Administrative Responsibility

Abstract

Public bureaucracies, a general term including government agencies and departments in the areas of public utilities, social services, regulatory services, security, and law enforcement, are indispensable to our welfare; we need them for the provision of these basic services. To provide these services, bureaucracies need such resources as power and money. The power of bureaucracies is compounded by their virtual monopoly of technical expertise, which puts bureaucrats at the forefront of public policy making. Indispensable to our welfare though they are, public bureaucracies also pose a potential threat. In view of the technical knowledge they have and their consequent important role in policy making, they may dominate public life. In other words, they may develop into a power elite and, as a result, act as masters of the public rather than as its servants. More disturbingly, they may not use the public trust to serve the public or respond to its needs. Still more disturbingly, they may breach the public trust or abuse the power entrusted to them. All of these possibilities have given rise to a widespread fear of bureaucracy. In some societies, this fear has reached pandemic levels. Fear of bureaucracy is not unwarranted; there is a consensus and concern in administrative and academic circles that the degree of bureaucratic accountability has declined in both developed and developing countries. A central issue with public bureaucracy has always been how to make it behave responsibly or in the public interest. Despite a plethora of mechanisms for ensuring administrative responsibility or bureaucratic responsiveness, many public bureaucracies may still be unresponsive and unaccountable ...