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Some Recent Studies of Nineteenth–Century European Bureaucracy: Problems of Analysis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
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- Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1986
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1. The nature of bureaucratic power itself, that is, whether the official merely administers laws and decisions made by others, or himself affects the formulation and execution of such laws and decisions, presents some difficulties. But it seems reasonably clear that in practice the official does both, in varying degrees depending on circumstances.
2. Kocka, Jürgen, Unternehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847–1914 (Stuttgart, 1969)Google Scholar, concludes that while a large-scale private industry like Siemens became progressively more bureaucratic, economic considerations always hindered the consolidation of officials' rights on the same scale as in government.
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7. Ibid., 25–28.
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34. Blackbourne and Eley's stimulating study, The Peculiarities of German History, is obviously relevant here. I find myself in agreement with many of their arguments in this book, and certainly their rejection of a purely instrumentalist view of the state, —see Eley's careful analysis of differing theoretical views on state autonomy, 126–43. Blackbourne and Eley, however, are primarily interested in the putative failure of the German middle class to establish a more liberal state, while my focus has been on the bureaucracy as a profession. Their interest is in clarifying the position of the middle class in relation to the nobility, whereas I accept as given that there was a kind of coalition between middle class and nobility, and look rather to the position of the working class and lower middle class in relation to this coalition. So that our overall arguments, while I believe them congruent, are a little like parallel lines that never really meet, and it is impossible to do anything like justice to their valuable work in this article.
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