Is bureaucracy uncontrollable?

Résumé du document

More and more people are complaining about bureaucracy. Indeed, if we take the example of the current French debate about the European Constitution, we can see that a lot of politicians are ascribed to Brussels bureaucrats; the difficulties people are facing, such as unemployment, delocalization or even reforms- which according to those politicians are imposed by Brussels. In other words, they are implying that Bureaucrats from Brussels rule the European Union and are uncontrollable.

However that feature is not a part and parcel of the definition of Bureaucracy, which only implies that governments are run by rules which are enforced by bureaus who are dedicated to just those rules. The original idea was to establish rules of law instead of arbitrary enforcement, which tends to be corrupt. Bureaucracy had been set up by governments in order to impose their control over the population. But today it is often said that the Bureaucracy has seized the power.

Extraits

[...] The administration, in a democratic community, is not only bound by law but by the budget as well. Democratic control is budgetary control. The people's representatives have the keys of the treasury. Not a penny must be spent without the consent of parliament. It is illegal to use public funds for any expenditure other than those for which parliament has allocated them. It is not for the staff of the administration to inquire what should be done for the public welfare and how the public funds should be spent. [...]

[...] Thus regarding the budget, bureaucracy cannot be said uncontrollable. But Politicians can have a stronger control over bureaucrats thanks to their ability to appoint officials and effect organisation of bureaucracy, and to their personal authority. The most obvious means of allowing political control over the civil servants is enabling politicians to select their own, at least those who will be their immediate subordinates and, more importantly, their policy advisors. This can provide some of the advantages of the counterstaff without involving its redundancy and dual lines of authority. [...]

[...] Another advantage of bureaucracy is its discretion in the way in which they implement policies. Indeed, the conditions for “perfect administration” in which there is a perfect correspondence between policy intentions and policy outcomes are never present and almost all government programmes allow for a wide degree of discretion in carrying them out. The implementation processes offer scope for implementers, which are the bureaucrats, to shape substantively the policies they implement. We can take the example of Jean Louis Borloo, as he was Minister la Ville complained about the bureaucrats who had changed, within a week end, one of his bill, he even declared that, because of the bureaucracy, reforms where difficult. [...]

[...] And Indeed the President of the Commission is supposed to fill the function of political authority and can prove to be a powerful and influential politician. In fact, he shares an aggregating role with the Council and, above all, the Committee of Permanent Representatives and other Committees of the Council staffed by permanent civil servants from member states. However a skilled President of the Commission, such as J. Delors, exercised a pervasive influence. Thus because of the lack of political authority, bureaucracy is considered as uncontrollable in the European Union. [...]

[...] If it were otherwise, bureaucrats would be irresponsible and arbitrary despots. So administrative legislation, as well as law in other countries, is able to control bureaucracy. Indeed in France there is an administrative Court who is in charge of controlling the lawfulness of a decision, and to be more accurate, it is in charge of controlling whether bureaucracy has acted in accordance with its assignment to act in the general interest. The creation of a specific administrative jurisdiction, such as conseil d'Etat” in France proves the necessity to judge and to control bureaucracy in order to deal with the disputes between administration and the citizens. [...]