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 political science, terms like "the bureaucracy" and "the federal bureaucracy" or "state bureaucracy" largely embrace the Weberian meaning and adds an additional connotation of systems of formally or rule-based coordination between distinct or distinguishable organizations.