Bureaucracy and Red Tape--Dorinda Smith (Social Sciences and Human Services)

It might seem strange that a discussion of bureaucracies – their functions, their possibilities, their limits and their uses – would inspire me. However, bureaucracies – large and small, public and private, local and national – influence and inform much of what we do. Since discovering the book Bureaucracy and Red Tape by Barry Bozeman in 2000, I have used it each and every semester to share with my students his wise counsel and his humor in navigating our unique government structures. In his book, he captures both the positive and the negative aspects of American bureaucracy and the intricate ways that we can become overwhelmed by them or find ways to maneuver through or around them.

Bozeman, Professor of Public Policy at Georgia Tech, best frames the tensions of bureaucracies in this statement: “By remembering the term ‘balance model’ it is perhaps easier to remember that bureaucracies usually serve multiple purpose values, including efficiency, accountability, performance, and fairness. Sometimes the values conflict…there is nothing simple about bureaucracy or its purpose” (p. 184). His ultimate lesson? In generally giving us what we, as a society, need, bureaucracies often seem to fail to give us what we want.