2

The Weberian legacy

Peter Barberis

Max Weber (18641920) was one of the founding fathers of modern social science. His intellectual arc was a generous one, embracing aspects of philosophy, research methodology, history, religion, politics and law. He was the quintessential polymath, though certainly no dilettante. In todays universities he is most commonly encountered by students of sociology and, if they are lucky, public administration and management. Perhaps the most tangible and durable product of his thought as it engages with the contemporary world is that associated with bureaucracy. It is this aspect of Webers legacy that is featured in the present chapter in particular his observations about state bureaucracy. The very term bureaucracy is full of connotations, often negative ones. In popular parlance it has become almost a byword for all that is stubbornly inflexible, inhuman, impervious to change, self-serving. It is seen by critics as highly imperfect if not downright perverse in its apparent inability to meet the needs of those it is supposed to serve, be they the democratically elected political masters of the day or the common citizenry (Osborne and Gaebler 1992). It has been defended by those who claim such images to be mere caricature, its virtues overlooked by the critics (Du Gay 2000). Others have adduced empirical evidence to show that bureaucracy is not inherently dysfunctional, that it has sometimes been more adaptable and flexible than is commonly supposed (Britan 1981; Goodsell 2004; Page and Jenkins 2005, p. viii). Implicitly and sometimes explicitly, it is invariably Webers ideal type that provides the benchmark for students of bureaucracy, critics and advocates alike. The first section of this chapter therefore provides a sketch of the ideal type bureaucracy as presented in his writings. It is important to remember that Weber himself entertained doubts about the efficacy of bureaucracy: at any rate he identified some of the inherent tensions and the conditions that were necessary to avert or minimize malfunctioning. These tensions and conditions, embracing the relevant political, constitutional and cultural aspects of Webers thought, will be featured in the second section. In different senses, these two perspectives about bureaucracy the ideal type and its imperfections provide points of reference for the third and fourth sections. Here the focus will be more upon the bureaucratic phenomenon as it has been manifest in state 13

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systems across the world. The third section will consider to what extent and in what senses the Weberian legacy served as a benchmark for state bureaucracies during a substantial part of the twentieth century; while the fourth section examines the challenges that began to predominate from the later decades of that century. Bearing in mind that Weber foresaw at least some of the features that have given rise to an apparent loss of faith in state bureaucracies, the chapter will conclude with a discussion about the extent to which recent trends have diminished the Weberian legacy.

2.1 WEBERS IDEAL TYPE BUREAUCRACY

In using the term ideal Weber did not imply any moral superiority. Rather, the ideal type is an analytical tool. It should have some recognizable connection with the real world yet without being submerged into any particular reality, neither narrowly descriptive nor a caricature. Rather it is an extrapolation of certain elements of reality presented as a generalization in terms of what Weber called rational properties. Thus the ideal type bureaucracy is at once the product in part of observation, part reason and part of what may be called structured imagination. This was so of all Webers ideal types. They provide benchmarks against which and by which real life examples may be compared and understood. Weber (1978, p. 956) saw bureaucracy as a phenomenon of the modern state alongside the advancing capitalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It was a function of what he saw as the modern legalrational type of polity, as distinct from those based upon charisma or upon traditional/patrimonial rule. For Weber, bureaucracy went handin-hand with rational capitalism and representative democracy (ibid. pp. 9834). The classic Weberian ideal type bureaucracy may be characterized under three headings: structure; procedures; personnel. Structures within the typical bureaucracy are hierarchical levels of graded authority ... a firmly ordered system of super- and subordination in which there is a supervision of the lower offices by the higher ones (p. 957). There is horizontal differentiation, predicated upon definition of task, function or specialist knowledge. As Weber put it, such organization yielded the optimum possibility for carrying through the principles of specializing administrative functions according to purely objective considerations (p. 975). Such considerations are above persona, so to speak. People fit into the organization; the organization is not shaped around the people who run it. Structures may change. They do so when objective needs, goals or other conditions change. Bureaucracy itself is notable for its durability,

