on a special political significance. High levels of need, particularly among
the poorer sections of society but also among other sections, such as private
capital, mean that the bureaucracy has to allocate scarce resources accord-
ing to politically determined categories of need. The market is not left to
make such allocations, it is done through official action.
The needs of poor people are not being met by the market because they
do not have the resources to create an effective demand. If the lower strata
of society are deemed to be in need – of an income, work, land, health care,
agricultural inputs, food, education and so on – it is because they are unable
to acquire through the market what is required to maintain life at a certain
officially designated standard. If the policy-makers define need in terms of
income, for example, steps may be taken to create jobs such as a public
works programme into which will be recruited labour from a target group
whose need has been officially identified and which the public intervention
has been set up to meet. Or the need may be identified as land so that peo-
ple can support themselves. The policy might then be a land-reform pro-
gramme which allocates land to the landless or to increase the size of
uneconomic holdings by means of official rules determining eligibility. The
need might be for shelter which cannot be demanded in the private housing
sector. Similarly the private market for education may be beyond the reach
of certain categories of people who are politically defined as ‘needing’ edu-
cational provision. Health care is in a similar category. The ways in which
development planners identify the needs of different people are extremely
numerous. Particular categories of agricultural or industrial producers
might be identified as having a need for inputs which should increase levels
of productivity. A potentially productive group may be unable to obtain
credit in the financial markets because of the lack of secure collateral or
ability to repay at the market rate of interest, so the state provides loans at a
subsidized rate. The need for increased productivity may be seen in terms of
physical inputs such as fertilizer, seeds or equipment, which again will be
allocated by the state.
A wide range of state interventions aimed at particular groups of benefi-
ciaries is virtually synonymous with development planning in many parts of
the Third World. Those state interventions should be managed bureaucrati-
cally by officials acting according to the Weberian model of public service.
Rules and regulations will be applied to specific cases. Entitlements to
public benefits are created for specified groups. According to bureaucratic
theory the intended beneficiaries will be able to identify themselves as such,
will be informed of their newly defined rights under a governmental pro-
gramme and will be able to comprehend the way bureaucratic organizations
Bureaucracy and Political Power 165