Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
JOURNAL OF MEHMET AKIF ERSOY UNIVERSITY ECONOMICS AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES FACULTY, cilt.8, sa.2, ss.651-681, 2021 (ESCI)
This study is an attempt of rereading of Max Weber's model of bureaucracy. The scholarly literature of political science focuses on Weber's theory of sovereignty/authority and refers mainly to his typology of authority only. Scholars of administrative sciences examine Weber's bureaucracy as a type of organization only and therefore delink it from its historical context. This widespread methodological and theoretical preference results in a disregard of the link between Weber's theory of sovereignty and model of bureaucracy. In addition, this approach leads to neglecting Weber's own critiques of bureaucracy and to presenting Weber as a rigorous proponent of bureaucracy. Weber, however, examines bureaucracy as a type of governance and a type of organization. Weber not only emphasizes the productivity of an administration tool when it is organized in a bureaucratic way, but also raises concerns about the risks that bureaucratic authority might have: it might intervene to the political sphere due to the possibility of autonomisation tendency and diminish the space of liberty. Thus, according to Weber, bureaucracy ought to be kept under strict control. Methodologically, this is a qualitative study in political and administrative theory organized to offer the aforementioned argument by analyzing Weber's own original works in German.