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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Bureaucracy
(bureaucratic, bureaucrats)
Bureaucracy is a word used to refer to a particular form of organisation that is part of the system of governance in a nation and its possible subcomponents, such as state and local government. Major corporations are also understood to be organised as bureaucracies. Bureaucracy is also used as a pejorative; that is, organisations are criticised for being bureaucracies.
When bureaucracy is used descriptively in democratic systems, it refers to a group of people who administer a population on behalf of political leaders who have been elected. A bureaucracy, then, is an organisation that provides public administration and which has a specific set of attributes that distinguishes it from other ways to administer a population. These attributes include the following: separate organisations that govern particular aspects of people's lives, hierarchy, political representatives as heads, rules that are applied to everyone in the same way, and full-time professionals whose salaries do not derive directly from the people they administer.
While people may talk about the Commonwealth bureaucracy, they are really talking about a set of relatively discrete organisations. We usually refer to them as agencies or departments. Many of these agencies provide particular services for people or regulatory frameworks within which we live our lives. In Australia, these include agencies that deal with agriculture, transport, health, education, trade, the legal system (Attorney-General), our relationship with foreign governments and organisations (usually called foreign affairs) and defence. Other agencies have more of an oversight or coordinating role.
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- Keywords in Australian Politics , pp. 15 - 19Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006