Bureaucratic responsibility.

• Author: Reed, Leonard

Bureaucratic Responsibility.

JohnP. Burke, Johns Hopkins University Press, $23.50.

Democracy calls forresponsiveness to the public will through elected officials. Bureaucratic organization, designed for order and stability, contains, by its nature, an element of self-aggrandizement, an appetite for independent power, and a stubborn resistance to external--that is, political --control. These two concepts are in frequent conflict so the problem is how to make bureaucracy the servant of democracy. Burke, who teaches political science at the University of Vermont, is not the first person to noodle this one around.

One school of thought, which includedWoodrow Wilson among others, holds that bureaucracy functions best on a tight leash-- when it rigidly follows the procedures laid down from on high, including strict adherence to the chain of command. There is no room for individual bureaucrats to make their own interpretation of how to carry out the intent of the lawmakers, and any independent actions they take are usurpations of authority.

A school newer to the scene,though its roots go back to Jefferson, stands for a more informal and decentralized approach where the bureaucracy interacts with activist citizen groups; this view of "participatory' democracy extends to the bureaucrat or administrator a degree of political latitude in accommodating the interests of competing groups.

Burke winds his way between thetwo schools. "A firm allegiance to democratic politics,' he writes, "is a necessary part of a properly defined understanding of bureaucratic responsibility, but so, too, is recognition of the active contributions to the policy process an individual official can make. In the absence of such recognition, public policy suffers...