Dimensions of Bureaucracy A Cross-National Dataset on the Structure and Behavior of Public Administration 1

Abstract

Scholars have emphasized the importance of having a “Weberian bureaucracy” for the\nsocio-economic development of a country, but few attempts have been made to\nmeasure public administrations according to their degree of Weberianism. This paper\npresents the study and questionnaire design of a web survey covering 58 countries,\nwhich embodies the largest cross-national dataset on the structure of public\nadministrations up to date. It also provides the main findings from the dataset: The\nfeatures often associated with a Weberian bureaucracy can neither theoretically nor\nempirically be collapsed into a single dimension (Weberian versus a patronage-based\nadministration). Instead two distinct dimensions are identified, in the paper referred to\nas professionalism (i.e. up to which extent bureaucracies are “professional” vis-à-vis\n“politicized”) and closedness (i.e. up to which extent bureaucracies are more “closed”\nor public-like vis-à-vis “open” or private-like). Finally, the paper validates these\ndimensions with information from other available data sources, and demonstrates that\nthe results have not been produced by respondent perception bias.

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