ABSTRACT
The remaining reasons for the increased power of bureaucracies in contemporary political systems are institutional, related both to the characteristics of bureaucracy as a political institution and the characteristics of other political institutions that are its competitors for power. The competition among institutions is rarely overt, but it does have the effect of delineating the power relationships among those institutions and the nature of the policies that are likely to be adopted. This segment of the chapter focuses on the weaknesses of the conventional, political decision-making institutions in government and then discusses the characteristics of bureaucracy that make it a powerful actor in the policy process in a later section.
