A Study On Bureaucratic Rationality And Public Administrative Responsibility

Before the 1970s, bureaucracy, as a rational and efficient organizational form and management system, has been applied extensively in administration of many Western countries. On the one hand, it met the need of large-scale production in industrial society and complicated administration; On the other hand, it was, with an impersonal characteristic, greatly welcomed by the scientific and rational era. Indeed, the use of bureaucracy promotes the technology and efficiency of governmental operation. But, with the coming of the information society, some deficiencies of bureaucracy itself have been exposed, which make it fall into the irrecoverable plight.Confronting the plight, many Western countries began to take efforts to reform and bring changes to bureaucracy. But the campaign of the so-called"government recycling"and"entrepreneurship"seems to be far from meeting people's expectation. Actually, the reform of attempting to abandon bureaucracy has not really been successful in abandoning it, but only trying to revise it in some details. It has not been fully realized that the problems of bureaucracy are largely resulted from its special emphasis on rationality.As we know, modern bureaucracy is the product of Western economic and social development while Chinese bureaucracy is a traditional one and there are essential distinctions between. Within Chinese context, bureaucracy is significantly affected by the idea and the culture of"rule of people", which emphasizes on human governance and ignores rules and rationality. In other words, it is not the time for China to abandon bureaucracy as bureaucracy is still far from being fully developed. The very argument which has been presented in this thesis is that instead of trying to abandon bureaucracy, we should, based on the consideration of Chinese context, fully develop bureaucracy, so that public administrative responsibilities can be exactly carried out.The essay is divided into three parts:The first: The rational basis of bureaucracy. This part begins with the background for bureaucracy to Appear, and then discusses the basic characteristics of bureaucracy and the application of bureaucracy in public administration. Finally we can conclude that the bureaucracy is necessary for us.The second: The relations between bureaucracy and public administrative responsibility. At first, this part classifies administrative responsibility, and thendiscusses the relations. At last ,with the example of western reformation ,we know that the bureaucratic rationality is necessary to public administration.The third: The way of strengthening public administrative responsibility in china:fully developing bureaucracy. This part begins with the present situation of china's bureaucracy and public administrative responsibility, and then discusses the deep obstacles of improving bureaucracy, and at last concludes that we can improve bureaucracy by strengthening administrative culture.