Customer Reviews

Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do And Why They Do It (Basic Books Classics)

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This book is really a "comprehensive" (in the literal meaning of the word), clearly written, richly supported by concrete cases (mostly, federal agencies) guide about government bureaucracy mainly in the United States. From introduction to the end, Wilson clearly and convincingly demonstrates the reasons what the government agencies do and why they do that in the way they do.

The book is organized into six parts: Organizations, Operators, Managers, Executives, Context, and Change. In the first part, Wilson's thesis is simply that organization matters. Organization must be in accordance with the objectives of the agency. In the second part, the author examines the operators' behavior (say, street-level bureaucrats) and how their culture is shaped by the imperatives of the situation they encounter in a daily basis. The third part deals with the issues peculiar to managers of public agencies. In this part, attention is focused upon the constraints that put the mangers in a stalemate (see chapter 7, this chapter is completely insightful!!). The fourth part is devoted to the Executives. This part clearly illustrates why the executives of government agencies compete with other departments and which strategies are used in the process of competition and/or cooperation (especially see the 10th chapter about Turf, insightful!!). In the fifth part, Wilson focuses on the context in which public agencies do their business (Congress, Presidents and Courts). In the last part, Wilson summarizes the problems and examines alternative solutions (the market alternatives to the bureaucracy) and concludes with reasonable and "little" propositions.

In the book, I found especially some points very insightful to me. One of them is concerned with the distinction between government agencies. According to the typology Wilson forms the government agencies are classified into four groups. That is, production organizations, procedural organizations, craft organizations, and coping organizations. This distinction is chiefly based upon the visibility/measurability of the organizations' outputs and procedures. In this logic, the "production organization" is defined as having both measurable processes and visible/understandable outputs (i.e., Social Security Administration). "Procedural organizations" perform measurable processes, but they have no visible or easily measurable outputs. The "craft organization" is characterized by having immeasurable processes and visible outputs (i.e., the armies). However, the "coping organization" has neither measurable/controllable processes nor visible outputs (i.e., the Police Department, the Department of Education). This taxonomy is put forward and used in the rest of the book as one of the main determinants of the problems (and also successes) in the public sector.

The second important and insightful point made by Wilson is concerned with the efficiency in the public sector. To Wilson, measuring efficiency is a difficult project in the public sector. Wilson approaches the efficiency from a different perspective that we are not so accustomed. His question is that if the efficiency is the ratio of input to the output, what are the outputs of the public agencies and can those outputs be measured/quantified? "Contextual goals" sought by public organizations in addition to their main objectives make the efficiency measurement problem more complex and elusive. If contextual goals are taken into consideration the efficiency of the public organization incredibly increases.

The third important point is concerned with the organization mission. Wilson sees organizational mission in the public sector radically different from how we learned it in the organization theory courses. To Wilson, organization mission is same with the public agency's culture if the culture is widely and heartily shared by the most of the organization's members. To connect organizational mission to the organization culture provides the author with another insight that in public sector, the culture of public agencies defines their mission (not congressional mandates or paper enactments!!). Culture is formed mainly according to the situational mandates of the work being done (and also many other factors such as leadership). That is, in addition to the "organization", also the "situation" matters.

Wilson does not neglect to touch another (susceptible) problem in the public sector: "red tape". To the author, the main reason behind the red tape can be explained with the fact that since there are high risks at stake when the rules are violated there is a "tendency" to multiply the rules, as (big or small) scandals occur, so as to impede the future scandals and violations that consume the trust capital generously in the eye of the common citizens.

Wilson also asks the question why public agencies are not given specific and well-defined goals. The reply to this question is "multiplication of interests". According to Wilson, as time pass, different interests find a place in the mission of the organization and accordingly new goals (for new interests [supported by politicians] to be satisfied by the agency) are added to the "objectives" list of the agency (mostly, contradictory to each other). You can discern this dynamic by comparing the total page number of the some enactments today in enforcement with the original page number when the enactment was first adopted (maybe ten years ago).

Having reviewed the government bureaucracy comprehensively, Wilson develops some "little" reform propositions. Wilson believes that if a reform is to be successful, it must take into account the situational imperatives of the public sector organizations, and the "reward systems" must be suitable to the output expected (this point can be summarized with the motto that DON'T REWARD THAT YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE).

Once you have finished the book will you likely to ask this question: Is really "bureaucracy" not a simple phenomenon? It has always been difficult to summarize the "great books", and this book is one of them. This book must be read in its entirety. Highly recommended.

