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20 Bureaucracy Resources
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Bureaucrats and Politicians - William A. Niskanen
links.jstor.org— — “My theory represents the relation between an elementary bureau and its government review group as that of a bilateral monopoly.”
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FedEx vs. Government Bureaucracy -- Newt Gingrich
youtube.com— —
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Public Service in the Age of Globalization
deimos3.apple.com— — “Madeline Albright speaks at the Yale Law School on public service in the age of globalization.”
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Street-level bureaucracy and public accountability
Library Database
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“In this article some axiomatic assumptions are drawn from the existing literature on the theme of street-level bureaucracy and on the conception of governance. Arguing for contextualized research, this results in a rethinking of the issue of accountability at the street level.”
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In Praise of Bureaucracy? A Dissent From Australia
aas.sagepub.com— — “This article explores whether bureaucracy creates alienation, through a case study of the Australian Public Service. By examining the structural determinants of seven job characteristics, it shows that alienation is generated by six features of bureaucracy…”
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The Unbureaucratic Personality
Library Database
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“After 60 years of scholarship on the rule-bound bureaucratic personality, this article turns attention to the unbureaucratic personality. Identified by a willingness to bend rules, the unbureaucratic personality is thought to be influenced by individual and workplace attributes.”
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Does Frederick Taylor’s Ghost Still Haunt the Halls of Government? A Look at the Concept of Governmental Efficiency in Our Time
Library Database
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“Since the Progressive Era, efficiency has been a cherished administrative value and a key concept in the study of public administration. Despite contemporary attention to other criteria, such as responsiveness and equity, efficiency remains a guiding… value and a focus of scholarly writing.”
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Personnel Management: Politics, Administration, and a Passion for Anonymity
Library Database
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“Personnel management is vitally important to the maintenance and preservation of the administrative state and its democratic institutions.”
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The Canadian public service has a personality
blackwell-synergy.com— — “The notion that the public service has no… persona distinct from the government of the day has been a key part of the bargain guiding the relationship between Parliament, ministers, and public servants in both Britain and Canada. This paper argues that this view no longer reflects reality.”
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Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy
Library Database
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“[T]he paper argues that contemporary democracies are involved in another round in a perennial debate and ideological struggle over what are desirable forms of administration and government: that is, a struggle over institutional identities and institutional balances.”
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Public Sector Growth: Comparing Politicians’ and Administrators’ Spending Preferences
Library Database
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“The notion that appointed bureaucrats act as budget maximizers still stands strong. This paper reports the results of a [Norwegian] case study…. Counter to the original theory, bureaucrats seem to be less expansive than their political counterparts.”
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Red Tape and Public Employees: Does Perceived Rule Dysfunction Alienate Managers?
Library Database
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“This study explores the relationship between organizational red tape and work alienation. When managers encounter rules… that seem pointless yet burdensome, this may trigger… alienation [and thus] reduce organizational commitment, job involvement, and job satisfaction…”
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Theory, Stylized Heuristic or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? The Status of Rational Choice Theory in Public Administration
Library Database
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“Rational choice is intimately associated with positivism and naturalism, its appeal to scholars of public administration lying in its ability to offer a predictive science of politics that is parsimonious in its analytical assumptions…. In this paper I re-examine the ontology and epistemology…”
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Bureaucratic Autonomy, Organizational Culture, and Habituation
aas.sagepub.com— — “What really does change when a bureaucratic agency is created?....This article formulates a model of political-bureaucratic adaptation between politicians and newly established agencies…The model is illustrated with the case of Independent Administrative Bodies in the Netherlands.”
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Bureaucracy: Is It Efficient? Is It Not? Is That The Question?
aas.sagepub.com— — “In analyzing Weber’s text, the author argues that Weber was mistranslated into English and then misinterpreted. Weber’s term rationality is not at all identical to efficiency.”
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Bureaucracy - Paul C. Light
brookings.edu— — ‘[Bureaucracy] was once a wonderful term that meant efficient and disciplined and the economies of scale—that people knew their jobs, knew where they worked; specialization and expertise.’
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Democracy and bureaucracy - Judith Gruber
informaworld.com— — “This paper calls for greater control resources for elected officials whereby they can overcome the abundant power resources of bureaucrats. A process of exchange as against a process of authority is suggested as a strategic means of democratic control over bureaucracy.”
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The Secret Life of the Office
exploratorium.edu— — “Today, over 50% of jobs are in offices, but 160 years ago the figure was only 1%, and the only office workers were ‘Dickensian’ clerks. They had considerable status and freedom to organise their work, and kept financial ledgers, but there were no forms, memos, reports, etc.”
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Gender and Bureaucracies —A Critique of Ferguson's ‘The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy’ - Yvonne Due Billing
blackwell-synergy.com— — “In feminist analysis, salient in Kathy Ferguson’s ‘The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy’, there is a tendency to have a one-sided view on bureaucracies and to regard these merely as products of ‘maleness’ and as incompatible with (radical) feminism.”
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Public Choice Theory and Public Choices: Bureaucrats and State Reorganization in Australia Denmark, New Zealand, and Sweden in the 1980s
people.virginia.edu— — “Reorganizers of the state in Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, and Sweden during the 1980s tried to separate policy making from the production of welfare and other services by introducing market disciplines and competition”