ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the context in which bureaucratic formation has taken place after 1994. It examines some of the international literature on the development of bureaucracies, pointing to the considerable influence of Weberian concepts of bureaucracy and the critique of Weber based especially on the development of post-Weberian and Marxian sociology. The chapter also examines some of the challenges faced by the public service as a result of the contradictory nature of state policies in the post-apartheid period. The concept of bureaucracy has been used in a variety of ways and in contexts that differ considerably from each other. In public parlance the term could be used simply to describe an unacceptable abuse of authority, the slowness of process, or a set of structural arrangements relating to work. Weberianism, therefore, locates bureaucracy within systems of authority and administration and in relation to their role in the organisation of technical knowledge in capitalist industrial systems.
