bodies. The development process of different political institutions such as
bureaucracies and parties are not separate and unrelated. In effect the bureau-
cracy has been known to create political vacuums for it to fill itself (Heeger,
1973, pp. 605–6).
The functionalists conceptualized this institutional imbalance as ‘multi-
functionality’, arguing that in transitional societies political structures have
not become as specialized as they would ultimately when society had
become fully modern (Smith, B. C., 1988, ch. 8). The functionalist idea of
political modernity included a bureaucracy fully specialized in rule applica-
tion. In advanced societies as defined by the functionalists, power resides
with the people and public servants are there to give advice and obey orders.
Transitional society has political structures that have not become fully
specialized, but are multifunctional. It becomes logically possible for
bureaucratic structures to perform all the input and output functions of the
political system and be as much concerned with the function of rule-making
as rule-application(Almond, 1960, p. 17). However, there was always
difficulty in fitting the behaviour of Third World bureaucrats into the func-
tionalist taxonomy (Smith, B. C., 1988, p. 120).
Marxist social theorists have adopted a different approach to bureaucratic
overdevelopment. A study of Mali found a ‘crisis of colonialism’ which had
brought about independence before any viable political structures other than
the bureaucracy had had a chance to develop (Meillasoux, 1970). Alavi’s
analysis of Pakistan and Bangladesh also refers to the overdevelopment of the
bureaucracy relative to other political institutions. Once freed from direct met-
ropolitan control, this oligarchy was able to extend its dominant power in soci-
ety, assume a new economic role, proliferate bureaucratic controls and public
agencies, manipulate the façade of parliamentary government, and eventually
even seize power from the democratic regime. Experience elsewhere indicated
the need for qualifications to this depiction of the bureaucracy. In Kenya, for
example, the bureaucracy was divided into different branches and strata. Civil
servants did not always have identical interests to the managers of state-owned
enterprises and the latter were ‘especially exposed to the bourgeois values
embodied in the technology, management practices, “efficiency” ideology, etc.
of the firms they take over’. Career bureaucrats also needed to be distinguished
from party officials inserted into the civil administration, particularly in terms
of their respective class linkages (Leys, 1976, p. 44).
Other authorities have qualified the post-colonial model by seeing it as a
passing phase and one that in some Third World societies has been left
behind – notably in India, where the colonial administration was overdevel-
oped and had enormous prestige supported by a complex ideology of racial
Bureaucracy and Political Power 163