Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are the founding documents of Western culture. Its protagonists, admittedly often of divine descent, are depicted as individuals with agency, whose actions make a difference, sometimes changing the course of history. Think Achilles. Western belief in the centrality of the individual and individual reason in philosophy or a personal bond with a deity reflects this founding myth of Western culture. Our congregating-around-the-campfire ancestors may not have had a sufficiently good grasp of the importance of bureaucracies or organizations, though they certainly understood the importance of groups (and tribes). Perhaps due to a lack of sociological understanding, their stories revolved around heroes, their qualities and their flaws. Today, this narrative structure remains ever-present in Hollywood (as opposed to some Eisenstein) movies. Two millennia later, the Enlightenment put reason, and generally individual reason, at the centre of its intellectual preoccupations. In Hegel, it is the world spirit, but in Kant the focus is squarely on reason and the individual is the epistemic and moral focus. Romanticism elevated the individual even further, even if at some level it also subverted it as individual rationality and the individual itself gets replaced or subsumed by the Weltgeist. Ironically, the Enlightenment coincided with modernity, technological progress, industrialization and the emergence of mass society, which created ever more powerful bureaucratic organizations, including the modern state. The wider reach and power of the state (Tilly) and the more extensive role played by government bureaucracies made possible the major catastrophes of the twentieth century, like the Nazi mass extermination camps and the Soviet gulags as well as industrialized, total armed conflict. Bureaucracies were instrumental, if not causal in bringing about these catastrophes (Zygmunt Bauman).
Today, bureaucracies both rule and structure the world. Until bureaucracies are replaced by computers or artificial intelligence, they will be populated by individuals. But well-functioning bureaucracies will be structured in a way as to be able to replace any individual at any point in time without jeopardizing its functioning – whatever this functioning consists of. Ironically, however, to the extent that individuals exercise power on a larger scale, it almost always depends on their position in a bureaucratic hierarchy or a larger organization. Not only do individuals stand on the “shoulders of giants” in the scientific realm, according to Newton. In the economic-political realm, most individuals, with exception of charismatic leaders (maybe) depend for their power and influence on their place in bureaucratic hierarchies. Individuals, trivially, are also reliant on the existence of broader systems, not just bureaucracies. If Mark Zuckerberg had not created Facebook, others would have done so. This insight refers to path dependency, particularly in scientific research. It is less individual brilliance, but an individual being part of a larger system, and often a bureaucracy, that allows it do important things or to exercise power. Scientific progress is highly path-dependent. Its increasing complexity also requires organizations and institutions and networks (and often bureaucracies like universities or research institutes). When it comes to political power, individuals accumulate or exercise power while depending on controlling organizations and bureaucracies. This is not to deny that, counterfactually speaking, individuals never tip the scale or never make a difference. Sure, there is Taylor Swift, or a charismatic preacher in 19thcentury in Brazil that caused mass uprising.
There are other ways of looking at bureaucracies. There is Max Weber, Ludwig von Mises, Robert Merton, James Q. Wilson, Anthony Downs, William Niskanen, Gordon Tullock, not to mention Franz Kafka or Jaroslav Hašek’s Good Soldier Svejk and its titular protagonist. (Bureaucracies can be subverted, if not the bureaucracies themselves, then their goals.) Most bureaucracies are inefficient by design and are meant to provide first and foremost stability. Bureaucracies ossify. They find it difficult to deliver outcomes, as opposed to output. They are inflexible. A Navy seals unit is but a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies’ relationship with their sponsors throw up the principal-agent problem. To the extent that bureaucracies perpetuate themselves, they need to have access to outside resources, but they also need to prove resilient or robust in the face of shocks. Bureaucracies expand and they overreach because they expand. Bureaucracies are necessary to create a needed degree of stability and predictability. Bureaucracies both increase and lower transaction costs. Controlling them is difficult due to information asymmetries, the principal-agent problem and the difficulty of managing them through the tyranny of numbers and often civil service status and limited ability to set incentives to limit profit-seeking and ensure impartial behavior (while inviting corruption).