In one way or another, most people in Europe who have interacted with public services provided by their government have experienced processes which have been rationalised to coordinate a large number of needs and people. This rationalisation is what German social theorist Max Weber described as bureaucracy. In the search for efficiency and increased accuracy, organisations are increasingly trying to automate their processes, and rely on machines to fulfil their tasks, instead of humans.
In this essay, I will draw a parallel between bureaucracy and automated decision-making in public services. I will describe the main critiques of Weber’s bureaucracy and focus on impersonal decision-making and over-compliance with the rationality of a machine. I will analyse the UK’s GDPR policy limiting the kinds of decisions that can be fully automated and the demand for keeping a human-in-the-loop of decision-making. I will argue that this is insufficient in tackling the current technological limitations of automated decision-making, given the bureaucratic contexts and pressures where these technologies will be used. Furthermore, solely considering adding a human in the loop may not be enough to fulfil the aims of the policy. There is a need to take a closer look at how humans are being kept in the loop if we are to enable free judgment and truly equitable decision-making.
To analyse the potential ramifications of bureaucracy on the use of technologies that automatically make or help to make decisions that impact individuals within public services, it’s important to start by understanding what might have been Max Weber’s (1864–1920) approach to sociology, how he perceived individuals motivations, and his aim when describing the main characteristics of bureaucracy.
1. THE CONTEXT
As a social theory, Weber’s Bureaucracy provides a way to make sense of the complexities of social life, in this case, the social norms, morals and meanings, of the organisation of a ‘bureau’ (office). These concepts are helpful in trying to understand why things happen in the way they do, by making them visible, and, therefore, able to be examined and inspected, deriving what are the consequences and implications of such structures.
The Sociology of Max Weber
Compared to other sociologists before and of his time, Weber is considered to provide a multifaceted perspective by also considering how meaning and ideas are produced, for example, through religion, and the impact these might have on social relations. Weber acknowledges sociology’s less factual side (compared to other sciences), the ‘Verstehen’, an ‘interpretative understanding’ of the multitude of causes and effects of actions in social life. But sociologists also hope to foster a more “just and equitable social order”, hence Weber describing the properties of an ideal-type bureaucracy.
So it’s important to consider Weber’s bureaucracy through this lens of both a description of a social phenomenon and also what it ought to become and foster. But where did Weber’s ideal of bureaucracy stem from, what might have led to it, and in which context did it arise?
Capitalism and search for profit
Weber observed and described the social changes experienced in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His work on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–1905) describes the correlations between populations where Protestantism was more prominent and the development of certain forms of economy, the “rational pursuit of profit”, and ways of living. However, Weber did not believe Protestantism was the sole cause of capitalism, but it was a key factor, among other contributing occurrences, such as technological developments, and the influence was mutual.
In time this influenced the way institutions in Europe developed into their bureaucratic forms. Western society tended to rationalise and formalise its social processes and relationships. And aim to make more efficient and make more capital. However, Weber argues that what was initially motivated by religious ideas, of salvation, transformed into being motivated by self-interest and profit making.
And so, what was Weber’s ideal of bureaucracy? What characteristics did it have, and what was its aim?
2. THE IDEAL
Weber’s bureaucracy was an ‘ideal’, a set of characteristics that serve as a tool for observation, not necessarily a recipe for the implementation of the ultimate bureaucracy. The bureaucracy was a way for rationalising and establishing specific rules and procedures to govern the social aspects related to the coordination of a large number of individuals working within an organisation.
For Weber, a bureaucracy presents the following characteristics:
- Hierarchical, centralised authority and decision-making: Decision-making is in the hands of a few leaders at the top of the organisation. Many consider that this is almost inevitable within large institutions because the process of coordinating a large number of workers leads to this form of less democratic authority. Others feel this poses a risk to the creativity and problem-solving skills of workers and envision more decentralised decision-making, for example, through activism.
- Set and unchangeable rules, procedures and tasks: The actions of workers are determined by set protocols and division of very specialised tasks. This creates an acceptance of routine and habits, from which predictability results, and with it, the reassurance that everything is going to be equal, faster and executed more efficiently.
However, this has been seen as resulting in a lack of ability to change and adapt to the evolving needs of the world around it. And so, the bureaucracy’s response to the uncertainty of changing life is to create more set processes, which reinforces its inflexibility. - Specialised, dutiful and careerist workers: To work, the bureaucracy relies on highly specialised and knowledgeable individuals, “the officials”, that ensure efficiency in its inner workings. Tasks and career progression are appointed based on merit and ability. This is a way to avoid favouritism and bias and reduce incompetence. Workers are trained to fulfil their tasks and develop loyalty in the form of a purely functional and impersonal sense of duty in the efficient completion of the task. Weber recognises one of the downfalls is that if one individual cannot perform their tasks, “chaos ‘results and it is difficult to improvise replacements from among the governed who are fit to master such chaos.” But some have criticised that this leads to individuals whose motivation is to fulfil correctly the procedures on their job, as opposed to fulfilling the need of those using the services they provide.
