ethics and social justice in educational leadership practices through the philosophical framework of Emmanuel Levinas. By investigating Levinas’ ‘an-archy’, the definition of ethics and justice in school leadership can be reframed towards responsibility to otherness rather than individual freedom. The anarchical ethic of pure responsibility to the Other suggests that educational leaders should prioritize specific acts (...) of responsibility over general actions based on the assumptions of traditional state education. Aspects of transactional, transformational, and social justice leadership are critiqued from this perspective. (shrink)

In his book, Democratic Autonomy: Public Reasoning about the Ends of Policy, Henry Richardson suggests a process-based objection to bureaucracy – that is, an objection to bureaucracy that does not refer primarily to results, but rather to an ethical flaw that is inherent to bureaucratic procedures. Richardson’s worry is that, while large and complex societies rely on bureaucratic agencies to implement policies, there is a threat of those within bureaucratic institutions having more power than the average citizen when it comes (...) to making specific decisions about how to enact policy, and that this inequality in decision making power may be unjustified because undemocratic. If such inequality in decision making power is indeed a real threat, it will turn out that bureaucratic organisations, while being largely motivated by considerations of procedural fairness, may in fact constitute quite unfair procedures. Richardson proposes some institutional reforms that he thinks will enable us to avoid being dominated by bureaucracies, while retaining bureaucratic agencies, which he believes are necessary in modern societies. In what follows, I illustrate Richardson’s worry about bureaucratic domination and his proposed solution to the problem with a simplified, concrete example. If we compare Richardson’s proposed institutional reforms with Max Weber’s analysis of the concept of bureaucracy, however, I argue that it becomes apparent that bureaucracy is in fact incompatible with the sort of democracy that Richardson favours. If I am correct, this means that to the extent that we adopt Richardson’s proposed reforms, we will be replacing bureaucracies with something else. (shrink)

The “Fourth International Conference on the Comparative, Historical and Critical Analysis of Bureaucracy” was held in Vancouver, B.C., September 2-6,1985. Focusing on the relations between “Bureaucracy and Culture,” the conference program promised to have sections on intellectuals, the labor movement, prisons, mass culture, the new class, state terrorism, etc. As is usually the case in even the best organized conferences, however, most speakers paid only lip service to their assigned theme and chose to discuss instead whatever they happened to be (...) working on. The predictable result, of course, was that when these various Leibnizian monads were forced by the collective discussion to focus on the issues at hand, they simply fell back on recycling well-worn political stances to confront specific questions with automatic easy answers. (shrink)

Weber's discussion of bureaucracy is generally taken as descriptive of organized social structure within a rational-legal society. This is understandable; yet elsewhere in Weber's sociology he cautions against precisely this kind of analysis. His counsel against reification, his emphasis upon subjective ideas standing behind social action, his characterization of "society" as subjective orientation to legitimacy, his discussion of organization and social relationships as probabilities of behavior in accordance with subjective belief in their existence, and his tendency to describe the wide (...) range of world views within the vocabularies of those who subscribe to them-all mitigate against viewing his description of bureaucratic standardization as Weber's own world view, much less as his sociology. Rather the discussion can be understood as a description of bureaucracy from within the bureaucratic setting and as a set of ideas subjectively held to as a basis of legitimacy, ideas whose truth value are largely irrelevant for Weberian analysis. This qualification of bureaucracy as a mentality supplements the more widely acknowledged ideal-type qualification and provides a basis for increased Weberian insight. Such insight dovetails with post-functionalist sociological theory, explains the origins and consequences of functionalist theory, and provides new understandings of recent findings in empirically based research. Moreover, it helps to focus current research away from bureaucracy as an existent entity and toward a phenomenon Weber identifies as the central process of Western civilization: the rationalization (bureaucratization) of human behavior, a process both unfulfillable and unstoppable. (shrink)

Selected papers on OCD, Bureaucracy, and Psychopathy. Table of Contents: What are Some Characteristics of OCD in Children? The Failure of Political Philosophy to Engage Reality OCD and Philosophy How to Get Rid of OCD What are Some Characteristics of OCD in Children? OCD: The Philosopher’s Illness The Obsessive-compulsive Must Accept his Own Sadistic Sexuality Institutional Psychopathy The Psychology of the Bureaucrat Psychopaths are Rogue Bureaucrats And Bureaucrats are Non-rogue Psychopaths How Double-think is Possible Bureaucratic Bloat Responsible for OCD-spike Submitting (...) to Feminism Makes It More Psychopathic What is the Prognosis for People with OCD? The Way to Beat OCD is to Have a Purpose in Life Is OCD a Disease? Social Anxiety is about Rage Structural Therapy Effective Therapists Must Have and Project Inner Strength Reading-related Difficulties in People with OCD The Limitations of CBT in the Treatment of OCD Turn OCD Against Itself How do I get over my OCD? Intrusive Thoughts ​ Why People with OCD Have Them Physical vs. Mental Illness How to Treat Compulsions that are not Accompanied by Obsessions? Why Psychopaths Overachieve ​​ The Therapeutic Significance of a Healthy Sex Life Autism as Pseudo-self-containment The Two Ways in which Intellectual Activity Promotes Intelligence How Mental Illness Differs from Physical Illness Psychiatric Munchausen’s by Proxy What is the Prognosis for People with OCD? How is Rationalization Different from Auto-hypnosis? (shrink)

