ABSTRACT
While Weber put bureaucracy at the centre of his theory of modernity, many contemporary social theorists consider the transformation of national public administrations, which occurred at the turn of the twenty-first century, an indication of a momentous shift towards postmodernity (Rhodes 1997). As noted in chapter 2, postmodernity stresses three distinctive sets of change: (i) the abandonment of hierarchical forms of organizations in favour of more horizontal and sleeker ones; (ii) the adoption of reflexive forms of rationality to replace the legal formal ones employed previously; (iii) the switch from input-oriented to output-oriented modes of assessment dictated by criteria of performance management. Following Weber, this shift is explained by looking at the efficiency gains brought about by the innovations introduced. However, unlike Weber much contemporary analysis ignores the existence of bureaucracy in the private sector and, by focusing exclusively on the apparatus of the state, implicitly equates bureaucracy with the state. Moreover, the alleged shift towards a postmodern organizational setup is associated with diverse attempts to introduce market discipline (and related private sector managerial practices) into the public domain via so-called New Public Management (NPM).
