Theoretical Underpinnings of Bureaucratic Neutrality in an Ethnic Federalism

Introduction

Throughout history, the creative nature of humankind has generated an array of political systems derived from just a few foundational political structures. As early as 350 BC, Aristotle identified four fundamental political structures in the governments of societies: tyranny, fascism, democracy, and oligarchy. Modern-day ideologies, including the various types of capitalism, socialism, and communism, are political economy interpretations of these same themes. Historical underpinnings, especially religious ones, can also provide contextual differences for these political economy structures. Regardless of the ideological orientation, however, all governing structures share a central operating element that is critical to the successful implementation of policy and the continuity of governance, namely, bureaucracy.

Repeated efforts to operationalize the term bureaucracy have been made by social theorists from Hegel, Mill, Marx, Lenin, Michels, and Weber through modern-day public administration theorists. In spite of the claim that Weber was the first to popularize the concept of bureaucracy, the idea is at least as old as the biblical account of the division of labor by Moses based on the counsel of his father-in-law, suggesting that the idea of division of labor is a prerequisite to the efficient implementation of a task. In current management literature, the multisided meanings of bureaucracy embrace administrative personnel, organizational types, and negative and polemic meanings of current trends in modern government such as red tape, redundancy, and decision making gridlock.¹

In this article, bureaucracy refers to the executive arm of any government regardless of political orientation, such as capitalism, socialism, communism, or ethnic federalism, the latest of which is a phenomenon that has come into vogue since the end of the Soviet state. In the context of Ethiopia, the term bureaucracy denotes the members of the civil service, which includes the "nonpolitical" or "permanent" executive that is recruited to serve the government in the implementation of policies through the management and conduct of governmental affairs, and excludes elected officials, legislators, judiciary, armed forces, and federal police.²

Historically, while there is consensus on the necessity for a professional, educated, efficient, and effective cadre of administrators to serve the government, there is no agreement on the political nature of this bureaucracy. In the French, German, and Japanese experiences, professional, objective competence ranks at least as high as political allegiance in recruiting civil servants. The Scandinavian civil service, slightly less politicized than the German and French, still emphasizes allegiance more than the Anglo-Saxon or American systems, which are considered almost obsessed with the conceptual insistence on neutrality in bureaucracy.³

The principle of bureaucratic neutrality has gained currency and added dimensions especially since the fall of the Soviet Union for two primary reasons. First, in the 1980s, Britain and the United States made concerted efforts to reduce the role of government and engender bureaucratic competency, accountability, and transparency. The reforms have been both far-reaching and influential in most European countries and other nations such as Australia. Second, the reforms were influenced by the fact that government reform in the global context has been predicated on the values of government accountability and transparency, such as those promoted by the World Bank and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) under the rubric of good governance.

The World Bank has made good governance a precondition for receiving loans and aid, and implies that countries, including developing nations, must demonstrate efforts to streamline and professionalize their bureaucracy and civil service systems.⁴

The research question addressed in this article and in a continuing study is as follows: given the constitutional organization of a state as an ethnic federalism, is bureaucratic neutrality viable and possible as a bureaucratic value within the civil service? This article is the first of several in a research stream. It examines bureaucratic theories as the underpinning from which to explore the theoretical role of bureaucratic neutrality in an ethnic federalism. The second part of this study will expand on the notion of bureaucratic neutrality as a value of the civil service, and the third will explore perceptions about the bureaucratic neutrality of civil service bureaucrats who work in...