ABSTRACT Hegel gave the bureaucracy a distinctively corporatist and collegiate structure and insulated it from legislative control. The close match between these features of the Philosophy or Right and the structure of the Prussian bureaucracy, which had been used by reformers to insulate progressive decisions from Junker resistance, suggests that Hegel, too, wanted the bureaucracy to spearhead reform within a hostile environment.

Over the last twenty years, wildlife biologists and transportation planners have worked with environmental groups and state and tribal governments to mitigate the effects of human transportation arteries on animal habitats and movements. This paper draws connections between this growing field of road ecology and feminist science studies in order to accomplish two things. First, it aims to highlight the often unacknowledged roots that the interdisciplinary field of animal studies has in feminist theory. Second, it seeks to contribute to conversations (...) in the humanities and social sciences on roadkill and on wildlife biology by steering us into a world of practice that foregrounds mundane details. I approach this topic through interdisciplinary methods, including interviews with tribal and state wildlife biologists and participation in fieldwork on a western painted turtle tagging project. Although engaging in science and formulating policy are often understandably regarded by nonspecialists as practices that distance observers from their topic, in the world of roadkill prevention, I argue that the opposite is the case. What I call “intimate bureaucracies” are formed: arrangements of papers, policies, and people that bring a world of counting, and accountability, into being. (shrink)

This article offers a revision of the history of Vincent de Gournay’s neologism bureaucracy. The author shows that it was designed as a polemical tool against a tendency to multiply customs, tax-collecting and controlling bureaus, which “strangled commerce” in France. The origin of the term had more to do with the pre-physiocratic theory of liberal economy than with political philosophy. More than just a pun, it emerged in the wake of a long tradition of anti-office discourse and formed part of (...) a new rhetorical strategy aimed at legitimizing the merchant estate, which suffered from a lack of prestige in France. (shrink)

There are two kinds of bureaucracies: those that serve some non-bureaucratic purpose, albeit in a bureaucratic way, and those whose only purpose is to create more bureaucracy.

Time is money. According to E.P. Thompson, this saying lies at the core of the logic of capitalism. And yet, in the vast literature on state-capital relations, the strategic value of time has remained relatively neglected compared to rent distribution and monetary exchanges. Elaborating on the recruitment of migrants by employers and their intermediaries in Mauritius, this article explores the role of bureaucratic time and delays in businesses’ access to the fundamental resource for economic accumulation: labour. It reveals a bifurcated (...) bureaucratic pathway, a two-speed logic in the Mauritian bureaucracy of migration. On one side is the lengthy and unpredictable process of administering the authorisations to recruit foreign workers; on the other appear what I term the “shortcuts through the red tape”, the exemptions to the bureaucratic procedures and delays that benefit politically connected actors. Drawing on this case study, I contend that the politics of waiting, inherent to bureaucratic routine, matters in the relations between business and the state. (shrink)

“Disenchantment” has been a popular trope in the social sciences since Max Weber's appropriation of the term nearly a century ago. In recent years, however, scholars have come to argue that, in contrast to the standard modernization story of unabated rationalization, organizations have long been subject to countervailing forces. In this essay, David Diehl uses modern reinterpretations of the “disenchantment” thesis to suggest that the structure of contemporary schooling is the product of ongoing cultural efforts to re-enchant public life by (...) infusing rational bureaucracy with Romantic impulses in order to combat alienation and social fragmentation. Moreover, Diehl argues that the changing relationship between rationality and Romanticism has taken a unique form in the contemporary period and that recognizing this helps us to better understand the paradoxical modern push for schools to achieve seemingly incompatible goals such as diversity and standardization, community and accountability, and creativity and efficiency. (shrink)

In a certain sense, voluntary communities and market relationships are relatively less coercive than democracy and bureaucracy: they offer more positive freedom. In that respect, they are more like romantic relationships or friendships than are democracies and bureaucracies. This tends to make voluntary communities and markets not only more pleasant forms of interaction, but more effective ones—contrary to Weber's confidence in the superior rationality of bureaucratic control.

