BUREAUCRACY

The term bureaucracy was first used in France in 1802. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) offered a definition of bureaucracy in his Idée générale de la révolution in 1851 that covers almost all the reasons why citizens detested and still resent bureaucracy. Proudhon said

To be governed is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do it.

Bureaucratic structures developed everywhere in nineteenth-century Europe, even in Britain, where dominant Liberal thinking decried state interference.

During the eighteenth century the costs and setbacks of war meant rulers had to find new ways to tax subjects. The massive development of state power in the guise of bureaucratic institutions in the nineteenth century was also closely linked to the demographic explosion, rapid urbanization, consequent public health crises, economic growth, and the transportation revolution. It was also tied in with the declining influence of other agencies. In Roman Catholic countries the church had, albeit often very scantily, provided some education and a little social welfare. The sale of church lands, spurred on by the French Revolution, mostly eliminated the social role. Private charities, mutual aid societies, trade unions, and sometimes, as in Britain, parish committees, addressed a variety of social issues. The first national insurance schemes for sick pay and pensions were introduced by the chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1871–1890) in Germany in the 1880s.

Religious schools played a major role in education in France and in Britain until the 1870s. Around this date governments began to accept responsibility for education, driven by widening suffrage and, in Roman Catholic countries, anticlerical concerns. Repeated popular unrest meant that law and order could no longer be left to the local community, while the continuing scale of foreign war necessitated the conscription and training of mass armies. Civil servants were needed as tax collectors and much more. Just as Proudhon said, they inspected, checked, and—because it had become essential to run regular population censuses—they above all counted. The sharpest bureaucratic tools were official statistics and inquiries, well publicized in increasingly numerous newspapers.

The most vital features that distinguish modern bureaucracies from earlier administrative structures are size, scope of activity, and the imposition of a centralized, uniform, rational, and legal framework. Rulers needed senior officials who would both command the respect of local notables and have a good knowledge of the area they ran but accept direction from the center, qualities fraught with contradictory tensions. In the nineteenth century, European bureaucracies emerged as extremely hierarchical bodies run by a tiny, sometimes noble, increasingly isolated elite and a burgeoning mass of lower civil servants. The fastest growth took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, as vast armies of junior officials were needed as clerks, teachers, postal and rail workers, and so forth.

bureaucracy in france

In prerevolutionary France private companies bought the right to perform key administrative functions, including tax collection. Others bought the privilege not to pay tax. Many argued that privatization and privilege explained France's near bankruptcy in 1789. Standardized systems run by the state and applicable to all seemed to be the answer if one was at the top looking down. The 1789 revolution set up administrative structures that were imitated elsewhere and that are essentially still in place in France. Within five years there were a quarter of a million civil servants, five times as many as in 1789. Lower and higher ranks were totally separate. Most of the middle and senior ranking were bourgeois, 8 percent had some higher education. A degree in law or science in one of the new higher education colleges became a prerequisite for appointment into the lower reaches of the council of state, the start of a senior career. Old privileged families soon muscled in and formed part of a family tradition of state service.

Despite entrance exams and law degrees, from the start it was obvious that the French model for rational, centralized, bureaucratic structures was highly politicized. The separation of powers never seemed to apply to bureaucracy. All officials were appointed, and dismissed, from Paris, which meant that a career bureaucrat had to be politically sensitive. After Napoleon I's (r. 1804–1814/15) defeats in 1814 and in 1815, the newly restored Bourbon king, Louis XVIII (r. 1814–1815, 1815–1824) struggled to square the ambitions of former exiled royalists with the need for trained officials. Even after Waterloo (1815) only one of the new Bourbon prefects had not served the empire. But Napoleon's emphasis on professional training was forgotten. By 1816 more than 75 percent of prefects were nobles. However by 1830 it was clear that a title and royalist sympathies were not enough for a modern prefect whose prime task in his department was to win elections, which Restoration prefects visibly failed to do.

The 1830 revolution led to the biggest upheaval in any nineteenth-century bureaucracy. Only seven of the old prefects survived, and all of the generals commanding the nineteen military districts were replaced, as were four hundred senior magistrates. Middle-class officials triumphed over noble, but the distinguishing feature of the changes, which was to mark the character of modern bureaucracy, was political compatibility. The modern state imposed an oath of allegiance. Many of those eager to take the oath to the new Orléanist king were former Napoleonic officials, out of work since 1815.

