How can one make state administrative systems interesting, embody an abstract public ethos and give heroism to homogeneity? The discipline of literature and bureaucracy dismisses Weber's 'neurocrat'. Milton, Trollope and Hare are case studies on...
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How can one make state administrative systems interesting, embody an abstract public ethos and give heroism to homogeneity? The discipline of literature and bureaucracy dismisses Weber's 'neurocrat'. Milton, Trollope and Hare are case studies on implementing the 'what if' visions literature explored during a period of great change in public service "Historians and sociologists have been consistently - albeit gloomily - enthralled by Max Weber's model of the inevitable rise of the neurocrat. However, literary critics positively boast that writers, like academics, cannot 'do admin'. While Weber's thesis about the rise of the entrepreneur - all fire, individuality, thrust - is in tune with what we think literature is about, his thesis about the rise of the bureaucrat is not, yet 'creative bureaucracy' is not only a euphemism for bending the rules. Literature in the Public Service shows how the public service makes its workers original, taking them beyond an individuated point of view to imagine the perfect public system. Creativity theorists too have swapped the model of solitary inspiration for a managed creative environment. John Milton, Anthony Trollope, and David Hare are examples of how authors work in and write about the public service, during its crisis moments"--
Introduction: Weber, Bureaucracy, and CreativityThe 1650s: Milton and the Beginning of Civil Service -- The 1850s: Trollope and the Height of Civil Service Ambitions -- The Present: Hare and Shrinking Government Provision -- Coda: Bureaucratic Creativity.
