Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985. / Also available in print.

<p>Commentators of parliamentary democracy in Britain and Canada tend to agree that parliament is an old institution that is in desperate need of renewal. Contrary to this perspective, there are those who believe that parliament is an evolving institution which has been susceptible to change over time. Given the disagreement posed above, there is a need to develop a method to measure which side has it right.</p><p>This dissertation seeks to establish such a method. By using organization theory to explain organizational change, this research will establish both the rationale for why institutions change and the decisions that led to that change. Change is defined as the difference between present organizational configuration from the original. If there is a difference, then change is present. To understand the original configuration of parliamentary institutions, the dissertation looks at "foundational principles" to parliamentary democracy. Of these foundational principles, the doctrine of ministerial responsibility is the one analyzed here.</p><p>In analyzing government decisions that lead to ministerial resignations, this dissertation builds a decision-making matrix that will compare organizational theories of decision-making and analyze the level of rationality applied when governments decide to require a resignation from one of its members. While the governments of Canada and the UK have both been built around the concept of ministerial responsibility, there are differences in how the government in each country is scrutinized. Contrary to these differences, the results show that both countries have nearly identical levels of rationality when it comes to decisions that lead to ministerial resignations. This leads to the conclusion that ministerial responsibility is not a dead concept in either country, and the differences in levels of scrutiny by officers of parliament, size of legislature, and parliamentary committees are not significant.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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Thesis--University of Wisconsin, 1968. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 202-208.

This project draws attention to a contemporary exaltation of competence and swift decision-making that emphasizes the moment of executive power in democratic political practice and within democratic theory. Drawing on Weber’s concept of rationalization and his opposition between the mentalities of the official and the politician, I develop a distinct conception of bureaucracy as a mode of thought. Bureaucratic thinking involves the application of technical knowledge and skills, with a claim to universality and objectivity, in order to produce results and promote consensus and social harmony. I argue that this conception allows us to better recognize the contemporary diffusion of a flexible, decentralized type of bureaucracy and situate it within the history of affinity and tension between bureaucratic and democratic principles. I focus on a tradition within continental democratic theory, which tends to downplay politics by replacing it with administration and regulation. French political theorist and historian Pierre Rosanvallon is its contemporary representative, building on Hegel and Durkheim as well as Saint-Simon and Léon Duguit. Initially, Rosanvallon offered a theory of participation and democratic legitimacy that would work within the administrative state, taking into account his own strong critiques of bureaucracy. I argue that significant shifts evident in his later works, which respond to new realities, explicitly and/or implicitly mobilize bureaucratic thinking and practice to buttress democratic legitimacy within the nation-state and the European Union. I then play Rosanvallon’s earlier anti-bureaucratic arguments against his modified position in order to argue against attempts to reconcile bureaucracy and democracy, understood in its procedural form with equal freedom at its core. My claim is that bureaucratic thinking aims at consensus, encourages passivity, undermines the democratic value of political equality, and obscures values and interests behind policy decisions that are presented as neutral, technical, and fact-based. Methodologically, I use the history of ideas to develop the concept of the bureaucratic mentality, tracing it through the work of exemplary thinkers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Hegel, Durkheim, and Weber.

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