BUREACRACY IS NOT A DIRTY WORD

When was the last time you heard anyone say, “Gee what an excellent bureaucracy we have in the Department of Motor Vehicles. It only took me five minutes to get a new driver’s license”?

Probably never.

In fact, the word bureaucracy is most frequently used as a pejorative.

As author Franz Kafka once said, “Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”

President Donald Trump clearly agrees that the bureaucracy is somewhat slimy, insisting that   "The days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over."

The list goes on and on. But this kind of context for bureaucracy is a sad and frustrating fallacy. Without the bureaucrats, we’d be left with a bunch of policies and programs that would have no one left to implement them.

There are, of course, stifling bureaucracies as well as efficient ones. But we take umbrage at the idea that the thousands of men and women who labor at getting the real work of government done are in league with the Devil of Small Details.

With that in mind, we decided to reach out to some smart people to help us assemble this column. Here’s what they had to say:

William Hatcher, Chair and Professor, Department of Social Sciences, Augusta University: “Few words invoke such negative mental images as ‘bureaucracy.’ When the public hears the word, they envision overly complex processes that lack empathy. They envision careless bureaucrats, more concerned about procedures than public service. As we in public administration know, these images are distorted and not reality. Bureaucracies and the bureaucrats occupying them are needed to ensure that our communities have the public goods to survive and prosper. Only through organizing into bureaucracies can we try to solve the problems facing our communities. Thus, bureaucracies are beyond a necessary evil, and we in public administration need to, as Charles Goodsell so soundly argued, make the case for bureaucracies.”

Michael Jacobson, deputy director for performance and strategy in King County's Office of Performance, Strategy and Budget: “I am a proud bureaucrat. But not in the popularized sense of a mindless and faceless paper-pushing, behind-the-scenes employee of government that doesn’t care about residents or customers. I mean in the sense of someone whose role was codified to counter the overly politicized, corrupt personal favoritism of the Tammany Hall period – someone who is there to, at least in principle, ensure that fair, and more recently equitable, treatment is foremost, and (that) the effective administration of my job is not subject to the personal whim of an individual behind a desk or computer screen.

I am using bureaucrat in the sense of a highly competent professional who has organizational savvy to get things done in a large and complex organization; someone with technical skills, management wherewithal, and personal knowledge of the organization who is able to follow procedures, and at times, question those same procedures. Without these kinds of bureaucrats, things don’t get done; or we go back to corruption and personal power alone as the way to get the organization to produce.”

William Brantley, author of “The Persuasive Project Manager: Communicating For Understanding”: “Bureaucracies, though often seen as rigid, can be agile with adaptive structures and a culture of improvement. Agility comes from decentralizing decisions, investing in workforce training, and integrating feedback loops for real-time learning. Lean management, digital transformation, and cross-functional teams can streamline processes and reduce delays while maintaining stability and accountability. When leadership prioritizes responsiveness and innovation, alongside transparency and equity, bureaucracies can adapt to new challenges and societal needs."

Don Kettl, professor emeritus, University of Maryland: “It’s become truly unfortunate that 'bureaucracy' has become a pejorative—or, even worse, a curse word to attack government, with critics almost spitting it as a form of criticism. It doesn’t make much sense to remind everyone that “bureaucracy” is simply a word used to describe a way of structuring complex organizations—or that private organizations are “bureaucracies” as well. By extension, a “bureaucrat” ought to be a simple, clear, and neutral way of describing someone who works for a large and complex organization. Alas, that’s not the case. 

“So, we seem to face a choice. We probably can’t talk people out of using 'bureaucracy' as a pejorative, or to characterize 'bureaucracy' as anything but a pejorative, no matter how hard we try. We can just swallow the problem and try to move on, or we can choose a word that has not built up such animosity around us.”

Andrew Kleine, Senior Director, Government & Public Sector at EY. “Without bureaucracy, there’s no democracy.  Bureaucrats carry out the will of the people by running police departments, processing food stamp applications, inspecting restaurant kitchens, fixing broken water pipes, and so much more.  It is hard to imagine a world with no people and organizations employed to implement and enforce laws, ordinances and codes.  Even the Wild West had sheriffs!

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