arrive at final decisions in individual cases. Officials correspondingly
behave according to norms which structure the decision-making process,
seeking relevant information to test whether specified conditions have been
met. The conditions may be numerous and complex. Nevertheless, a claim
can still be systematically examined to see whether a claimant falls into the
category of eligibility or not (Smith, B. C., 1986).
For many people there is no problem in understanding the way public
organizations plan such expenditure and interventions, and the way they
make decisions about its allocation. There may be political interference
with the process of administrative allocation, leading to deviation from the
bureaucratic norm. Allocations may then not be made impartially and
according to the rules. It is a highly politicized process, but for the more
Westernized and educated sections of society the processes of decision-
making are comprehensible. However, for other sections of society in poor,
agricultural economies that are in the process of change, bureaucratic meth-
ods of decision-making are difficult to adjust to.
In a peasant community such bureaucratization may appear very alien.
This is not because people lack intelligence, are irrational or are too back-
ward. It is because bureaucratic rationality does not coincide with peasant
rationality. The behaviour of the bureaucrat, who can only deal with infor-
mation that is relevant to the case that falls within his jurisdiction, may
appear very strange in the context of rural society in many parts of the
world. To dismiss information about a person’s current situation as irrele-
vant is difficult for a person to accept when they are part of a community in
which aspects of different lives interact. People do not see themselves as
standing in a single-stranded relationship with others, but in multi-stranded
relationships (Wood, G. D., 1977). A money-lender rather than an agricul-
ture extension officer may be approached for credit, but the relationship
with the money-lender will be very different from that with a government
official. The multi-stranded relationships of peasant communities combine
debt, kinship, tenancy, employment, reciprocity, political factionalism, and
patronage. A bureaucrat treating like cases alike and concerning himself
exclusively with officially selected aspects of an individual’s circumstances
is using a peculiarly Westernized form of rationality that rich and educated
farmers in the community may be able to appreciate and co-operate with.
But poor, illiterate, uneducated and dependentmembers of the community,
at whom the programmes of public expenditure may have been specifically
and deliberately targeted, may find the process difficult to adapt to.
A bureaucrat cannot be approached in a multi-stranded way. Other aspects
of an individual’s economic and family circumstances which are currently
166 Understanding Third World Politics