The Weberian legacy 15 providing a mainstay, a veritable repository. The fact of organization gives it this quality. Weber said that bureaucracy works best, technically, to the extent to which it is dehumanized (p. 975). Here was a comment about bureaucratic procedures. Bureaucracy is thus a counterweight to the high degree of personal discretion and arbitrariness typical of regimes founded upon tradition or charisma. Ideal type state bureaucracies work within the constitutional context of the rule of law before which all citizens are held equal, at least in juridical terms. Bureaucracy operates on the basis of calculable rules ensuring consistency of application. The textual documentation of procedures ensures such consistency whosoevers hand is on the tiller, so to speak. In the ideal type bureaucracy there are therefore many detailed rules, regulations, codes of practice in a sense the more the better. It is no less important that they be upheld and adhered to. Weber allowed for some creative administration, so long as it was neither arbitrary nor the product of personal whim or favour (p. 979). As with structure, the procedures adopted by bureaucracy must of necessity be firm, even rigid, if they are to yield their potential benefits. The personnel of the ideal type bureaucracy are to be recruited by objective criteria and educational qualifications the quintessential meritocracy (p. 960). They will be professionals, their experiences honed by appropriate training (pp. 9981003). They receive a fixed salary, determined according to the strict requirements of the job rather than the characteristics of a particular incumbent; whoever does the job gets the same pay and conditions of employment. Weber further opined that the personnel of the ideal type state bureaucracy would be career officials that is people who spend their entire working lives in the service of one employer (the state), enjoying security of tenure save in the event of fraud or rank incompetence. Such, he argued, serves to guarantee a strictly objective discharge of specific official duties free from all personal considerations (p. 962). A career service engenders collegiality and a certain esprit de corps, at least in the early stages. Collegiality, said Weber, recedes with the growing depersonalization of administration. And it is depersonalization that becomes the dominant feature, along with a separation of public and private spheres (p. 998). Thus officials in a state bureaucracy subjugate their private selves to the public role that they discharge: they are cogs in a larger mechanism; they act out a role, they are team players. Although the ideal type was not conceived by Weber in evaluative terms, he was emphatic about its virtues. It is, he says, technically superior to other organizations as is the machine to non-mechanical modes of production (p. 972). There are similarities here with Marxs acknowledgement of industrial capitalisms superiority as an economic system over feudal

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and other pre-capitalist forms of production. And just as Marx identified the inner tensions and contradictions that would bring capitalisms destruction, so Weber saw within the logic of bureaucracy certain tensions and imperfections that could lead to its malfunctioning, though not its demise. Before looking at some of the worldly examples of state bureaucracies it is therefore necessary to know something about the tensions and imperfections that he identified.

2.2 WEBERIAN BUREAUCRACY TENSIONS AND SHORTCOMINGS

It is useful to distinguish between, on the one hand, Webers notion of bureaucracy at the technical level as an instrument of delivery and, on the other hand, his observations about the role played by state bureaucracies within a set of political institutions. The distinction is in some ways a false one but it nevertheless serves to highlight some of the tensions. One interpretation of real world bureaucracy is that it works best to the extent to which it approximates to the ideal type. Yet even with ideal type characteristics writ large, bureaucracies may malfunction by their own weight, as it were. Too much of a good thing may be counterproductive. There may be procedural sclerosis, lack of innovation, self-serving tendencies and so forth even and especially where the career official holds dominion. Weber observed that the career official seeks a fixed salary (according to status) and a good pension (p. 963). Here he seems to have prefigured some of the concerns of the public choice theorists, discussed below, who have seen state bureaucracy as an obstacle to meeting the needs of the citizen. The key to this aspect of Webers thinking and in striking similarity to the later public choice theorists lies in his upholding of competitive market capitalism. Weber held state bureaucracy to be at its best when the role of government was relatively limited, checked by the institutions of private capital and civil society. Where the balance gets out of kilter, when state bureaucracy and its values come to dominate, then its ill effects will be manifest (p. 1402). For Weber was an unabashed supporter of capitalism, though he feared that, like bureaucracy, it was a potential threat to individualism (Mommsen 1980). He saw something ineluctably destructive about bureaucracy within any milieu. Once fully established, he noted, it was among those social structures which are the hardest to destroy (Weber 1978, p. 987). Of course it does not follow that durability means lack of change; but the logic of bureaucracy implies an inflexibility that makes for difficulty in adapting to a change agenda emanating from an external source.

