The term Weberian bureaucracy refers to Max Weber’s (1864–1920) ideal type (or model) of rational bureaucracy, published in Economy and Society posthumously in 1921/22 by his wife Marianne Weber. His ideal type of bureaucracy consists of a number of organizational features of administrative order. At the ideal type’s core lies a hierarchically structured, professional, rule-bound, impersonal, meritocratic, and disciplined body of public servants who possess a specific set of competences and who operate outside the sphere of politics. An ideal type is an analytical construct against which to contrast empirical observations. Weber never meant it to be a descriptive nor a prescriptive account of how bureaucracy should be. Weberian bureaucracy is part of his broader sociology and must therefore be understood as part of its methodological, theoretical, and empirical context. The model is not an isolated concept; it derives from Weber’s historical analysis of modernization and the emergence of the rational state, and serves as the epitome of it.
To Weber, modernization and people’s corresponding transformed worldviews were preconditions for rational rule and inevitably led to rational bureaucracy. Weber’s rationalization thesis draws from his sociology of rule, which comprises three types of authority: charismatic, traditional, and rational. Weber wrote in dynamic historical times. His bürgerlicher (bourgeois) background and his politically liberal stance contributed to the model’s normative objective of keeping administration out of democratic politics. The model received immense scholarly attention. Due to its simplicity and how catchy it was, the model was prone to become a stereotype, which is exactly what happened. In post–World War II public administration literature, Weber’s model was made into the scapegoat for unfashionable bureaucracy based on hierarchy and red tape. The model’s reception was not only negative because of de-contextualized reading and misinterpretation. There were also serious criticisms regarding the model itself, including claims of empirical inaccuracy. Twenty-first-century attempts to launch a neo-Weberian approach in Public Administration have not yet eclipsed the stereotypical use of Weber. Weber’s legacy as an intellectual giant of 20th-century social sciences is best served if 21st-century Public Administration scholarship treats the model as what it actually is—an integral part of a historical scholarly masterpiece, not an analytical or normative guideline for the study and design of early 21st-century administrative praxis.
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