Federalism and West German Bureaucracy
| Published date | 01 September 1959 |
| Date | 01 September 1959 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1959.tb01934.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
FEDERALISM
AND
WEST
GERMAN
BUREAUCRACY
KARLHEINZ NEUNREITHER’
I.
INTRODUCTION: BUREAUCRACY
IN
A
FEDERAL SYSTEM
THE
substantial increase of governmental functions which many nations
have seen in this century has made bureaucracyZ a major problem of
our
time. The question of how to ensure responsible and effective administra-
tion
of
political decisions has been the object of many excellent ~tudies.~
Clearly, it is more difficult for a democracy to solve these problems than for
an authoritarian form of government where the question of control may
play
a
minor role
visd-vis
the technical problem of efficiency. Democratic
federal systems have to face an additional difficulty: they must integrate
their administration not only in the structure of separated legislative and
executive powers on a national level but also in that of federal-state
relations.
A
survey of existing democratic federal systems would show that most
of them attempt to find a solution in more or less uncomplicated ways:
federal and state governments simply exert administrative authority in
those areas where the federal constitution provides them with legislative
authority; that
is,
administrative authority fbllows legislative prerogative?
Dr. Neunreither has studied sociology, economics, and political science in Heidelberg
and Paris, and took his D.Phi1. at the Institut fur Politische Wissenschaft, Heidelberg,
of
which Carl
J.
Friedrich is the director.
He
was Theodore Haebler Fellow at the Graduate
School of Public Administration, Harvard University,
1957-8.
He has worked from
1956
on the Bundesrat and is publishing
a
study this summer under the title
Der Bundesrat
zwischen Politik und Verwaltung
(Quelle
&
Meyer, Heidelberg). An article of his on the
Institutional Aspect
of
the Bundesrat
is
shortly to appear in the
American Political Science
Review.
Dr. Neunreither is now working on a comparative study
of
European Assemblies
and took up an appointment as Committee Secretary in the European Parliament on
1
May
1959.
*
‘Bureaucracy’ is used in this paper as a technical term, not in the pejorative sense it has
in popular parlance in both English and German.
A
large part of the literature on the
subject follows the popular use and thereby fails to contribute
to
a
description of the
principles of bureaucratic organization.
It is impossible to give
a
bibliography here. A good survey of the problem and an
abundant bibliography is given in the
Reader in Bureaucracy,
edited by Robert
K.
Merton
er
nl.,
The Free Press, Glencoe, Ill.,
1952.
The outstanding example of this separation is,
of
course, the United States of America.
Even there, however, the traditional administrative separation between federal and state
governments tends to give way to some degree of co-operation. For some excellent studies
on this subject see
Federalism-Mature and Emergent,
edited by Arthur
W.
Macmahon.
Polltfeel
Studles,
Vol.
VII.
No.
3
(1959,
233-245).
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