CSS Forums - What is bureaucracy and what are its characteristics?

Bureaucracy or Civil Service plays a key role in running the Public Administration e by performing the following functions:
1. Implementation of Governmental Policies and Laws:
It is the responsibility of the bureaucracy to carry out and implement the policies of the government. Good policies and laws can really serve their objectives only when these are efficiently implemented by the civil servants.
2. Role in Policy-Formulation:
Policy-making is the function of the political executive. However, the Bureaucracy plays an active role in this exercise. Civil Servants supply the data needed by the political executive for formulating the policies. In fact, Civil servants formulate several alternative policies and describe the merits and demerits of each. The Political Executive then selects and adopts one such policy alternative as the governmental policy.
3. Running of Administration:
To run the day to day administration in accordance with the policies, laws, rules, regulations and decisions of the government is also the key responsibility of the Bureaucracy. The political executive simply exercises guiding, controlling and supervising functions.
4. Advisory Function:
One of the important functions of the Bureaucracy is to advise the political executive. The ministers receive all the information and advice regarding the functioning of their respective departments from the civil servants. As amateurs, the ministers have little knowledge about the functions of their departments. They, therefore, depend upon the advice of bureaucracy. As qualified, experienced and expert civil servants working in all government departments, they provide expert and professional advice and information to the ministers.
5. Role in Legislative Work:
The civil servants play an important but indirect role in law-making. They draft the bills which the ministers submit to the legislature for law-making. The ministers provide all the information asked for by the legislature by taking the help of the civil servants.
6. Semi-judicial Work:
The emergence of the system of administrative justice, under which several types of the cases and disputes are decided by the executive, has further been a source of increased semi-judicial work of the bureaucracy. The disputes involving the grant of permits, licences, tax concessions, quotas etc. are now settled by the civil servants.
7. Collection of Taxes and Disbursement of Financial Benefits:
The civil servants play a vitally important role in financial administration. They advise the political executive in respect of all financial planning, tax-structure, tax-administration and the like. They collect taxes and settle disputes involving recovery of taxes. They play a vital role in preparing the budget and taxation proposals. They carry out the function of granting of legally sanctioned financial benefits, tax reliefs, subsidies and other concessions to the people.
8. Record-Keeping:
The Civil Service has the sole responsibility of keeping systematically all government records. They collect, classify and analyse all data pertaining to all activities of the government. They collect and maintain vital socio¬economic statistics which are used for the formulation of Public policies and plans.
9. Role in Public Relations:
The era of modern welfare state and democratic politics has made it essential for the government to keep close relations with the people of the state. The need for maintaining active and full public relations is a vital necessity of every state. The civil servants play an active role in this sphere.
They are the main agents who establish direct contacts with the people. They serve as a two way link. On the one hand, they communicate all government decisions to the people, and on the other hand, they communicate to the government the needs, interests and views of the people. Thus, Bureaucracy plays a vigorously active and highly important role in the working of the government.
Control over Bureaucracy:
The rise of modern welfare state and increase in its functions has been a source of big increase in the powers and role of Bureaucracy. It has, therefore, given rise to an additional need for exercising control over bureaucracy. An effective control system has become essential both for preventing the civil servants from abusing their powers as well as for ensuring their active and positive role. In fact, every state maintains a system of internal and external control over Bureaucracy.
(A) Internal Control:
It means control applied from within the organisation i.e. by the administrative machinery. The administrative organisation is hierarchical and is divided into wings, divisions, branches and sections. There are present some internal controls in its every section. The tools of control are budgeting, accounting, auditing, reports, inspections, efficiency surveys, personnel control, code of conduct, and discipline and leadership control.
In particular, regular internal inspections, auditing of accounts and evaluation of the performance of each civil several act as main means of internal control over Bureaucracy Internal control is necessary for keeping the bureaucracy efficient and productive of desired results.
(B) External Control:
External control is that which flows from outside agencies. These agencies are the people, the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.