Bureaucracy Against Democracy and Socialism

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

This collection of essays represents a comprehensive socio-political analysis of public and private bureaucracy, emphasizing its dangerous ramifications for democracy and individualism. The contributors analyze a variety of bureaucratic systems, providing a combination of theory, case studies, and proposed solutions, in an effort to enable the reader to confront the real problems of bureaucracy. Emphasis is on programs and principles directed to the maintenance of democracy and freedom within the limits and conditions of modernity. Bureaucracy Against Democracy and Socialism offers valuable implications for anyone interested in organizational theory and behavior.

Reviews

This is a marvelous collection of fourteen essays brilliantly organized around an introduction by all three editors and epilogue by Swatos. The problem of bureaucracy is its built-in tendencies to supplant democracy. The editors demonstrate Max Weber's considerable concern about this. Weber argued that socialism would not fare better than capitalism in tempering bureaucracy's antidemocratic characteristics. . . . This significant and timely collection will be appreciated by graduate students, academics, enlightenable bureaucrats, and defenders of democracy. It is clearly written, high-level scholarship, with extensive notes and bibliography to direct the reader back to Weber and forward to current supporting literature.-Contemporary Sociology
"This is a marvelous collection of fourteen essays brilliantly organized around an introduction by all three editors and epilogue by Swatos. The problem of bureaucracy is its built-in tendencies to supplant democracy. The editors demonstrate Max Weber's considerable concern about this. Weber argued that socialism would not fare better than capitalism in tempering bureaucracy's antidemocratic characteristics. . . . This significant and timely collection will be appreciated by graduate students, academics, enlightenable bureaucrats, and defenders of democracy. It is clearly written, high-level scholarship, with extensive notes and bibliography to direct the reader back to Weber and forward to current supporting literature."-Contemporary Sociology

Author Bio

RONALD M. GLASSMAN is Associate Professor of Sociology at William Paterson College. WILLIAM H. SWATOS JR. is Professor of Sociology at Northern Illinois University at DeKalb. PAUL L. ROSEN teaches Political Science at Carleton University Ottawa, Canada.