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Peter Wilson's Definition Of A Bureaucracy

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A bureaucracy is a large complex organization composed of appointed officials. Because of its complexity, there are multiple problems throughout. Both Peter Woll and James Q. Wilson explain their points of view on the bureaucracy and its issues. A heavy bureaucracy is a necessary structure to help governments to deal with the complexities of modern life and the expectations of modern governments. Modern life and government contain multiple complexities within them, one of them being a problem in enforcing decisions of the branches. Weber’s observations view a bureaucracy as “an important fourth branch of government” where the administrative branch has all of the power of government. He states that these agencies have the responsibility of making and enforcing the decisions initiated by either the legislative or executive branch. Because the government is so far away from the people, the bureaucracy is used to link them together. This heavy bureaucratic structure is necessary because these agencies can offer advice and can affect the policy-making process, which can help to deal with the complexities …show more content…

By definition, a bureaucracy is the hierarchical system of agencies and departments that work under a single chief executive in order to attain the organization’s goals. Once people are involved, this idea changes. Wilson states that in a hierarchical organization, personnel reach a point where incompetence is obvious. This incompetence leads the bureaucracy to lead to stagnancy, corruption, and/or mediocrity since the personnel are described to not have the ability to effectively reach their goal. The definition of bureaucracy leads people to believe that it would not lead to stagnancy, corruption and/or mediocrity; however, once people are involved, the situation changes and things take a turn for the

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In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it should be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on the other hand, that it should be fortified.” (Madison, Fed.

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When a men rule over other men, that can be dangerous and even deadly. The government must control the governed and control itself (Madison 1). A nation’s administration must depend on people for its direction, but there are some reservations that must be maintained. Two views are presented about why the federal system of America should follow a constitution. The first is that usurpations are protected with the division and distinctions in governmental departments (Madison 2).

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One of these methods is “power of the purse”, or Congress’s ability to control the flow of money to a federal bureau. This allows Congress to control the productivity of specific branches of the federal bureaucracy, as well as its existence. If Congress does not approve of a bureau’s management, it can cut its funding, effectively causing the bureau to adhere more to Congress’s will. Just like Congress can cut funding to a branch of the federal bureaucracy, it can also increase funding, if it approves of what the bureau is achieving. This power illustrates Congress’s ability to control how individual bureaus conduct their

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Regulating the branches of government is crucial to the success of our country, so the constitution laid out the concept of “checks and balances”. For example, the president can veto any bill passed by legislature. In this case, the executive branch checks the legislative branch of government. If this wasn’t possible, congress could pass any bill they want, and ultimately become a powerhouse. These guidelines help keep the government intact, and in turn keep the constitution intact.

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The most important thing that the bureaucracy does is implement policy. Congress and the President make the policies and laws, but they have someone else (the bureaucracy) to implement them. However, they also make policy by rule-making (process of defining rules or standards that apply uniformly to classes of individuals, events, and activities). Also, according to Jillson (2016), "Congress passes laws that authorize government programs, the bureaucracy then writes specific rules that define how the program will be administered." So, when the bureaucracy makes rules you have to obey them because they have the force of law.

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In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. "(The Federalist Papers, Paper #51, p.2) This is another reference to the checks and balances system in the United States. Basically, this states that the people (of whom are being governed) must be under control by laws, policies, and law enforcement.

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Under these conditions, no one branch can obtain too much power in the government. These checks along with many others are the reasons for the long lasting success in the prevention of

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The Constitution is the greatest document to teach “the question of how free and equal citizens check and channel power both to protect themselves from domination by one another and to secure their mutual protection from external forces that might seek their domination” (Allen 9). To do this, the Constitution created the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances so that each branch of government does not have domination over the other. Each branch of government has a specific area of responsibility and was made to not have too much power over the others, to keep an unbiased system of

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In the movie “Harvest” you learn that life is not so easy for some families. You learn that immigrants come here for an easier life but it ends up not being that easy. These immigrants know that it is going to have to be a group effort just to survive. There kids even stop going to school to help their parents so they do not have to kill themselves every day. The movie is based around three people named Victor, Perla, and Lumez.

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They are in a generation where they accept the logic of organizational power in short being a conformist. Even though a bureaucratic system is obvious in our government today we are still not made aware of it specially its complications and its consequences. Up to this date we still experience complications in a bureaucratic government also in a bureaucracy mandated business. A bureaucratic government isn’t all negative it has its pro’s specially being a well-organized government as well as a well-organized business organization. but in this paper were going to talk moreover on the negative or the cons of a bureaucratic government.

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The top management is the one who look after the entire bureaucracy. Weber suggests the bureaucracy within organisations are more rigid and authoritative, tend to be centralised, highly specialised, do not encourage empowerment, and high formalisation (Best, 2002). As a results, Weber’s conception of power connected with his interest in bureaucracy and office hierarchy (Sadan, 2004). Many organisations rely on bureaucracies to operate whether it is private or public sector such as government, hospitals, and schools. Therefore, everyone must follows the standardised procedures in order to produces similar results in the productivity and to promote the efficient attainment of the organization 's

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The German sociologist Max Weber [3] described many ideal-typical forms of public administration, government, and business. Weber agreed that bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which human activity can be organized, and that thus is indispensable to the modern

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This belief supported Weber’s view on human rights; Weber implied that there was a relationship between bureaucracies and rights. The features of Sjoberg’s theory of human rights included focusing on the bureaucracy and the role of human agency in relation to it. Unlike Weber, Sjoberg went further into the topic and includes the inequality that occurs with individuals higher up in the hierarchy. From Sjoberg and his colleagues’ studies it was proposed that individuals are capable

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A centralized structure is usually designed and has a formal layout. While in a decentralized organizational structure, the decision making control is distributed among departments and each department has certain degree of independence. It is usually emergent. Bureaucracy in an organization is based on single chain of command from top level to bottom level. It is the most rigid and formal type of organizational structure.

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The term bureaucracy refers to a particular type and technique of administrative organization. In the 1930s Max Weber, a German sociologist and political economist; he wanted to find out why people in organizations obeyed those in authority above them. He wrote a validation that described the bureaucratic form as being the ultimate way of organizing government agencies. Weber’s study of business was centered on understanding the need for stability and consistency in achieving competence.

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