The Weberian legacy 17 Weber recognized a tension between bureaucracy and democratization or at any rate the institutions of representative government in a liberal democracy. The closer to the ideal type bureaucracy, the more piquant the tensions. As Beetham (1974, p. 54) points out, there was in Webers thinking a tension also between the nationalistic and the liberal democratic elements. The former would give greater latitude to bureaucracys natural tendencies, while the latter would have it more vigorously controlled in the belief that it is a good servant but a poor master. Two further points arise. The first is whether or not bureaucracy is in essence an inanimate instrument in the hands of whomsoever is elected or appointed to rule or whether it is an active agent, perhaps in pursuit of its own goals, more or less impervious to the democratic or representative impulse. If it is essentially inanimate, then we need to look to those who give it direction in order to understand its effects the political masters. But if it is an active agent, then we must look within the bureaucracy itself. And it is such a view that Weber seems to have taken. He emphasized the importance not only of constitutional checks and balances, replete with liberal rule of law precepts, but also the social and cultural relationships between state bureaucracy and the socio-political order. Such concerns are central to those who have attached importance to the notion of representative bureaucracy. The second issue, then, is about the relationship between state bureaucracy and the socio-political institutions. Does the bureaucracy have and should it have a measure of independence from the polity and from the wider society that it is supposed to serve? Does it matter if the bureaucracy is staffed by an insular, lofty social or educational elite corps so long as it is efficient? Indeed is it necessary for its proper functioning that the senior echelons of the bureaucracy are filled with functionaries drawn to a higher moral calling in the manner of the Platonic philosopher king? Much depends upon the polity and the nature of the society in question. In an advanced liberal democracy there may be greater concern to limit the latitude given to bureaucratic discretion: the more closely supervised the better it is likely to serve society. Conversely, a measure of independence may be necessary in order for its potential superiority to have purchase. In any event, there is a dilemma about the technical wisdom for which state bureaucracy is a repository. Does state bureaucracy, bound or unbound, really make for better government; does the proverbial man in Whitehall usually know best? These dilemmas have a bearing upon any discussion about concrete examples of Weberian ideal type state bureaucracies. Just as perfectly competitive markets are to be found only on the intellectual drawing board of the economist, so nowhere in the real world would we expect to experience the ideal type bureaucracy. Some cases will exhibit closer approximation

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than will others and in some respects, though not in other respects. As we have seen, Weber acknowledged complexities and fault-lines that make the ideal elusive. Nor is it always easy to say for certain that this or that example of state bureaucracy conforms more closely to the ideal type.

2.3 THE WEBERIAN HIGH-TIDE?

It is sometimes only when a phenomenon recedes that its full significance becomes apparent. And then, because we are no longer under its shadow, we are apt to exaggerate its significance in days gone by, if only to underscore the importance of recent changes. Such has been the fate of the Weberian model of bureaucracy. It is often assumed that the so called New Public Management (NPM) and other reforms of the last two or three decades have been pitched against a pre-existing tide of state bureaucracy that was the antithesis of the current reform agenda; and that the unreformed state bureaucracies were essentially Weberian in character. Thus the period from roughly the late nineteenth to the third quarter of the twentieth century is seen as the Weberian high tide. In general and by comparison with certain of the more recent trends (in certain places), such characterization has some validity. When subject to closer scrutiny, it is deficient and misleading. This is evident from a survey of state bureaucracies in the industrial world during the supposed Weberian heyday. Finer (1995, p. 63) criticized Weber for grounding his ideal type too heavily in the Prussian experience. Yet Weber was careful to identify those aspects of the Bismarck regime that were not conducive to the proper functioning of bureaucracy. In particular, while officials showed a laudable sense of duty, impartiality and mastery of organizational problems Weber considered them to have failed completely in dealing with political problems when not properly supervised by the Reichstag (Weber 1978, p. 1417). As a near contemporary of Webers noted, the Prussian bureaucracy was efficient if not strictly impartial and that its officials were not excessively tied down by routine but were willing to act on their own responsibility (Lowell 1904, p. 293). In other countries, too, state structures were rarely neat, orderly or even always strictly hierarchical during the Weberian heyday. And where, as in most cases, a formal hierarchy pertained, there remained many irregularities and loose ends. In Britain, the most senior mandarins maintained a fairly tight rein within their departments (Barberis 1996, pp. 459). But the shape of the state apparatus was anything but orderly (Greenleaf 1987). Even in France, despite the Napoleonic imprint and the obsession with uniformity the state machine

