Bureaucracy in the development process

One line of scholarship sees the bureaucracy mainly as an actor hindering development. This occurs when the bureaucracy is so powerful that they can allocate resources and provide public services in a way that serves their self-interest.

These pessimistic views have been subject to considerable critique. One argument, for example, is that it is unlikely that the bureaucrat is only an impediment to development, whilst at the same time the bureaucracy has an interest in ensuring that development continues. Moreover, as a result of establishing relations with external groups, the bureaucracy is constantly influenced and therefore adapts to external demands (Eisenstadt 1969).

Rather than looking at bureaucracies in developing countries either as powerful and self-interested, or powerless and ineffective, some depart from the assumption that bureaucrats always have to adapt to the societies in which they live. Firstly, bureaucrats in developing countries often perceive themselves as the agents of development, who often assign themselves the duty to modernise more traditional, lower- educated people (Dube 1969; Asmerom, Hoppe, and Jain 1992; Kajembe and Monela 2000).

For critics who regard the bureaucracy as an obstacle to development, law-making is seen as a top-down process in which particular elites or small groups of powerful persons wield considerable influence. When the law-making is carried out in a society in which family ties and traditional forms of authorities are still prevalent, elitist or corporatist groups may dominate the law-making processes. Not only the domination of the elites influences the formation of law but also the competition among government agencies in pursuing their own agencies' interests (Otto, Stoter, and Arnscheidt 2008). The type of law-making in which the public hardly participates and in which there is hardly a rational debate and decision-making process can jeopardise the quality of the law.

When bureaucrats have the task of locally implementing national laws and regulations but try to take into account local aspirations, they try to make the law accommodating and render it responsive. The gap between the demands of the law and what social reality requires is the main reason for the need for this balance. It is important to acknowledge that bureaucrats attempting to make the law responsive and adaptable are not always merely driven by the interest of maximising wealth or maintaining the existence of the bureaucracy, but also by social concerns and solidarity with the affected groups (Dixit 1997).