What do you mean by Bureaucratization in the Modern World?

Bureaucratization in the modern world means that all spheres of public action have been professionalized and are run through bureaucracies. They are now found in the armed forces, the civil services, and the security services, the principal arms of the state.

The principles of bureaucratization include centralizing decision-making through a tight chain of command, appointing professional experts through uniform criteria of examination and certification. These examinations demanded impersonal adherence to rules and laws, and tried a nearly full calculability of action. In any one of these hierarchies, the official acts impersonally, on the basis of expertise, and obeys and issues instructions which are legitimate.

This means instructions must be framed in accordance with the law and the rules and regulations that derive from the law. There is mechanism for effortless removal of the individual official. The system functions like a machine with moveable replaceable parts.

All modern rulers, who need effective instruments of rule which are politically reliable, impersonal, and professional, find bureaucracy very attractive.

However, this does not mean that bureaucracies are only instruments of modern rulers and are not the rulers themselves. For choosing a ruler, some form of election exists in the most part of the world and the process of becoming a ruler is not simply rising to the top of a bureaucracy. It is true that the electoral processes must submit to rules most often but they are not bureaucratic but the electoral machines like political parties and their supporters are.

It may be noted here that those at the top who ultimately rule, they do so through instruments that are bureaucratic but reach that position through processes that are not bureaucratic.