Description
Book SynopsisBureaucracy is a much-maligned feature of contemporary government. This book is about good governance as much as it is about bureaucratic organizations. It asks: is democratic governance hindered without an effective instrument in the hands of the legitimately elected political leadership?
Trade Review"In this powerful defense of the modern bureaucratic state, Suleiman argues that decades of attacks on government bureaucracy by Western politicians have undermined their own authority, weakened citizenship, and imperiled democratic governance... Suleiman acknowledges that a leaner, more efficient state may be necessary today, but he makes a compelling case for the continuing necessity of the bureaucratic machine."--Foreign Affairs "Suleiman demonstrates precisely how legitimacy requires bureaucracy that is effective and how new and old democracies alike require bureaucracies at each stage of development... This is an important work and should be considered by those concerned with the proper functioning of democratic states."--Spencer D. Bakich, Virginia Quarterly Review "The relentless and prolonged assault by politicians and the public on the competence and motives of their government bureaucracies is slowly but surely undermining democracy in the Americas and Europe... The book arrives during a moment of particularly nasty relations between major parts of Washington's bureaucracy and a conservative Republican president who bemoans having to live and work here. This is a happy accident of timing. The book has no partisan ax to grind, and its insights could be useful to the Bush administration--both at home and in its unexpected bonanza of nation-building projects abroad."--Jim Hoagland, The Washington Post
Table of Contents*FrontMatter, pg. i*Contents, pg. vii*Acknowledgments, pg. xi*Introduction, pg. 1*Chapter 1. The End of Bureaucracy?, pg. 13*Chapter 2. Beyond Weber?, pg. 21*Chapter 3. New Conceptions of Bureaucracy, Democracy, and Citizenship, pg. 41*Chapter 4. Popular Dissatisfaction and Administrative Reform, pg. 63*Chapter 5. Universalistic Reforms, pg. 89*Chapter 6. Emulating the Private Sector, pg. 123*Chapter 7. The Reluctant Reformers: Japan and France, pg. 155*Chapter 8. Deprofessionalization: The Decline of the Civil Service Career, pg. 191*Chapter 9. Deprofessionalization: The Process of Politicization, pg. 209*Chapter 10. The End of the Nonpolitical Bureaucracy, pg. 241*Chapter 11. Constructing a Bureaucratic Apparatus in East-Central Europe, pg. 279*Chapter 12. The Politics of Bureaucratic Reform, pg. 305*Index, pg. 317
