Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy has two principal meanings in contemporary social science. In the tradition established by Max Weber the term refers to an ideal type of rational authority and rule-based organization, as compared to traditional or charismatic authority and organization. Weber's original frame of reference was the Prussian (and later, German) civil service. In this sense, the typical government agency, nonprofit organizations like the American Red Cross, and large business corporations are all bureaucracies.

In political science, terms like "the bureaucracy" and "the federal bureaucracy" or "state bureaucracy" largely embrace the Weberian meaning and add an additional connotation of systems of formally or rule-based coordination between distinct or distinguishable organizations typically composed of more than one organization. In this second sense, the full set of national-level government agencies, together with their state and local subsidiary offices are all included in the term federal bureaucracy.