Background
A bureaucracy is a group of specifically non-elected officials within a government or other institution that implements the rules, laws, ideas, and functions of their institution through "a system of administration marked by officials, red tape, and proliferation. " In other words, a government administration should carry out the decisions of the legislature or democratically elected representation of a state.
Bureaucracy may also be defined as a form of government: government by many bureaus, administrators, and petty officials. A government is defined as the political direction and control exercised over the actions of its citizens. On the other hand, democracy is defined as: government by the people. In other words, supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system and not by non-elected bureaucrats.
Weberian bureaucracy
Weberian bureaucracy has its origin in the works by Max Weber (1864-1920), a notable German sociologist, political economist, and administrative scholar who contributed to the study of bureaucracy and administrative discourses and literatures during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Max Weber belongs to the Scientific School of Thought, who discussed such topics as specialization of job-scope, merit system, uniform principles, structure, and hierarchy.
Weber described many ideal types of public administration and government in his magnum opus Economy and Society (1922). His critical study of the bureaucratization of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work. It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularization of this term. Many aspects of modern public administration go back to him, and a classic, hierarchically organized civil service of the Continental type is called Weberian civil service. As the most efficient and rational way of organizing, bureaucratization for Weber was the key part of the rational-legal authority, and furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing rationalization of the Western society.
Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterized by hierarchical organization, delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, action taken on the basis of and recorded in written rules, bureaucratic officials with expert training, rules implemented by neutral officials, and career advancement depends on technical qualifications judged by an organization, not individuals.The decisive reason for the advancement of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organization.
While recognizing bureaucracy as the most efficient form of organization, and even indispensable for the modern state, Weber also saw it as a threat to individual freedoms. In his view, ongoing bureaucratization could lead to a polar night of icy darkness, in which individuals are trapped in an iron cage of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control. To counteract this bureaucratic possibility, the system needs entrepreneurs and politicians.
The Cabinet and the Bureaucracy
The Cabinet of the United States is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States, who are generally the heads of the federal executive departments. All Cabinet members are nominated by the president and then presented to the Senate for confirmation or rejection by a simple majority. If they are approved, they are sworn in and then begin their duties. Aside from the Attorney General, and the Postmaster General when it was a Cabinet office, they all receive the title of Secretary. Members of the Cabinet serve at the pleasure of the President, which means that the President may dismiss them or reappoint them (to other posts) at will.
U.S. Department of Labor headquarters
The Frances Perkins Building located at 200 Constitution Avenue, N.W., in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Built in 1975, the modernist office building serves as headquarters of the United States Department of Labor.