France settled down with successive generations of professionally trained bureaucratic families, eager to adapt to changes of regime. Politicians and officials were indistinguishable. Forty percent of the chamber of deputies in the 1840s held official posts. Notable families dominated. Only three (1 percent) of the Second Empire prefects came from modest backgrounds. Eighty-eight (40 percent) were nobles.

For other than the most senior jobs in the localities—prefect, military commander, and so forth—centralization meant local patronage. Local notables elected to parliament expected to have a major influence on appointments from subprefects to postmasters. For subprefects the prestige of their family in the locality was conclusive.

Nonetheless the French bureaucracy was becoming more professional. Sons of officials filled the new lycées, or high schools, and won the bulk of the six thousand high school scholarships endowed by Napoleon I. Higher education became the norm. Over half (130) of Louis-Napoleon's (Napoleon III; r. 1852–1871) prefects studied at the Paris law faculty, a further thirty-six at provincial faculties. A glance at letters of recommendation however confirms that the writers of these letters stressed the applicants' genealogy and that an essential prerequisite was family money. Official posts brought prestige, but by 1900 other careers paid far better. A fairly senior official earned fifteen hundred francs per year, compared with twenty-five thousand francs for a senior salesman in one of the Parisian department stores.

italian bureaucracy

Under Napoleon I the French conquered an empire larger than any since the time of Charlemagne (742–814) and, driven by the need to collect revenue for war, imposed new institutions on it. New administrative elites in areas such as Italy, already emerging in the eighteenth century under Enlightened rulers such as the Holy Roman Emperors Joseph II (r. 1765–1790) and Leopold II (r. 1790–1792), were strengthened. In northern districts new elite families such as the Cavours and the Pignatellis acquired land, investments, and bureaucratic posts.

With Napoleon's defeat, much of Italy fell under Habsburg rule. Italian bureaucrats were replaced by Austrian, the Italians having to be satisfied with more junior posts. In Naples, supporters of the restored king asserted their right to displace French-appointed officials. Centralized systems were replaced with a traditional blurring of the public and the private as all manner of public services, from taxation to social welfare, were sold to private individuals. The dispossessed Napoleonic bourgeoisie, like the old nobility, invested in the private companies. The French bureaucratic model did not disappear totally. After the 1848 revolution the Piedmontese restored a French-style prefectoral system and codes of law, which were applied to the whole country after unification in the 1860s. Unification meant the virtual colonization of south by north. Piedmontese officials dominated the new centralized state and the acquired southern provinces.

Most Italian bureaucrats were trained lawyers, although this was not a requirement. There were no formal structures for promotion, salary increases, rules for dismissal, or pensions. Patronage was the norm. Each ministry recruited its own officials, who were poorly paid. Local notables and politicians each had jobs to bestow. Unification brought a 50 percent increase in administrative jobs. There were the same number of magistrates as in France, although there were only half the courts. The colonial ministry employed twice as many officials as its British counterpart. Between 1882 and 1912 the size of Italy's bureaucracy mushroomed from 98,000 to 260,000. To some extent this was genuine growth; many of the new jobs were in rail and telephone services. Most were very poorly paid; primary school teachers received less than agricultural laborers. As alternative ways of earning a living were lacking, low pay was better than nothing.

russian bureaucracy

Throughout the nineteenth century the enormous Russian empire was held together by military governors, who were mini-tsars in their provinces. Military, civil, and judicial functions were indistinguishable and Russia did not begin to develop a recognizably modern civil service until after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861.

In the early eighteenth century Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725) created a system that lasted virtually intact until the 1917 revolution. Using France and Sweden as models, he set up an administrative senate and five "colleges" or government departments and inspectors were appointed to monitor officials. Peter the Great also set up a table of fourteen ranks that would reward worthy commoners with nobility. Hereditary noble status was conferred upon any nonnoble who reached the eighth civil rank or the fourteenth military rank. However, throughout the nineteenth century nobles successfully froze aspiring middle-class applicants out of jobs, ironically asserting their superior rights as "service" nobles. Nobles also manipulated the system so that a nonnoble had to reach not the eighth, but the fifth rank before he gained nobility. By the middle of the nineteenth century, between two-thirds and three-quarters of senior officials were still nobles, but the service was becoming less the preserve of a land-owning elite. By 1900 most bureaucratic posts were held by low-ranking nobles or bourgeois. Only slowly did the service take on the characteristics of a modern bureaucracy, demanding educational prerequisites and not merely an army record for its applicants.