The Weberian legacy 19 became increasingly fragmented (Wright 1990, p. 120); while in the USA there was always a good deal of fragmentation (Peters 1995, p. 35). In other cases patterns seem to have been more tightly structured. In Italy, there developed during the nineteenth century structures that were strongly hierarchical and centralized (Lewansky 2000, p. 214) while the Norwegian civil service had structures of the classic Weberian character (Christensen 2000, p. 105). Of course, Weber (1978, p. 1393) allowed for variations, both past and present. He saw a contrast, though, between the ancient forms to be found in China, Egypt, late Roman or Byzantium and those of the modern world as lying with the rational training and specialization of the latter. And, along with these characteristics, went the notion of a career corps, recruited on merit with an emphasis upon formal examinations. The French and German bureaucracies were prime examples. By the late nineteenth century France had a corps of officials recruited not only for a position or a job but for a career (Meininger 2000, p. 199). It developed its elite training schools to feed the grand corps, later (1945) establishing the Ecole Nationale dAdministration (ENA) to become perhaps the most famous of all such schools. In Germany well before the First World War, merit recruitment had been established. There was never anything to compare with the ENA but there was a long established tradition of legal training provided by the universities, later (in the Federal Republic post-1949) regulated by statute (Derlien 1995, p.69). The Meiji state in Japan (18681913) was deliberately modelled on the Prussian bureaucracy and featured a training school for public administrators (Krauss 1995, p. 119). In Belgium during the 1930s, Commissioner Louis Camu was charged with establishing a civil service inspired partly by British and French example. It has been described by Hondeghem (2000, p. 123) as the Weberian model of a neutral apolitic and competent civil service based upon an objective selection system with competitive examinations and a career system of promotions. The principle of recruitment by competitive examination had been established in Britain by the late nineteenth century. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge provided a quality control mechanism of sorts, though it is misleading to portray these universities as an equivalent of the French coles. They provided a reservoir of talent and, in the process, fostered a fairly high degree of cohesion within the higher echelons of the bureaucracy. But the British system also remained notable for the absence of systematic post-entry training for its future leaders, the emphasis being placed upon learning by doing. It ties in with the British aversion to any scientific, mechanical or theoretical approach to administration (Thomas 1978). It also connects with the dominion of the generalist, not incompatible with but less easily reconciled to the Weberian notion of technical expertise. Defenders of

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the British administrative elite always insisted that the lack of technical expertise among its senior members did not imply a lack of professionalism. There was indeed not only a highly conscious professionalism but also a strong public service ethic and sense of esprit de corps (Chapman 1988). A strong esprit de corps was no less evident in France, Germany, Norway and Sweden (Torstendahl 1991, p 228; Meininger 2000, p. 189). In the USA despite the lack of a European tradition of a strong, autonomous civil service, there developed a distinct esprit de corps at least in terms of the management of the state and of goal achievement (Peters 1995, pp. 1819). In Italy, by contrast, there was almost no esprit de corps, though a sense of professionalism, a concern for performance and the employment of well-qualified technical staffs featured from the 1880s (Lewansky 2000, p. 229). A word should be said about representative bureaucracy. It may mean one of at least two different things. First, the bureaucracy should to some extent be a microcosm of the society it serves; second, that it should conduct itself in accord with public opinion (Krislov 1974, p. 37). The latter implies some sort of symbiosis between its senior personnel and those of the political executive or at any rate, a bureaucratic elite in which the democratically elected political classes have confidence. It was in this sense that Kingsley (1944, pp. 26183) famously asserted that Britain had a representative bureaucracy. The essential ingredient is attitudinal, a mutual understanding of complementary but separate roles and a sharing of values between members of the administrative and political elites. In Britain as in most other state bureaucracies of the period (the Weberian heyday) there was a clear demarcation not only of roles but also of personnel and of respective career paths. But in France, the grand corps system promoted partially integrated careers among civil servants and ministers; so too, to a lesser extent, in the German Federal Republic. The patterns in Britain, France and Germany were all compatible with the Weberian model inasmuch as the primary criterion of appointment remained that of competence in the broadest sense. It will be more difficult, though not impossible, to meet this condition where there is a deliberate attempt to contort appointment to public office to achieve representation as a microcosm. For the most part this dimension of representative bureaucracy remained either silent or was played out in minor key among the state bureaucracies of industrialized nations during the Weberian heyday and then usually where there prevailed a high degree of social heterogeneity. In Italy, the issue arose from the late nineteenth century in connection with geographical origins, a high proportion of senior personnel coming from central and southern regions, though the factors involved were quite complex (Melis 2005). In Belgium and in Canada, linguistic divisions have

