superiority, paternalism, and tolerance of indigenous institutions deemed to
be compatible with metropolitan interests. But after independence a fairly
well established Indian middle class increasingly articulated its interests
through the formal institutions of political democracy. Arguing from the
basis of a case-study of the Kosi Development Region of north-east Bihar,
Wood shows that administrative behaviour in post-colonial India had
become increasingly bureaucratic and instrumental ‘as a response to the
emergence of legislatures, political parties, and new forms of class differen-
tiation which together have functioned to undermine the autonomy of the
state administrative apparatus’ (Wood, G. D., 1977, p. 307). In particular,
a class of capitalist farmers had emerged as dominant in the formation of
agrarian policies. The establishment of democratic institutions meant a loss
of authority, power and status for the bureaucracy. When class interests
sought to oppose reforms by undermining administrative authority, the
bureaucracy retreated into ideologies of professionalism, instrumentalism
and neutrality.
Bureaucratic stability, or the continuityof the bureaucratic élite com-
pared with other political élites, is another source of power. Governments
come and go,coupsbring about changes of regime, but the bureaucracy
remains. Other élites come to be dependent on it: ‘it seldom occurs to the
men leading a coupto throw the administrators out’ (Abernethy, 1971,
p. 95). In the case of Pakistan, it seems that the bureaucracy has been in con-
trol from the very inception of ‘military’ rule (Alavi, 1990, pp. 48–9). Under
conditions of political instability the continuity of the bureaucracy enhances
its power. It is impossible to dispense with it as an institution and often
extremely difficult to replace its personnel with those who have the ideo-
logical commitment needed by the leaders of a new government or regime,
especially if administrative expertise is monopolized by the old guard.
Bureaucracy and access
Bureaucratic power is also related to the administrative allocationof scarce
state resources to meet politically defined needs among different sections of
the population – for income support, employment, land, agricultural inputs,
food, health care, education, credit, shelter and other public provision that
has to be bureaucratically administered.
If we reconsider the different meanings attached to bureaucracy, and in
particular bureaucracy as a certain kind of rationality, we find that in the
context of the bureaucratic allocation of scarce resources rationality takes
164 Understanding Third World Politics