Overshadowed Concerns: Bureaucracy in Brief
In this article, I would try to give a glimpse of how and why bureaucracy of Bangladesh has taken today’s position. Also why ecological approach to administrative theory should be taken into consideration.
First, I would say that the post-colonial legacy or the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) has influenced and shaped the bureaucracy in Bangladesh to a major extent. In fact the idea of centralized power has established from the British time period. The CSP also was similar to the Indian Civil Service. The bureaucracy at that time was thoroughly elite based. There urge to have control over the command structure and over-commitment to career concerns was a prominent characteristics of bureaucracy. This scenario created the contradictions between bureaucracy and politics even before the time period of liberation war. Then the bureaucracy acquired new characteristics that presented social, political, administrative and economic situations. And the issues of accountability, partiality, insufficient training or lack of responsibility was visible excessively in East-Pakistan, more than in the west. We can notice some historically and socially constructed traits originated from that colonial era too. For example, clientelism. Which violates the legal-rational administrative system.
After the Liberation war, Bangladesh went through authoritarian and democratic transition. There were several report for administrative reformation. But the lack of political determination and bureaucratic resistance to change status quo turned all reformation into failure. This tendency to keep the status quo is a consequence of the social traditions. It is because the bureaucrats do not want to break the social structure or result in any social dislocation. They are restrained with social norms and indifference to citizen’s choice. Two things more, that are not properly seen in bureaucracy, are ethics and integrity. Bureaucratic ethics are constructed by the accepted ideals of Weberian bureaucracy as well as it considers the socio-cultural norms and values. These two help judgement to be impartial and uphold accountability. But I guess corruption over ethics, keeps the wallet heavy. Ironically, the nature and role of bureaucracy in both the pre and post-democratic period remained almost the same except for an increase in number of ministries, divisions, departments and statutory bodies.
Then New public Management was supposed to change the system with its essential characteristics which were politics-administration dichotomy, rule-based administration, impersonality, division of labor etc. But this is another western model which resulted in failure because Bangladesh does not even have a developed infrastructure management yet.
Now bureaucrats support the information flow between government and citizen. But there is a visible wide gap between bureaucrats and the citizen. Like many developing countries, bureaucracy in Bangladesh was founded on the Weberian style which is a western theory. And there are many inaccuracy in current bureaucratic system if we compare it to the Weberian perspective. We can see hierarchical clashes, leak in recruitment system, improper training, political biasness, corruption and many more. Now my question here is that whether the Weberian bureaucratic theory should be applied in Bangladesh or not.
Then we can say the norms of impersonality was portrayed by western countries and these are not necessarily applicable in countries where social rules and compulsions are the focal point. This characteristic of some countries is an impediment to the established bureaucratic theories. Which results in chaos. The idea of ecological and comparative perspectives in developing countries was studied by F W Riggs. He said that western models are not relevant in countries where norms, cultural practices, economic life, political symbols, division of labor are shaped by the ecology. He developed Fused-Prismatic-Diffracted models to understand the administrative structure. And his study in Philippine and in Thailand explained that environmental conditions influence administrative system. Though there are criticism of this new theory but it is important enough to research it intensively.
I think the long term influence of western ideas have shackled our thoughts. Its better now to research and try to create our own system.
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