Administocracy: An Essay: What's Gone Wrong With Democracy

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Originating from the Greek words demos and kratos (meaning “people” and “rule”), the ideology of democracy was first implemented over 2500 years ago by the ancient Greeks (Mintz, Close, & Croci, 2013). Praised for its elected government that ideally represents the people’s interests; maintains a high level of transparency and accountability, as well as a limited role of government, the concept of democracy gained popularity throughout the centuries to follow, with representative democracy being the most prevalent form of democracy in modern-day society (Mintz et al., 2013). An essay in the Economist entitled “What’s gone wrong with democracy” highlights that while the formation and implementation of democracies was at an all-time high in the …show more content…

Pairing a type of government where bureaucrats have a stronger ability to formulate and implement public policy concurrently under a powerful executive becomes even more perilous if both the administocracy’s interests and executive’s interests align with each other but not that of the citizens’. The effect of the external and internal controls on keeping the bureaucrats in check can arguably be manipulated; as John Dalberg-Acton exclaimed, “power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Mintz et al., 2013). Also of concern is the fact that bureaucrats are not publicly elected and therefore, are not regulated by the citizens to which the decisions that they are making are supposed to benefit (Gruber, 1987). As Judith Gruber exclaims in her book Controlling Bureaucracies (1987), bureaucrats:

are generally people hired on the basis of competitive examinations, promoted on the basis of the judgments of other bureaucrats, and fired only under extreme provocation. How then is their work to be controlled by ordinary people? How can we reconcile the growth of decision making in powerful government bureaucracies with our ideas of democracy and popular control?

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