Bureaucratic Control (bureaucratic + control)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The Administrative Presidency and Bureaucratic Control: Implementing a Research Agenda

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2009
ANDREW RUDALEVIGE
As Richard Nathan pointed out in The Administrative Presidency 25 years ago, much contemporary policy making occurs through the execution of the laws and the management process. Thus, the conditions under which administrative power can be effectively exercised are important components of future research. In short, we must revisit an old question: Who controls the bureaucracy? This article sets out a research agenda for doing so by examining a set of related strategies that presidents have utilized in their efforts to assert control over the bureaucracy,namely, centralization, politicization, and reorganization,in the course of linking two strands of literature with significant overlap but little conversation between them: the largely quantitative bureaucratic control literature, and the largely qualitative "politicized presidency" literature focused on presidential structures. Each strand, I suggest, can inform and enrich the other; both would benefit from better measures of inputs, outputs, and, crucially, the processes that connect the two and influence the success of policy implementation. [source]


The Tokugawa Bureaucracy and Urban Crises: A Revival of the Humanist Traditions of China and Japan in Ogyu Sorai's Political Writings

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2007
Yasuko Sato
Ogyu Sorai (1666,1728) is a Japanese Confucian scholar who formulated his political philosophy, honoring the benevolent Way of the ancient Chinese Sages. It was his firm conviction that the task of government is to bring peace to the people. This humanistic concern was indeed central to classical Confucianism before the rise of a bureaucratic empire like the Qin (221,206 bce). How then is it possible to account for this lofty idealization of early Chinese Confucianism and its relevance to Tokugawa Japan (1600,1868)? This paper explores how Sorai's pursuit of Chinese antiquity was pitted against Tokvgawa bureaucratic control in the Edo metropolis and how he celebrated the centrality of great human beings to the promotion of popular welfare. In this view, the institution of soceity rests ultimately on political personalities who govern the land virtuously, and not on enforcement of order by punishments. It is worth noting, however, that Sorai did not articulate this humanist position merely as a Sinologist. In his mind, the Confucian values of humane rulership and interpersonal and social ethics were conflated with the samurai ideals prior to the establishment of the centralized Tokugawa power structure. He was well acquainted with the mental prowess of Japan's military lords and with their commitment to the primacy of human potentialities in both the military and civil arts. Theoretically, the ideal drawn from the way of antiquity is decentralized rule, as samurai rulers were originally lords of their fiefs. The construction of a human order in autonomous regions is what Sorai considered to be essential to realizing a society where the people can enjoy peace and tranquility. [source]


Scientifically Debased Research on Learning, 1854,2006

ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2007
Ray Mcdermott
By its emphasis on arbitrary standards and misleading systems of accountability, the No Child Left Behind Act has had deleterious effects on classroom practice, teacher education, and even educational research. The new constraints on educational research, driven by a logic of randomized field tests, are part of a larger and more invidious international managerialism that subordinates individual biographies to state-based bureaucratic control. [source]


Opportunists, Predators and Rogues: The Role of Local State Relations in Shaping Chinese Rural Development

JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 2 2005
MICHELLE S. MOOD
Chinese rural enterprises have developed in various ways in different parts of the country, giving rise to competing explanations of the variation in terms of the role of structure, historical legacies, norms, bureaucratic controls and agency. A new analysis seeks to resolve these contradictions by placing development in the context of township and village cadres' relationships. Townships can either enforce village compliance with county policy or not, and can promote economic development or not, resulting in bureaucratic controls working where compliance is enforced, and norms and agency guiding development where they are not. Perverse incentives allow compliance without achieving larger goals of economic development, and can trap villages in opportunistic or predatory townships. While structure and historical legacies do constrain development in general, inter-level relationships are key to understanding micro-variations. Village wealth and village elections further empower the village level and give agency greater salience. [source]


The Underpinnings of ,Bureaucratic' Control Systems: HRM in European Multinationals

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 4 2000
Anthony Ferner
This paper explores the relationship between the operation of management control systems and the mobilization of power resources in multinational companies. It argues that formal ,bureaucratic' controls depend for their effective operation on informal systems and the power relations they embody. In particular, bureaucratic control systems rely inherently on the deployment of ,social' control mechanisms relating to the creation of common value systems, understandings, and expectations about the ,rules of the game' among corporate actors. The argument is illustrated by material from case studies of HRM in British and German multinationals. [source]