I can’t remember ever hearing someone speak about a bureaucracy with anything other than contempt. Another term, red tape, has always gotten the same treatment – contempt. I’ve known a lot of government employees and they also have been contemptuous when it comes to both of these points so I am wondering why we have such universal agreement on this point when we have such universal disagreement on almost everything else?
Let’s start with a visit to my trusty Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition so that we are all talking about the same thing.
bu·reau·cra·cy n, pl -cies [F bureaucratie, fr. bureau + -cratie -cracy] (1818)
1 a : a body of nonelective government officials
1 b : an administrative policy-making group
2 : government characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority
3 : a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation
Why are government bureaucracies so filled with red tape? When you think about it, it isn’t because the bureaucrats got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning – no, they got up wanting to help their customers (all of them) fairly and equally. If they serve one customer differently than another there will be complaints of prejudicial treatment so the best thing to do is treat each customer the same and the way to insure that is the case is to use some red tape.
Red tape seems to have its origin in either England or Spain. In England, King Henry VIII is thought to have used red tape to bind the many documents he was submitting to the Pope in hopes of having his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled. In Spain, Charles V is said to have used red tape to keep important documents together in support of discussions by the Council of State. Either way it would seem that red tape was supposed to be helpful rather than a hindrance as it is now seen.
Of course, we don’t hear from the satisfied customers of the government who were treated fairly and respectfully on any given day. Perhaps their expectations were too low and, thus, they were easily satisfied. On the flip side, perhaps the customer who was dissatisfied had their expectations set too high and preordained their frustration. I’ve noticed that when a customer is frustrated and dissatisfied there is almost no way to get anything positive accomplished.
We might be onto something here with the idea that a predisposition toward unhappiness could be part of the problem when it comes to our feelings about bureaucracy – our feelings about government. As I look back just a few years I notice that our dissatisfaction really took a big step up when we started using the internet to examine government documents. In my book, A Broken Sausage Grinder; Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed? , I wrote the following about this important question:
“We constantly read that some legislature is passing a measure to promote greater “transparency.” But nobody is asking, why is there some motivation for secrecy in the first place? What makes an elected official think that telling the whole truth is the wrong thing to do? We desperately need to find the answer to these questions and put measures in place to absolutely stop the secrecy. Otherwise, we can never trust the information we have to support the actions we take in what we think is our best interest.
“”Democracies die behind closed doors,” wrote Judge Damon J. Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in a ruling handed down in 2002 regarding secret visa courts.
“He said the First Amendment and a free press protect the ”people’s right to know” that their government is acting fairly and lawfully. ”When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation.” He said, ”A government operating in the shadow of secrecy stands in complete opposition to the society envisioned by the framers of our Constitution.””
There is nothing about a bureaucracy that promotes secrecy, but the bigger and more complex the bureaucracy the more likely it is that there will be ignorance amongst the bureaucrats because they just won’t all be fully aware of everything – nobody can do that.
I wonder if we can explain the desire for secrecy by exploring some human nature. We prefer to be right rather than wrong. We avoid offering an opinion when we are not sure of our facts. We like to finish our first draft before we show our work to anyone else for comment – especially if we think there will be critical comments and anything associated with government will get critical comment from one side or the other. I have a friend who, when asked to review something I had written, would hardly finish the first sentence before offering ideas of a better way to convey my message – paragraphs of context were never even read before the rephrasing was begun. My friend was making my work her work. I stopped asking for her opinion.
Government officials are no different than us so why would we expect them to be totally transparent with their work. There is only one reason – we pay the taxes which pay their wages so we have a right to expect transparency. Let’s not forget, however, that we elect their bosses so we need to remember to conduct our business through those we have elected to represent us. If our elected agent isn’t keeping us informed, it is up to us to elect a new agent who will.
The Sausage Grinder is broken, will you help to fix it?
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