The reform movement in science is seemingly constructing a new moral economy of science around process and bureaucracy, in which a new scientific etiquette is emerging that prescribes the performance of reformed science as civilised, efficient and objective. Bureaucratic innovations were borne out of the reform movement that seek to prescribe specific research processes, including but not limited to preregistration and registered reports. This moral economy emerges in the form of a bureaucracy and its epistemic uniformity actively suppresses scientific plurality. (...) This paper argues that Eliasian drivers such as distinction, shame and disgust, act to pressure scientists into adopting this new etiquette. Even though the etiquette's appearance is quite new, it can be traced back to existing moral economies of science and their pursuit of efficiency and objectivity. (shrink)

This article examines the role bureaucracy has in enhancing the social diversity of judiciaries. It does so by analyzing the Israeli judiciary and its reforms over the last three decades, and the interaction of these reforms with the appearance of intersectional judges—Arab women, Jewish women of Orthodox background, and Jewish women from geographic and economic peripheries—into the Israeli judiciary. Based on an original empirical study, the article shows that the career paths of intersectional judges include administrative roles in the judiciary (...) more often than non-intersectional judges. The article further demonstrates how these administrative career paths were shaped by bureaucratic-minded reforms. The Israeli case study thus shows how the bureaucratic design of the judiciary can accommodate diversity efforts, sometimes unintendedly, and discusses the merits, boundaries, and drawbacks of such bureaucratic design. (shrink)

I argue that bureaucracies, as described by Max Weber, have essential characteristics that clash with basic educational values. On the one hand, bureaucracies, because of their divisions of labor, inevitably narrow all those who participate. Bureaucracies also, because of the need for impartiality, inevitably dehumanize all who participate. On the other hand, education aims to broaden and humanize those who participate in it. This tension between bureaucracy and education makes bureaucracy an unsuitable mechanism for delivering an education. Bureaucracies are often (...) the best ways to accomplish large tasks involving many people; however, the task of educating all humanity is not one of those tasks. Problems in education can only be exacerbated by “fixing” the bureaucracy, because efficiency, the greatest bureaucratic virtue, is harmful to education. While I offer no solution, I share some thoughts about how a humanizing, broadening, and suitably inefficient education might look. (shrink)

Bureaucracy has had few admirers, as a quick perusal of 20th-century political and social theory readily indicates. In recent years, several feminist theorists have also joined this vociferous anti-bureaucracy chorus, denouncing bureaucracy’s excessively hierarchical, impersonal, cold and controlling nature. The goal of this article is to review these charges and to show why the term ‘caring bureaucracy’ is not an oxymoron. In the first two sections, the author considers the various reasons why bureaucratic structures are said to be bad both (...) for the people who work in them and for those who deal with them. The author proposes to discuss these charges in light of some research on feminist organizations and street-level bureaucracy. The intention is not to offer a paean to street-level discretion or to the claims of ‘the heart’ in public service; it is, rather, to underscore at once the beauty and the danger of discretion. It is also noted that feminist theorists ought to be cautious when they call for ‘flattened hierarchies’ and for fewer rules in large institutions – for these might work against the best interests of women. The last part of the article offers the outline of a caring bureaucracy and suggests avenues to be explored in future care ethics research. (shrink)

Several prominent analysts, including Heilbroner, Ophuls, and Passmore, have drawn bleak conclusions regarding the implications of contemporary environmental realities for the future of democracy. I establish, however, that the day-to-day practice of environmental politics has often had an opposite effect: democratic processes have been enhanced. I conclude that the resolution of environmental problems may weIl be more promising within a political context which is more rather than less democratic.

Policy making is not only about the cut and thrust of politics. It is also a bureaucratic activity. In this ground-breaking work, two leading authorities come together to examine the world of the policy bureaucrat for the first time. The volume draws in crucial debates over accountability and democratic ideology, hierarchy and expertise, and should establish itself as a central point of reference for scholars and practitioners alike.

. Through examining a case study of a major fluids modelling code, this paper charts two key properties of software as a material for building models. Scientific software development is characterized by piecemeal growth, and as a code expands, it begins to manifest frustrating properties that provide an important axis of motivation in the laboratory. The first such feature is a tendency towards brittleness. The second is an accumulation of supporting technologies that sometimes cause scientists to express a frustration with (...) the bureaucracy of highly regulated working practices. Both these features are important conditions for the pursuit of research through simulation. (shrink)

In ‘Bureaucratic respectful equality’, Christopher Nathan puts forward two challenges for the author’s claim that basic equality can be grounded in a form of ‘opacity respect’ appropriately shown b...

Some feminists in the battered women's movement have been striving to develop egalitarian and participatory organizational structures for shelters. The Family Crisis Shelter offers a case study of a feminist shelter that is operating with a counterbureaucratic organizational structure. The shelter has a staff of nonprofessionals, makes all policy decisions through consensus, pays all staff the same wages, and imposes minimal regulations and restrictions on residents, who are encouraged to take initiative and make decisions. The article discusses the successes and (...) limitations of the nonbureaucratic structure for implementing the feminist goals of consensus and empowerment. (shrink)

(1990). Science, technology and bureaucracy: From the discourse of power to the power of discourse. World Futures: Vol. 28, Cross-Cultural Dialogue, pp. 183-201.