The Weberian legacy 21 long been prescient (Krislov 1974, pp. 927), while ethnic diversity in the USA has long given the issue of representative bureaucracy a particular significance (Peters 1995, p. 27). The second dimension of representative bureaucracy is closely linked with the wider issue of relationships between the state bureaucracy and politics. As we have seen, Weber was concerned that state bureaucracies should not exceed their due role in a liberal democracy; that they should not be perverted; nor that they should become instruments in the hands of a particular ruler or faction. Thus the notion of a properly functioning constitutional bureaucracy requires a nice balance between responsiveness to the political will of the democratically elected government of the day and a measure of independence that will keep it free to place its expertise and accumulated experience at the disposal of a similarly elected government of the future. It is a difficult balance to achieve and, while insisting upon the virtue of different roles for politicians and bureaucrats, Weber saw that the line could be drawn in different places (Du Gay 2000, pp. 12021). In the USA, openly partisan appointments to fill the most senior positions in the federal bureau were in part a way of dealing with the spoils system of the nineteenth century. It nevertheless established a distinction between the political and the neutrally competent civil service (Peters 1995, pp. 289). In Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands there have been traditions of impartiality at all levels with arrangements to insulate the recruitment process from any taint of political interference (Page and Wright 1999, pp. 27071). In fact even during the Weberian heyday some trace of ministerial interference occasionally crept into senior appointments in Britain, though not such as to disturb the principle of impartiality (Barberis 1996, pp. 11924). Similarly in France, Sweden and Germany appointments were subject to more direct political influence (Page and Wright 1999, p. 271) though the bureaucracies were able to retain their non-partisanship. Different traditions as regard to the wider role and competence of the state also have some bearing. Pierre (1995, p. 8) contrasts Rechtsstaat systems with public service models. Rechtsstaat systems involve the legitimization of a strong centralized state operating as an integrating force with a heavy administrative law tradition. In the public service model, the state has a more circumscribed role, its powers, sometimes extensive, often being granted more grudgingly. The strong state tradition in France accords more readily with the Rechtsstaat system, while the public service model is exemplified by Britain where bureaucratic power grew by steady accretion, accompanied by periodic outpourings of indignation born of a fear that it was exceeding its role (Thomas 1978). In many ways the British case reflects some of Webers injunctions about the ills of unharnessed

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bureaucracy, though the French system has, by comparison, exhibited more classical features of structure, legalism and technical expertise. What this discussion shows, first and above all, is that there existed quite a variety of bureaucratic forms. There was never a one-size-fits-all pattern among state bureaucracies of the capitalist world during the supposed Weberian heyday. Second, while some variety is quite compatible with the Weberian legacy, we must be careful not to explain away the misfits or deviant traits as mere exceptions that confirm the generality. Some of the characteristics in some of the state bureaucracies always rested uneasily within the Weberian skein. Certain bureaucracies at certain times down to the 1970s came closer and in more respects than did others; none conformed to a literal reading of the Weberian ideal type, even allowing for a certain amount of play. This is not to say that it is entirely wrong to talk about a heyday of the Weberian state bureaucracy; rather that we should be aware of the many qualifications. Third, we must remember that no country consciously modelled its state bureaucracy upon Webers ideal type; no one copied from the pages of Weber, so to speak. That was never the nature of his legacy. And fourth, we should resist the temptation to describe as Weberian any aspect of a state bureaucracy that has been in retreat during more recent times or is at odds with the conscious designs of the reformers.

