INCONGRUITY BETWEEN BUREAUCRACY AND SOCIETY IN DEVELOPING.pdf

In most developing countries, there exists an “overdeveloped” bureaucratic apparatus inherited as a colonial legacy and expanded through imitative postcolonial reforms, while the political, economic, and cultural realms remain largely underdeveloped. As a result, there is a certain incongruity between bureaucracy and society in these countries, which has serious implications for their socioeconomic progress. However, the existing literature focuses mainly on the structural and procedural issues of postcolonial bureaucracy, and contains very limited discourse on this mismatch between the bureaucratic apparatus and the overall social formation. This article attempts to explicate the nature and dimensions of this bureaucracy-society incongruity, analyze its adverse implications for socioeconomic development, and offer some remedial policy alternatives for consideration. INCONGRUITY BETWEEN BUREAUCRACY AND SOCIETY IN DEVELOPING NATIONS: A CRITIQUE by M. Shamsul Haque In developing nations, one of the most dominant features of state bureaucracy is its inherited colonial legacy, in spite of the postcolo- nial rehabilitation and reforms in the administrative superstructure.1 Although the recent pro-market reforms under structural adjustment programs, including privatization, deregulation, and liberalization, have created certain challenge to bureaucracy, especially in terms of its size and scope, there has been minimal change in its inherited structural, normative, and behavioral formations. In these countries, bureaucracies still reflect their respective colonial heritage, includ- ing the British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and American traditions.2 While the British administrative legacy remains promi- nent in countries such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, and Botswana, the French tradition is dominant in the fo