БИРОКРАТЕ И ВЛАДАРИ: Поглед у свет неформалних пракси
Abstract
The new book by Dr. Srđan Korać, Senior Research Associate in the Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade, brings the results of multidisciplinary scientific research dedicated to identifying the diverse nature of informal practices in the organization and work of the bureaucracy, spanning the time span from the first civilizations to the 19th century. The author identifies and analyzes the time-constant and civilizationally universal presence of “hubs” in which elastic informal practices are “stamped” into the formal “armor” of bureaucratic organization. In this endeavor, Dr. Korać uses the theoretical-analytical instrumentation of political anthropology and political science, in order to shed light on the factors and processes that influenced the shaping of the structural characteristics of bureaucracy as a political institution and social group. In contrast to the rare studies on bureaucracy in our country, the author considers the role of the bureaucrat in the political order, as a kind of mediator between the decisions of the top of the political authority and the final outcomes of the official (state) policy, in the totality of what is normative and what is real.
The author seeks to achieve three research goals:
- to shed light on the universal nature of informal patterns of behavior of officials in the performance of entrusted state duties;
- to point out the normative and institutional solutions that the rulers designed and applied for the purpose of effective control over the state apparatus and the bureaucracy as a guild;
- to shed light on the mutual intertwining of informal bureaucratic practices with the wider social and cultural context.
Korać advocates the thesis that numerous differences in the political and value constitution of administrative apparatuses from individual civilizations, i.e. states, and historical periods can be abstracted away, and that, according to the dyadic exchange model, the focus of analysis can be shifted from the state as a sociopolitical and institutional macro-plane of analysis. on the micro-level of everyday clerical practices, more precisely in the field of interaction with the top of the government, managers, colleagues and with other members of the political community (that is, with those who are governed). The author believes that from the empirical abundance of those individual cognitive “micro-plans” it is possible to rise to the level of continuity and universality of challenges, problems and moral dilemmas that today’s public servants face in their work. It is about the problems faced by every official immersed in a complex network of hierarchical social interactions through which the process of redistribution of social power takes place by implementing the decisions of the supreme political authority.
An insight into the immutable properties of bureaucracy can provide clues regarding the future of its social role in the political life of the 21st century, in which deviations from the democratic ideal with potential long-term consequences in the form of the revival of certain informal practices from earlier historical periods are visible.
The contents of the book are available HERE