2.4 RETREAT FROM THE WEBERIAN LEGACY?

Whatever the baseline, there undoubtedly developed during the last quarter of the twentieth century a perceptible shift in prevailing assumptions about the role of state bureaucracies, about the way that they should be run and about the values they were expected to enshrine. There have been varying chronologies with considerable differences of emphasis in different countries. But significant changes have taken place in most industrial nations. Four principal driving forces may be identified: first, a demand for more effective political control; second, a wish to make bureaucracies more efficient, better able to deliver; third, an underlying trend that may be loosely described as postmodernism; and fourth, internationalism or globalization. There is no conspiracy. These driving forces reflect disparate and sometimes unconnected if not conflicting movements. But they have often been mutually reinforcing. For example, the demand for more effective political control is born of a view shared by radical elements of both left and right that old-style state bureaucracies had self-serving tendencies. But it is from the radical right that such forces were expressed perhaps most elegantly in

The Weberian legacy 23 the shape of public choice theory. Here, then, is a denial of the special role and status accorded to senior mandarins who helped to steer the ship of state for the common good. It is necessary therefore to rein back the role of the state, seeking wherever possible to introduce market-orientated mechanisms in whatever remained of the public sector. This view has to some extent coalesced with the second force for change a desire to make the state more efficient. The import of business methods is seen as one way to achieve this objective, accompanied by a heavier emphasis upon management as an instrument of salvation. For convenience this is usually called the NPM. The third and fourth forces postmodernism and globalization are of rather a different order. They are abstractions, though they reflect real world changes. Postmodernism implies the break-up of orderly social, economic and political patterns associated with (pre-post) modern industrialism. Relative order, structure, regularity and stability have been replaced by comparative disorder, fragmentation, irregularity and inherent instability. Such at least is the apparent trend. It relates partly to the fourth driving force globalization. Here is a phenomenon which, in extremis, could render meaningless or far less significant the notion of the nation state upon which that of state bureaucracy is predicated. Three questions arise. First, what are the specific manifestations of these four driving forces what bearing do they have for state bureaucracy? Second, to what extent do they constitute a denial of the principles associated with Weberian bureaucracy? Third, how much bite have they had within state bureaucracies of the industrial world and, most importantly, to what extent has the Weberian legacy been thereby diminished? These four driving forces yield a number of characteristics. Rhodes (1994, 1996) has referred to a hollowing out of the state and a shift from government to governance. It means that the state has lost functions both above and below above, to international and supranational institutions; below, to non-state and quasi-state institutions through programmes of privatization, contracting out and delegation. The so-called enabling or regulatory state may retain many responsibilities but it seeks wherever possible to regulate those who deliver on its behalf rather than to deliver directly itself. There is thus a process of fragmentation a more jumbled tapestry of organizations with differing responsibilities, more complex patterns of interaction and lines of accountability. Within many public sector organizations there are flatter hierarchies; polycentric relationships have replaced linear chains of command. The postmodern bureau is output rather than procedure orientated, reflecting a more utilitarian concern for ends rather than means. The output culture has embraced target setting, performance assessment, league tables and payment by results. Citizens and clients are, in the business tradition, customers. Citizens charters,

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mission statements, codes of practice and the like provide benchmarks against which the performance and adequacy of bureaucracy may be tested. There is greater transparency and concern about open government. Senior mandarins are more accessible and more visible. More information is provided about them (including human disclosures such as the football team they support) and they answer in public not only to explain the technical detail of policy but also, on occasion, to defend its substance. There has been a shift away from careers for life and towards job-specific contracts, periodically renewable subject to satisfaction. Collective bargaining and collective reward systems have given way to individually negotiated contracts, at any rate for senior and mid-ranking officials. More fractured, localized patterns of recruitment and promotion make for less homogeneity. Greater diversity of personnel makes state bureaucracies less elitist, less cohesive and with less of an esprit de corps. The above picture is, in effect, an alternative ideal type. No more does it exist in pure form than did the ideal type bureaucracy in the apparent Weberian heyday. And no more could it. It takes no account of inner tensions and contradictions. For example, greater fragmentation may well render more difficult the transmission of the democratic impulse. Or the desire, say, of a locally managed school to attract better pupils in order to lift itself up the achievement-orientated league table may negate the governments wish to engineer a broader social intake. These and numerous other tensions, then, would make it almost impossible anywhere or at any time to activate a full-blown programme of reformed bureaucracy. Our concern for the moment is whether, in principle, the alternative ideal type constitutes a total denial of Weberian bureaucracy. There is no simple answer to the question. In some ways, the two models are compatible to a certain point. The greater emphasis upon making bureaucracy more sensitive to political direction is, as we have seen, not only compatible with but is indeed central to Webers ideas about state bureaucracy. Similarly, the infusion of outsiders need not destroy the Weberian principle of a career service so long as they are recruited on merit and that careerists remain preponderant. But politicization is an assault on Weberian principles, be it the intrusion of party colours when making appointments or the loss of objectivity by mandarins in order to please the political leaders of the day. The modern penchant for transparency is in one sense an intrusion. Weber noted the tendency of bureaucrats to maintain secrecy wherever they could. Some secrecy he saw as necessary, especially in diplomatic exchanges (Weber 1978, pp. 9923; 14318). But he did not see it as the sine qua non of the effective bureau. A measure of transparency and open government may also therefore be compatible

