Structure

Bureaucratic Polity 
Most western scholars seem to believe that in the developing world, even the 
political regimes dominated by one party, one ruler or by a multi-party system, 
bureaucracy controls the crucial levers of power. Bureaucracy, by virtue of its 
educational background, competence, experience and expertise, has an edge over 
other subsystems for it enjoys power that is far in excess of what it should 
deserve in a legal-rational authority system. When major policies and decisions 
relating to a regulatory or development administration bear the stamp of 
bureaucratic expertise or discretion, it would be a trait of what Riggs calls a 
“bureaucratic polity”. 
Riggs maintains that in a large majority of developing countries, one notices the 
working of a bureaucratic polity as against a “party-run polity.” Issue of ideology 
apart, a bureaucratic polity is likely to use the power of governance to its own 
advantage, leading to the dysfunctionalities of self-centeredness and personal 
aggrandisement. These negative attitudes, in turn, would prove inimical to the 
process of development. 
As a corollary to this assumption regarding the relationship between bureaucratic 
power and socio-economic development, Riggs and other ideology-oriented 
scholars seemed to suggest that hastening of the development process in 
developing countries should be preceded by creating ‘balance’ in the polity and 
thus reducing the powers of bureaucracy. This approach is a direct legacy of the 
western concepts of “checks and balances” and “balance of power” and exhibits 
distrust in bureaucracy. Only a few scholars such as Ralph Braibanti question 
that wisdom of this approach and suggest that sometimes bureaucracy alone 
becomes the prime mover of the development process and a preconceived notion 
about its attitude towards power and development should not be adopted. There 
is need to take a broader ecological approach and judge the role and effectiveness 
of bureaucracy in a most rational and objective manner.