Wilson's book is a breath of fresh air after years of being forced to deal with stilted rational choice texts in graduate school. Though the idea of finding a study of bureaucracy interesting seems strange, I literally could not put this book down- and not only because I am a poliSci nerd.

Wilson's review of how bureaucracies make policy is pretty comprehensive- he nods at almost all of the major contributors to the discipline. For this reason the book is an excellent introduction to Political Science for someone wishing to get beyond the 101 courses.

His most interesting work deals with the formation of institutional culture- how the definition of an agency's tasksm and the limitations of its capabilities influence its performance and can often produce seemingly "irrational" behavior.

The most interesting thisn, however, is his discussion of how institutions and organizations develop an "ethos" or organizational culture. What bureaucrats do depends not only on what they think their priamry task is, but to a large degree on who they think they are. It is an area often neglected in the field today.

Wilson is a giant, and I recommend him to anyone who is interested in policy, in academia, or outside of it.

Wilson, as usual, writes amazingly well in this comprehensive book covering bureaucracies, how they operate, and why bureaucrats act the way they do.

He discusses the different organizational features that persist across all bureaucracies, and why it is that once a bureaucracy is created it's almost impossible to get rid of. This may pique your interest if you've been following the recent attempts to solve our intelligence problems by adding more layers of bureaucrats, as if that will somehow solve the problem.

Highly recommended to all students of American politics.

I just finished a masters program in public policy, and though this book was not used in any of my classes, it was recommended reading. I have to say that it provides a great introduction to bureaucracies and why they are the way they are. (Spoiler: it's not, as many believe, because bureacrats are idiots) Coming from a background of small, private-sector organizations, this was especially useful for me.

I appreciate Wilson's taxonomies of various organizations. Every political scientist has to have a 2x2 matrix to divide the world, but one of Wilson's, that divides organizations into "production," "coping," "craft," and "procedural" is particularly useful. If you are planning a career in public service, you'd do well to take some time to match your personality to the type of organization you're thinking of joining.

Wilson's brilliant treatise on this subject is a classic for the ages. Starting with the topic of transient nomadic dictatorships and why they are not compatible with industrialized societies, Wilson goes on to outline the machinations and internal rumblings of a run and tumble system of ruminators that we call the man. Bureaucracy is simply, Wilson argues, the culmination of people, plans, and progress, the necessity of created necessities. Hinting at what bureaucracies do and why they do it, Wilson waits till volume two to expound. A treasure. Illustrations by Mary Quigley are also insightful and full of warmth.

Overall good book offering the student of Bureaucratic Behavior a unique insight into the wide variety of personality traits that are commonly found in today's bureacracies as well as an in-depth vew of how the US form of Governemnt operates in a sometimes difficult arena of these personalities. I do believe chapter summaries could have been better developed and in some cases there was too much in the examples and in some there was too little. Overall a good book on the subject.

This is a book used for my public management class and I have to say, it is pretty interesting. I feel that there is some overlap in chapters, but overall it's a good book.

Dr. Wilson's thesis: the Bureaucracy (mostly the federal bureaucracy) behaves in consistent, hence predictable, ways. His point is very well taken and explains why, for example, the Clintonians showed up expecting to be greeted as saviors by the civil service... and why they weren't. Liberal, Conservative, Populist, or Libertarian, you'll find no better study.

Though the author does name drop Max Weber twice, this book is far from a concise sociological understanding of the concept bureaucracy. So reading it from this standpoint, the material would appear a bit long winded and inconcise. I would not recommend this book if you are interested in understanding bureaucracy from a sociological perspective. The focus is strictly government bureaucracy (mostly if not entirely a United States bureacracy analysis). "Search inside this book" and you can see how the author breaks up this focus. ( Don't be fooled by reading the paged provided to you by Amazon, the rest of the book isn't at all like those few beginning pages. The book gets more uninteresting as you read the following chapters.) In my opinion the book is overloaded with example that, as reader, you kind of lose focus as to what the points of those examples are. And it's almost as though these "examples" that the author provides are really suppose to be stand alone "stories of interest" The book was written in 1989 so all the examples are dated in that respect so if you purchase this book now in 2007, these examples may not be of any interest in and of themselves like I believe the author intended them to be. For 25 plus dollars I would say that this book really isn't worth a purchase but if money is not an issue or if you can get this book for less then whatever you know. It not even a very good book on government bureaucracy either in my opinion because the author really isn't very insightful in his analysis. Just read the review by Tansu Demir found in the review section and save your money.