The Nature, Conditions, and Development of Bureaucratic Herrschaft

Its Qualitative Change
However, more so than such quantitative extension, the intensive and qualitative extension was an important cause of bureaucratization as well as the inner unfolding of the scope of administrative functions.
The reasons and directions in which this development proceeds are various.
In Egypt, the oldest country with a bureaucratic state administration, it was technically and economically inevitable that a top-down way for water supply management for the entire country be found. This led to the emergence of the scribal and Beamte apparatus, and this apparatus found its second operating area in the administration of enormous milita ry-like organized construction activity.
Bureaucracy often became necessary when a standing army was established for political reasons, as already mentioned. In such a context, the development of the finance sector evolved. Other demands push the modern state in the direction of increased bureaucracy. It is the ever-growing complexity of the culture that leads to growing demands on administrative capacity.
Major territorial expansion abroad, especially overseas, has always been carried out by states which were ruled by Honoratioren (Rome, England, Venice). As we will see later, however, the “intensity” of administration in the larger states ruled by Honoratioren (e.g., Rome and England) was relatively weakly developed compared to bureaucratized states. “Intensity of administration” means that as many tasks as possible were absorbed by the state and the processing and completion of tasks was handled by the state’s own bureaucratic apparatus.
To understand it correctly, the structure of state power strongly influenced, in both bureaucratic and Honoratioren rule, the culture very strongly. However, it influenced culture only very little in the form of state organization and state control. This applies to everything from the justice system all the way to the education system. Such growing cultural demands result from increased wealth among the state’s most influential strata, albeit to different degrees. Therefore, increased bureaucratization is a function of increasing availability of consumable and usable possessions. Because of this new wealth, bureaucratization is a direct function of increasingly refined lifestyles.
In effect, a welfare system that is organized by the public sector and transgresses regional areas (e.g., a bureaucratic welfare system) becomes increasingly indispensable, at least subjectively. This system meets various necessities of life that were previously unknown, or were met through private businesses or locally.
But of all the purely political factors leading to bureaucratization, particularly enduring is the growing need for order and protection (“police”) in societies that increasingly become accustomed to absolute and stable peacefulness. The growing need for order and protection was a continuous process, moving from the solely sacral or conciliatory influences on the blood feud, where rights and security for the individual members of the clan were tied to oaths and responsibility for seeking revenge, to today’s situation when police officials become “God’s representatives on earth.”
Other influential ideas leading to increased bureaucratization are primarily the manifold “socio-political/welfare policies,” which are partly pushed onto the state by interest groups, and also partly usurped by the modern state itself, whether for ideological reasons or for reasons of political power. These reasons are, of course, to a large degree stimulated by economic factors.
Finally, the essentially technical factors of a specifically modern means of transport (public land and waterways, railways, telegraphs) are also forces pulling bureaucratization along. The reason is that they are managed by the public sector, partly out of necessity, and partly because it is technically most expedient. Today’s means of transport often play a similar role like the canals of the ancient Orient in Mesopotamia and the water regulation of the river Nile. At any rate, the degree to which the means of transport are developed is one of the crucial preconditions for bureaucratic administration, even though it is not the decisive one.
For example, in Egypt, with its almost pure barter economy, the centralization of the bureaucracy could have never reached such a high level without the naturally existing transport artery of the Nile. Another example is in modern Persia. There, the Beamte of the telegraph system were officially entrusted to providing all the news of the province to the Shah directly, without first notifying the local administrative offices. Further, everybody was given the right to file a complaint via telegraph further facilitating bureaucratic centralization. Any modern Occidental state can only be administrated because it is in command of the telegraph networks, the postal service, and the railway system as they do currently.
Further, the development of these transportation and communication networks are closely connected to the development of interregional bulk traffic, which in turn becomes one of the main causes and side effects in the creation of modern states. However, this does not necessarily apply only to the past, as we have already pointed out.
The Technical Superiority of the Bureaucratic System
The decisive reason for the advancement of bureaucratic organizations has always been the purely technical superiority over all other administrative forms. A fully developed bureaucratic mechanism compares to other administrative forms in the same way a machine compares to nonmechanical means for producing goods. A strictly bureaucratic administration—especially an monocratic administration run by trained, individual Beamte—produces an optimal efficiency for precision, speed, clarity, command of case knowledge, continuity, confidentiality, uniformity, and tight subordination. This is in addition to minimization of friction and the costs associated with materials and personnel. The opposite is true for all other forms of administration, such as collegial, honorary, or adjunct administration.
Further, one has to acknowledge that complex bureaucratic tasks are even more cheaply and precisely done by paid trained Beamte than by formally unpaid volunteers. This is because working in an honorary capacity means working part-time and on the side. Consequently, the pace of work is slower, follows less rigid schemata, and tends to be less formal. Therefore, such work is less precise and less uniform due to the fact that honorary members of staff act more independently from their superiors. Further, Honoratioren are in fact very costly because the apparatus of subordinates and clerks is almost inevitably more difficult to create and run economically under such conditions.
This especially holds true if not only the hard cash of the public budget is considered, but also frequent economic losses for ruled people because of wasted time and lack of precision. (However, hard cash for the public budget tends to increase considerably when a bureaucratic administration has been created, especially when compared to voluntary administration by Honoratioren.) In the long run, voluntary administrative work by Honoratioren is usually only possible when all business can be managed “as a second job.” Ultimately, such administration systems face their limitations as the qualitative complexity of their tasks increases, as happens in England today. Further, work based on collegiality implies frictions and delays, and compromises between colliding interests and views. Therefore, the work performed is less precise and less dependent on superiors, hence it becomes less uniform and slower.
All progress the Prussian administration made in the past and will make in the future is due to bureaucratization based specifically on monocratic principles.