Alexander I (r. 1801–1825) tried to modernize his civil service by setting an examination for entry to the eighth rank and beyond, but his successor Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855) was pressured by nobles to abandon it. In 1828 graduates of district schools gained preferential entry, gymnasium graduates even more so, while a knowledge of Greek guaranteed instant appointment in the fourteenth rank. Fast-track entry for high fliers was restricted to the noble establishments of Tsarskoe Selo lycée or the School of Jurisprudence. On the other hand, in the years 1894 and 1895 over half of the more than four thousand new men lacked even secondary education. When technical or engineering experts were needed, a vital and respected part of the French and German systems, Russia had to import them from abroad.

The Russian bureaucracy grew from 38,000 in 1800 to 113,990 in 1856. By the end of the century it had quadrupled, servicing new areas in railways, postal services, and so forth. It was still tiny compared with the size and scale of populations of other major states; 62 for every 1,000 inhabitants in European Russia (40 in the whole empire), compared with 176 in France and 126 in Germany.

Russian bureaucrats were poorly paid. Although ambassadors received fifty thousand rubles per year, senior officials netted a mere fifteen hundred. Only about 20 percent earned more than one thousand rubles, barely enough to maintain a middle-class lifestyle. The deficit was covered by ubiquitous corruption. Promotion depended solely on seniority, but there was no security of tenure. Furthermore, whereas in Germany bureaucrats were respected, in Russia they were treated with social and intellectual condescension.

Nor did the Russian bureaucracy possess a corporate identity. The gulf between central and local officials was huge. There were very few senior posts in the provinces; only 1 to 2 percent at rank five or higher, whereas in St. Petersburg 15 percent were at this rank. Provincial offices were staffed by poorly paid and educated local men, with no prospects of promotion. Their seniors were imported from the army or St. Petersburg.

bureaucracy in prussia and the german empire

An effective bureaucracy was needed in Prussia because the territories owned by the ruler were so physically scattered. Following defeat by Napoleon I, the reforming minister, Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein (1757–1831), shaped a bureaucracy increasingly dominated by a service, rather than a landed nobility. This service elite was not a closed caste. The absence of formal entry requirements or rules for promotion allowed some clever sons of peasants and artisans to compete for posts. In the 1830s nearly 30 percent of those recruited into the bureaucracy from the universities were sons of minor officials, peasants, or artisans. More than half of the rest came from existing bureaucratic or professional families. Only 9 percent were sons of big landowners.

However in the decades after 1815 the job market slumped as a result of Stein's reduction of senior bureaucratic posts by 50 percent. People began to worry that there was a dangerous excess of educated men. More rigorous standards were imposed. In the 1830s German universities began to demand a pass in the abitur or school-leaving certificate as a precondition for university study. The proportion of university students from poorer families fell as a direct consequence. Meanwhile more senior bureaucratic posts were restricted to university graduates, while only those students who had been members of student societies, including military groups, could apply. Such societies refused to admit sons of poorer families.

In the years up to and including the revolutions of 1848, bureaucrats whose careers suffered played a leading role in promoting liberal and constitutional reforms. Forty-two percent of those elected to the Prussian National Assembly were officials, 26 percent members of the judiciary, and 16 percent civil administrators. Fifty percent of the Berlin city council elected in the wake of the 1848 revolution were bureaucrats. The prospective of a revolutionary bureaucracy seemed imminent. However in May 1849 the number of conservative bureaucrats in the new Prussian assembly rose from 40 to 113. By 1855 the vast majority of bureaucrat MPs were progovernment, including 55 percent of the magistrates elected to the assembly. An increasingly conservative bureaucracy effectively triumphed over liberal parliamentarianism.

The reasons were complex. Some 1848 liberals were alarmed at the scale of popular unrest and radicalism, others were disappointed that the constitutional movement was emasculated in May 1849 by the introduction of a hierarchical three-class franchise. Others came to accept that their own interests were best served by obedience to centralized authority. Frederick William IV (r. 1840–1861) cleverly introduced salary increases and extensive judicial reform on the French model, which led to a 75 percent increase in the size of the bureaucracy in the second half of the century. In France, Italy, and Britain, officials elected to parliament gained promotion; in Prussia they did not.

