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8. Brazilian Bureaucracy

Study

Chapter Summary

Bureaucracies are important. They do stuff. We want them to follow the rules so that we all know pretty much what they are going to do. Yes, it can be infuriating. Learn to live with it. The alternative is worse. People have fretted about how to enforce democratic control over bureaucracies. Overhead democracy didn't seem to fit with what was happening. Agency theory, where the bureaucracies were treated like subcontractors, seems to explain more. Comparing bureaucracies to cockroaches is both philosophically appealing and explains how they monitor their environment and adapt to public demand.

Study Questions and Exercises

• Consider your personal experience with some bureaucracy-be it at the Department of Motor Vehicles or in the financial-aid office of a public university. Do the characteristics of bureaucracy ring true given your experience?
• What kinds of governmental functions do bureaucracies commonly served?
• Why are there extra vowels in bureaucracy?
• Why is strict adherence to rule-based decision making an ideal of bureaucratic government?
• How does an Iron Triangle form?
• Why isn't overhead democracy and effective means of subjecting bureaucracies to democratic control.