governance

[OPINION] The problem with bureaucracy

Kyle Parada

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[OPINION] The problem with bureaucracy
'Ultimately...the greatest danger of bureaucracy, civilian or otherwise, is that it is not obliged by the will of the people'

It is the sacred right of the citizen in political society to express genuine grievances to the governing body in order to influence its change. The citizen’s co-rulership of the state, after all, is the most basic concept of a functioning democracy. Public outrage and criticism have always been predominantly directed toward a specific cadre of the ruling elite; namely, towards its elected persons in the form of president, senator, representative, and so on.

However, the democratic processes we partake in have rarely ever produced the prime conditions necessary to actualize meaningful changes in mass society. It came to me then that perhaps we may have overlooked certain aspects of government in our desire for reform. Particularly, I believe that we must look beyond the realm of electoral possibility, to an influential body we have thus far paid little attention to, that is, that collection of non-elected officials we call the bureaucracy.

The introduction of new and democratic forms of government, liberal ideas, and heavy industries under the veneer of progress have given rise to fundamental questions concerning the running of the state. To quote Hannah Arendt: “[P]rogress, as we have come to understand it, means growth: the relentless process of more and more, bigger and bigger. The bigger a country becomes in terms of population, objects, and possessions, the greater will be the need for mass administration[.]”

Generally speaking, how does government effectively manage resources, regulate the economy, maintain health and security, develop infrastructure, or provide services to the public but on a simultaneous large-scale basis? The nation-state has, by then, grown far too unwieldy for any elite few to adequately oversee. Their exponential growth necessitated a massive reorganization of the internal systems with which to manage them. And although similar systems have existed as far back as Ancient Sumer and China, never before has the bureaucratic system operated on such an industrial scale as it has in concert with the political and technological developments of the past few centuries.

Consequently, the modern state is now crippled, buckling under the colossal weight of its own enormity. Bureaucracy has become – as Max Weber puts it – an “efficient machine…indispensable to the needs of mass administration,” i.e., a crucial mechanism for the general functioning of the state. Owing to this indispensability, by definition, the bureaucracy must possess some measure of resiliency. That is, that it must be able to, to a certain degree, exist and operate independent of the changes occurring within the broader political system.

Theoretically, this arrangement is ideal. Virtually, they are free to consolidate gains and positions over an extended period of time. Practically, it allows the bureaucracy to endure multiple transfers of power, outliving old regimes on one hand, and successfully integrating into new ones on the other. A perfect example is Juan Ponce Enrile – a Marcos henchman and bureaucrat-turned-politician who had thrived in both the Marcos and Aquino presidencies despite the radical difference in regimes, even managing to propel himself into a subsequent independent political career.

But in a broader sense, the general question of bureaucracy rests in how government can effectively implement policy. Power is, even in a democratic society, consolidated in the hands of a select few, seeing that the room cannot hold all. Ergo, the subsequent institutional organizations of bureaucracy become the middlemen by which power trickles down unto mass society. In this sense, the bureaucracy is the most vital actor of government as it is involved directly in the interaction between state and individual. Policy, in effect, is nothing more than the pursuit of rational outcomes for state and person. But what happens when the rationality of these outcomes is instead tailored to the whims of the policymaker?  

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Like a machine, the modern bureaucracy has become unfeeling. Although it has retained its independent functioning, its purpose now lies totally dependent on the ends of whomever wields it, abandoning any vestiges of its humanity in favor of an extreme level of efficiency in servicing its master. Public interest is supplanted by vested interest in a relationship vis-à-vis the ruling power, in which bureaucracy is transformed into the plaything, and the state the playground, of the politician. Such is the case for the police and military bureaucracies of this country, as men like Gens. Sinas and Parlade have evidently shown us. In their capacity as middlemen of political authority, they and the broader institutions they represent have become government’s most potent tools of oppression and repression.

Ultimately, however, the greatest danger of bureaucracy, civilian or otherwise, is that it is not obliged by the will of the people. The increasingly unchecked, outspoken, and outrageous behavior of a number of prominent bureaucrats in the country – most recently of DENR Undersecretary Benny Antiporda, MMDA Spokesperson Celine Pialago, and again of LGen. Antonio Parlade Jr. – are but the early warnings of this danger.

Normally, the politician must, at the very least, maintain some decorum or façade of credibility in either word or action. But unlike the politician, the bureaucrat does not derive its authority from mass society; rather, it is bestowed it by government itself. The bureaucrat is free from restriction in that it is not subject to the volatility of elected office. This last point is important; elections in a democratic society make all the difference for the simple reason that any desire for change in the managerial bureaucracy becomes significantly harder without the primary channel through which the public exerts the pressures of its collective power. 

I believe, therefore, that the problems of change’s actualization are rooted not in the politician per se, but in the nature of the highly-bureaucratized system of republics which is almost designed to produce the precise type of conditions detrimental to mass society. The question of fundamental change then, is not so much a question of who is in government, but of government itself. – Rappler.com

Kyle Parada is a third year undergrad taking up Political Science in the Ateneo de Manila University. His fields of interest include Political Theory, Ideology, International Relations, Philosophy, and Western History. 

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