of such professionals have for many years been employed in the public
sector and public services. This again limits the availability of countervail-
ing forces that can present political leaders with alternative plans, policy
advice and techniques of implementation to those put up by government
officials. Development planning has consequently tended to be highly cen-
tralized, technocratic and of the ‘top down’ variety, where the experts at the
top make the decisions about what the masses need in terms of programmes
of development, whether in health care, agriculture, education or other areas
of planned development. This feature of bureaucracy reflects the concept of
a specially recruited group appointed on the basis of merit to produce
rational and efficient methods of working. A system of recruitment that
admits only those that can demonstrate the required level of expertise and
competence is bound to produce organizations which lay politicians find it
difficult to dominate.
Bureaucratic power also arises from dependency. Effective administra-
tion is a necessary if not sufficient condition for planned change in devel-
oping countries (Abernethy, 1971, p. 94). Insofar as the state has been at the
forefront of planning change in economy and society through programmes
of investment, education, family planning, nutrition, sanitation and the like,
it has been dependent for the success of those plans upon a powerful and
effective administration. It is one thing for a government to legislate on, say,
land reform. The subsequent implementation requires thousands of land-
titles to be registered, compensations to be settled and paid, and disputes to
be processed and adjudicated upon. Without officialdom, nothing is imple-
mented. What the politicians might win through electoral support or force
of arms has to be consolidated by administrative proceedings and by
the multitude of development programmes formulated by governments in
the Third World.
A third source of bureaucratic power, recognised long ago by Max
Weber, is the social esteem and statusenjoyed by senior bureaucrats. This
may originate from a number of different sources – the public’s acknowl-
edgement of the impartiality of the public service, or of its professional
expertise; and the legacy of colonialism when, particularly in the rural
areas, officials stood at the apex of the power structure and when the post-
colonial officials inherited the posts, pay scales and perks of the colonial
expatriates, so inheriting the same prestige and status in the community.
When also there are few other opportunities for educated people to find
employment, posts in the public service become the goal of the technocratic
élite. For many years the private sector could not offer the opportunities
which government service could and still does in many societies of the
160 Understanding Third World Politics