The Prussian bureaucracy was gradually transformed from a privileged, almost self-recruiting corporation into part of a new, more consolidated, upper class. Up to 1850, more than half of the law students destined for the bureaucracy were sons of senior officials; by 1870 the figure had fallen to 36 percent. Careers in business or industry, previously thought inferior, were beginning to appeal. By 1900 a military career was the first choice for a bureaucrat's son. Meanwhile a bureaucratic career was increasingly appealing to sons of landed nobles whose family estates had become less profitable. By 1916, 50 percent of senior officials came from landed families. Over the century the social composition of the German bureaucracy had undergone a major transformation. At the outset they regarded themselves as a platonic guardian class, recruited from all social groups and thus representing the whole of society. Gradually they came to represent, and reflect the interests of, a tiny upper-class elite, increasingly fraught with social ignorance and fear. Whereas in Russia major landowning noble families lost interest in running the bureaucracy, in Germany the opposite occurred.

The consequences for policy making were considerable. Whereas before unification south German bureaucrats tended to follow liberal policies, unification left an increasingly conservative bureaucracy in control. German bureaucrats could point to triumphs, especially the first national system of education. However the conservative bureaucratic elites later in the century were accused of being ignorant of the need to encourage entrepreneurial growth and of petty and negative meddling.

great britain and bureaucracy

In 1780 in Britain there were only about sixteen hundred government employees, mostly customs and excise men appointed through patronage. By 1870 there were fifty-four thousand; these served as regulators and coordinators of the Poor Law and prisons, ran Royal Commissions of Enquiry and a regular ten-year census of the population, and served as inspectors of factories and in a whole range of economic activities. Patronage was gradually replaced by competitive examination, which became open in 1870. Some of the leading civil servants were professionals, lawyers, doctors, or engineers. Government gradually took over prisons between 1835 and 1877. No one wanted state-run railways in Britain, but the board of trade acquired some obligations to inspect on safety grounds after a number of spectacular accidents.

Whereas the states already discussed gradually assembled centralized bureaucracies, in Britain many of the functions were managed by parishes and financed by local rates. Poverty and public health were major issues. The problem of how to help the poor cheaply without encouraging them into idleness, traditionally the responsibility of the church in Catholic countries in earlier times, became acute, particularly in the cyclical economic depressions of the nineteenth century. Poverty was dealt with by ad hoc combinations of private, municipal, and state charity and only after revolutionary upheaval. Britain avoided revolution, but more by luck than by generosity or farsightedness. After much debate a new Poor Law (1834) gave central government the power to order local landowners and other notables to create boards of guardians. They tried to replace traditional parish outdoor relief with parish-run and parish-financed workhouses. The tragedy of the potato famine in Ireland (1845–1846) led to government commissions overseeing Poor Law inspections and massive land sales, although it is hard to imagine that the poor benefited when they swapped Catholic for Protestant landlords.

Concern over public health was a major factor in breaking Liberal resistance to official intervention. Cholera was a catalyst because it affected rich and poor. With the second epidemic, Sir Edwin Chadwick, commissioner of the board of health from 1848 to 1854, managed to gain acceptance for the Public Health Act in 1848 and for the General Board of Health, but after ten years the board was abolished. The investigations of a non-partisan professional, Sir John Simon, medical officer in the Privy Council (1855–1876), helped to produce the Local Government and Public Health Acts, 1871–1872. Worries over the spread of venereal disease led to legislation in the 1860s that ordered health checks on known prostitutes.

The state had no role in running schools in Britain until 1870. Until then charity school and competing religious schools held the day. The 1870 legislation encouraged ratepayers to elect school boards to set up and run elementary schools where they were needed. The state provided inspectors. This did not produce a uniform or total solution. In 1895 state schools served only 20 percent of children, but the new state system already needed a substantial body of teachers and inspectors.

Proudhon's stirring definition of the objectives of bureaucracy may not be entirely proved by the examples given here, but many will feel deep sympathy with him when they tackle their tax returns or parking fines. A country is generally described as bureaucratic when extensive aspects of the state machinery are centralized and run by unelected officials. There is an assumption that these officials should be trained to blind obedience and in return be guaranteed a secure career structure. Bureaucrats were directly answerable to single rulers, while their status in countries with parliaments was more complex. It was common for large numbers of officials to sit in parliaments and local assemblies and voters in France and Italy, and probably elsewhere, saw the resulting patronage as opportunities for their families and their area. In Britain, on the contrary, there used to be a myth that secure career structures in the civil service ensured that the senior figures could offer independent advice to government, an aspect of the separation of powers that used to be understood in Britain but was not recognized in other countries, including the United States.

See alsoEducation; Professions.

bibliography

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Pamela Pilbeam