The Weberian legacy 25 with the Weberian legacy so long as it genuinely serves the cause of better government and does not become a fetish. Privatization, downsizing and perhaps even contracting out may be in line with Webers ideas about a state that would not become too dominant a force; he might well have endorsed a prospectus for a state more modest in scope and reach (though no less effective) than had become common by the final quarter of the twentieth century. On the other hand, he would have been uneasy with any tendency to make public agencies behave as if they were private businesses. Thus the limited and judicious use of appraisal and other performance-related techniques may be compatible provided they remain within the compass of proper public administration objectives. When used inappropriately or to excess, though, they can become corrosive of traditional bureaucratic values. They can induce a performance game necessitating the exercise of managerial discretion that is the antithesis of the Weberian concern to uphold the consistent application of rules and procedures. There may also be a corrosion of the public service ethos and sense of esprit de corps. The new reforms do not, then, imply the inevitable denial of every aspect of the Weberian legacy. In moderation and in themselves, certain features may be compatible. But in combination, even when in moderation and certainly when rendered with full force, the result would be a retreat for the Weberian model of bureaucracy. To establish the extent to which these reforms have brought the Weberian legacy into retreat we must now briefly survey some of the most notable changes in various state bureaucracies since the 1970s. If there are different base lines of proximity to the ideal type in the Weberian heyday, we should expect different patterns of movement away from traditional civil service systems. In terms of the rhetoric of reform, Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004, p. 102) make a threefold distinction: first, the pro-NPM Anglo-America-Australasian states; second, the early and participating modernizers of northern Europe; third, the later, more managerially orientated modernizers in central Europe and the EU. The latter two are variants of what they call the neo-Weberian state. They involve, inter alia, a shift towards meeting citizens wishes, though not necessarily by market mechanisms; a supplementation though not the replacement of representative democracy by mechanisms for direct participation; an emphasis upon results while not abandoning questions of procedure; and an endorsement of professional management in place of the reliance upon legalism. So much for the rhetoric; what about the reality? The Anglo-Saxon countries have moved furthest, sometimes feeding upon each others reforms (Halligan 2007, p. 56). There has been some downsizing in these countries and in those of Western Europe and beyond, including

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programmes of privatization, decentralization, and agencification. Such has been the experience since the 1980s, even to an extent in France where there has been little enthusiasm for the NPM (Meininger 2000, p. 208). Across Europe there has emerged a more managerially orientated professionalism and a questioning of the efficacy of the public sector (van der Meer et al. 2007, p. 47). In the Anglo-Saxon countries and in certain other nations there has been some distinct movement away from traditional methods of recruitment and reward (Laegreid and Wise 2007, p. 173). In the UK, the Civil Service Commission has been abolished, its commissioners given new roles and recruitment for all save the elite stream effectively decentralized; partisan special advisers have been enlisted in greater numbers; people with outside experience are with greater regularity than before filling the senior permanent positions; performance-related reward systems have intruded at all levels. These developments are, if nothing else, a challenge to the Weberian legacy; they could become its nemesis. Yet merit remains the touchstone even amidst decentralized recruitment; the use of partisan advisers, while destabilizing and occasionally pernicious in the central departments (and then under prime ministerial tutelage) has had less direct purchase in the delivery departments; and most of the senior mandarins have spent most of their careers in and around Whitehall. Elsewhere and despite the introduction of more flexible service conditions, the Weberian ideal of a meritocratic career service remains equally prominent for example in France (Meininger 2000, p. 131), Germany (Goetz 2000, p.66), and Japan (Krauss 1995, p. 127) as well as in Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands (Bekke and van der Meer 2000, pp. 27980). Performancerelated reward systems may be a more serious threat. Much depends upon the attitude that they have fostered, for which little evidence is available to compare with that of an earlier period (Dogan 1975; Aberbach et al. 1981). As suggested above, the implications for the Weberian model of bureaucracy cannot be assessed along any one coordinate in isolation. The creation of a senior civil service in the UK and in the Netherlands during the 1990s and of a senior executive service in the USA following the Civil Service Reform Act 1978 may look like the consolidation of a Weberian principle. But these were really attempts to counteract the threat of fragmentation and loss of cohesion. In a wider sense, too, there is a duality, reflecting tensions between Weberian and post-Weberian values. Thus in the UK, senior mandarins continue to proclaim the virtues of the public service ethic while becoming increasingly immersed in the managerialism that is allegedly its antithesis (OToole 2006). Here and elsewhere, bureaucrats have adopted the creed of managerialism, sometimes as self-professed agents of change (Du Gay 2000, p. 137).

