ABSTRACT
There are many books on the civil service and on bureaucratic theory. There are not many which combine explanations of both bureaucratic theory and the civil service. There are a few books which empirically test theories of the bureaucracy by setting them against the evidence of the British civil service. Books of the latter kind, like those concerned with bureaucratic theory itself are often rather dry and hard to understand, which is fair enough. The world is hard to understand; and if it is made to appear simpler than it really is, we will be hiding as much of the world as we reveal. However, most of the books which provide easy introductions for the undergraduate or general reader merely describe the civil service and do not consider, other than in passing, the theories of bureaucracy which help us to explain the way the civil service works. They are too full of descriptions, opinions, anecdotes and personalities with not enough theoretical analysis explaining how these elements all fit together. Often the reason for this is that writers of the descriptive mode believe that the general theories of bureaucratic behaviour are badly drawn or inapplicable. They may be right in this belief. But if the existing theories are poor, then some better ones should be divised, rather than denying that theories can be used at all. As Nevil Johnson implies in the quotation above, to deny theory is merely to obscure the theory with which one is operating.
