Is bureaucracy the most effective way of running a state?

The Romans believed, in certain circumstances, there was a very real and necessary alternative, specifically in periods of conflict. They would toss the "committee" in favor of following one specific person and hang on his words until danger had passed and the senate could once again function appropriately.

It depends on the geopolitical environment. In periods of relative calm, bureaucracy is probably best, with less influence from corruption via more prominent checks and balances.

Yes

t. Max Weber

1) The Senate was not bureaucratic. The Senate was the opposite of bureaucratic.
2) Emergency powers are a provision not an alternative, unless you go with third world-style martial law abuse
3) Bureaucracies don't disappear while dictators rule

What alternative would you suggest?

>The Senate was not bureaucratic. The Senate was the opposite of bureaucratic.

I don't understand this statement. To my interpretation, any committee or convention begins a bureaucracy by its nature. That's to say, when there is any group of people making a decision, from the nature of their combined ideas, there inherently exists bureaucracy.

It's not some one specific manner of governance, but the by-product of combined individuals. You don't think this way?

Yes but the idea of the Senate is that the people who head the bureaucracy are not bureaucrats, but elected officials who (in theory) represent the common man on the street, and not the educated elites who typically dominate bureaucratic systems.

I'm pretty sure there existed, even then, the "good old boy" system of political support and those people in senate were absolutely, specifically the educated elite, particularly in a world state wherein very many fewer system participants (citizens) were educated in any manner.

Well yes, bureucracies require a constant supply of educated people which in turn props up class structures. China is the classic example of a bureaucracy that hi-jacked it's putative state, largely because the bureaucrats there were also the class who appointed and inducted new bureaucrats. The Roman system aimed at a balance between oligarchic, democratic and aristocratic forces which prevented any one class achieving hegemony. Modern states take this even further, often using oligarchic systems such as elections even for purely bureaucratic posts such as mayors and aldermen, precisely because it has been so often observed that putatively "meritocratic" systems invariably degenerate into class hegemonies.

I don't think there is enough meritocracy.

The problem with meritocracy is, who is to judge who deserve what position? If you leave it in the hands of the expert, you end up with technocracy, where academics and engineers plan the economy, with all the disastrous results seen in for example the USSR or Venezuela. The advantage representational democracy has over meritocracy is that no matter how terrible, stupid, lazy, corrupt and perverted a given elected official may be, there is an in-built mechanism to get rid of him once his term is up. Meritocratic systems rarely have such mechanisms, which leads to oligarchy as a single class comes to dominate the supposedly "meritocratic" assembly.

MIXED GOVERNMENT

Yes, I understand. I think the system dangerously loses efficiency with so many special interests, so many moving parts. This is like, some base difference in principles of liberalism.

You don't need to be so extreme with comparisons to authoritarianism. It can be, and I can demonstrate even "is now" in some modicum of effect. How very many places (jokes aside in bias against specific candidates) have dirt-poor, uneducated crack heads representing their constituency? But even if, even in that event where, there might become some of that element, the surrounding bureaucratic machine would certainly filter out that element, if not only in idea and practice, in a literal dismissive fashion.

The history of both politics and economics has been the gradual realisation that the systems that govern our lives are too complex for any human to grok, and that the people who claim to understand them, and who offer simple solutions and panaceas to all our societal ills, are simply wrong. No ideological fix has ever worked out how it's proponents expected, every attempt to fix a problem has always resulted in more problems, and often much worse ones. The middle-of-the-road, mixed systems that dominate today, for all their many failings, are the best we've managed to date

Even a broken watch is right twice a day. There are periods in time the bureaucracy needs to take a back seat, when serious decisions need to be made in a timely manner for the betterment of the entire system, not simply for the comforts of a handful.

It's an interesting statement, "No ideological fix has ever worked out how it's proponents expected...", but many have, indeed, worked toward some advance in order, and order is pretty necessary.

it's the only way.

In theory, if we read the rules Webber wrote, yes. But the reality it's not.

>non-meme

wtf r u on 'bout?

also, states and provinces are bureaucracies too. It's actually better to divide the bureaucracy into small pieces, instead of one giant one.

>Is bureaucracy the most effective way of running a state?

Yes. States either become bureaucratic or disappear. Look at Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Depends on the (size of) bureaucracy and the (size of) state.