The Weberian legacy 27 Uneven and patchy as it is and unconfirmed by systematic field research, there seems to have been some sort of attitude change among senior mandarins of the industrial world that rests uneasily with the Weberian legacy. Conversely, there is little indication of any serious dismantling of the Weberian ideal of a politically impartial corps. It may be, as Pierre (1995) says, that in countries such as the UK, USA, France, Germany, Sweden and Japan neutral competence has been replaced by a politico-administrative relationship characterized by more complex patterns of interaction and interdependence. In normative terms, though, the Weberian ideal remains predominant (Bekke and van der Meer 2000, p.281). And there is little evidence of political intrusion beyond that which has in different ways always existed not at any rate such as to render any state bureaucracy incapable of transferring its loyalties to a newly elected government. There has been some blurring of the lines. Bureaucrats have by stealth become more publicly associated with certain policies; less widely noticed, politicians have become more concerned with the techniques of management, partly in order to inject their hue to the administrative process. But the NPM has been by no means universally embraced. Outside the pro-NPM states (UK, USA, New Zealand) many of the traditional assumptions and practices have survived what has been described as the modernization of the Weberian tradition (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004, p. 100). What is more, many of the post-communist central east European states are trying to move towards the creation of unified, professional and impartial bureaucracies (Verheijen and Rabrenovic 2007, p. 18).

2.5 CONCLUSIONS
Where does all this leave the Weberian legacy? In the first place, we must remember the nature of the legacy, as bequeathed by Weber. His ideal type state bureaucracy was more than an inert instrument of efficiency, though he upheld its virtues partly on account of its claims to greater efficiency. It was in fact part of the constitutional apparatus for a properly functioning liberal democracy a state strong in authority and democratically grounded legitimacy but not overbearing in role, a product of the age of reason to husband the institutions of industrial capitalism and civil society. Second and unsurprisingly, no state bureaucracy ever came close to fulfilment of the ideal type in all its characteristics. Even in the advanced industrial states and during the apparent Weberian heyday, there never existed more than an approximation to the ideal. In many of these countries there was nevertheless a recognizable approximation, especially in terms of merit recruitment, employment of expertise, a career

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service and some sort of esprit de corps among senior personnel, together with the crucial ingredient of political impartiality. For all the caveats and imperfections, there is enough to sustain the notion of a Weberian heyday, so long as our purpose is a comparative one, relative to other periods, and not a statement of the absolute. Third, movement away from such as ever existed of the Weberian heyday has been partial and patchy, though more pronounced in certain Anglo-Saxon countries, where there has been a more concerted embrace of post-Weberian reforms. The most visible manifestation is in the use of modern management methods. Not all the reforms of the last two decades are inherently incompatible with the Weberian legacy. Put crudely, more of the Weberian legacy survives than was ever adopted and subsequently abandoned. Weber understood as well as anyone the durability of bureaucracy. In the longer term, though, the dynamic forces that it has so far been largely able to absorb in the form of a modernized Weberianism may eat into its soul. How would we know? It will be clear that this had happened when merit is no longer the touchstone for recruitment and promotion; when it becomes necessary routinely to look beyond the bureaucracy for the expertise necessary to sustain the state in its role; when the bureaucracy is no longer able comfortably to transfer its loyalties to a newly elected government; when there is no longer any sense of esprit de corps or public service ethos in other words when the hired hand supplants the good shepherd. These things have not yet happened in their fullness. There is no compelling evidence of their inevitability, though there are some distinct signs in that direction. If they come to pass, it will be end of the Weberian legacy. It will be a legacy very difficult to retrieve if, once lost, its virtues (or some of them) are judged worthy of redemption.

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