- Rational and impersonal: All personal, emotional and irrational aspects of the individuals are left outside of the bureaucracy. Weber argues that the more ‘dehumanised’, the more perfect, “without regard for persons” or difference. Success is achieved through the elimination of any aspects that cannot be calculated. This impersonal nature is one of the most highly criticised characteristics of bureaucracy. For example, author George Ritzer calls this aim to make all parts of social life efficient “McDonaldized institutions”.
The unintended consequences of focusing inwards
Reading Weber’s Bureaucracy, I cannot help but think that it is an inward-looking process. Is it so preoccupied with how to make itself more efficient, that it loses sight of what its aim is as a service provider?
Weber notes that one of the most critical advantages of the bureaucracy is “its purely technical superiority over any other form of organization.” He compares it to a machine, and its advantages are similar to the ones afforded by the replacement of non-mechanical modes of production by mechanical ones: “precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs”.
In this search for efficiency and equality, the bureaucracy portrays itself as a ‘neutral social technology’, however many argue otherwise (Greaber, 2016). By removing the mystery and uncertainty of human life, and idealising equality of treatment, bureaucracy ignores the need for equitability, becoming blind to differences in a way that increases discrimination. The avoidance of any personal feelings and reasoning, of anything that doesn’t follow rational thought, creates space for the desensitisation of outcomes that otherwise would be considered horrendous.
The bureaucracy becomes so worried about its own efficiencies, and fulfilling its rules and procedures, that it is harder to think critically about its goal, and the quality of the service it provides.
Today the word bureaucracy is used derogatorily by the public to complain about laborious, absurd and overly complicated interactions with public services. It’s certainly ironic that Weber’s ideal of a bureaucracy as an efficient system turned out to be a system felt as wasteful by the population it’s aimed to serve. How did this happen? Why did the pursuit of efficiency turn to wastefulness? And what types of social relations and behaviours has it produced?
3. ‘THE OFFICIAL’
For Weber, bureaucracies had a great impact on the way individuals related to each other, just like capitalism. And he was interested in understanding the impact of social organisations on individuals’ motivations, and vice-versa. Weber believed that the guiding force of people’s behaviours was the meaning they attributed to their world and described people’s motivations as ranging from purely rational to value, habitual or impulsive based.
“Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart”
The motivations of the workers of a bureaucracy are calculated and rational, based on the specific task that needs to be undertaken and obeying orders. Workers are motivated by the progression of their careers and the payment received for the job performed. The enforcement of these rules through coercion and ‘structural violence’, in time, turns to ‘structural stupidity’, as author David Graeber calls it, where workers are unable to creatively solve a problem outside of the norms of their task.
One side of ‘structural violence’ is that workers are afraid to do anything outside the rules for fear of personal consequences.
“The manufacturer who in the long run acts counter to these norms, will just as inevitably be eliminated from the economic scene as the worker who cannot or will not adapt himself to them will be thrown into the streets without a job.” (Weber The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism)
Another side is the desensitisation to the harms produced by the bureaucracy and the needs of those their serve, but also the nature of their actions. Ritzer points to a crucial example of this: “the Nazi concentration camp officers who, in devoting so much attention to maximizing the efficiency of the camps’ operation, lost sight of the fact that the ultimate purpose of the camps was the murder of millions of people.”
The accountability challenge and blame of the individual
Though bureaucracies are hierarchical and can be seen as a means to implement the aims and command of the leaders, they can also lead to following orders for the sake of the organisation and its rules. But what happens when something goes wrong? What or who is to blame?
As Weber described, the worker that does their work wrong or doesn’t do their work will be fired, and replaced by a more suitable candidate. The worker is often seen as the cause of the problem, because they are incompetent or lazy, as opposed to identifying what within the organisational processes and rules might not be working. There is little room for thinking about other causes of the problem, considering what might have changed in this context of society.
Hannah Arendt criticises this way of blaming complex social wrongdoings and problems, on individual responsibility. Arendt described how Adolf Eichmann had internalised the ideals and aims of Hitler so deeply, that he was blind to the horrendous nature and consequences of his actions. But his actions weren’t purely due to the following orders, it was about efficiently achieving the goal of Hitler, at all cost, even if it meant refusing orders from superiors. For Arendt, this wasn’t a way to excuse him for the horrendous act he committed, the individual still had responsibility and accountability for their actions, but a way to also recognise what other factors might have had an impact. Individual accountability is easier to describe than collective responsibility, because its easy to correlate and track what actions an individual did to produce a certain result.
The ‘Iron Cage’
For Weber, the individuals born into bureaucracies are forced into a certain order of social life which they might need to conform. “The individual bureaucrat cannot squirm out of the apparatus in which he is harnessed.” The iron cage is, in many ways, the systemic forces that impact individuals in a society, processes that from within feel difficult to act differently, constraining individual agency and freedom of thought.
Weber pondered where the direction of our society and bureaucracies would take us and what form these social processes might gain in the future. So then, what now?
→ Continues in Part 2 — ‘The computer says no’.
Part of an essay written for a ‘Social Theory and the Study of Contemporary Social Problems’ module at UCL.