MENA: Bureaucracy

Challenges posed by Bureaucracy throughout the MENA Region



Challenges posed by Bureaucracy throughout the MENA Region

Bureaucracy is usually seen as constituting an important place in the social fabric of political systems of majority of the countries despite numerous challenges and tremendous volume of negative aspects that come attached with it. MENA region, short for Middle East and North Africa region, is among such regions that are widely known for their use of bureaucracy as a political system. Adoption of Bureaucracy to determine the political structure and framework of any country is primarily associated with the use of elite control as a source to govern any country or region. Changes in bureaucratic and bureaucratically derived political structure to make the government operate in favour of the major part of the population might have become commonplace, but yet the negative aspects of the approach could neither be minimised not be eliminated. It is because it involves important decision making pertaining to state matters and running the state by government representatives and officials who have not been elected by general public through the use of their voting rights, with the elected representatives being made to involve in minimum amount of important decision making, thereby making the political system appear effectively as a negation of the democracy. Bureaucracy is characterised by voluminous amount of petty rules which effectively sets up 'red tape' making the entire system inefficient lacking the flexibility to meet the requirements and expectations of masses in a timely manner, and this is what is primarily considered as the factor behind the challenges a bureaucratic country or state usually faces and suffers from.

Nature of Bureaucracy and Bureaucracy as a Political System

Prior to moving on with the assignment, it is important to briefly understand bureaucracy through its nature as stipulated by its characteristics, in addition to what bureaucracy means as a political system which essentially promotes governmental control as dictated by the elite members of the society. Hierarchical authority is what emerges as the foremost characteristic of any bureaucracy followed by petty set of rules and standard operating procedures, strict division of labour, as well as impersonal relationship as shared between the bureaucrats or the staff working in any bureaucracy. In order to attain effective understanding of a bureaucratic political system, it has been compared with factory system of production. Prior to the implementation of Factory system of production, 'Putting Out' system was generally used following which workers were free to work in their own space and time, thereby having no controlling authority overseeing them. The domain of raw material as well as retail distribution could be under the control of capitalists; however the department of production; the method and the speed with which the output will be produced among other aspects, was entirely under the authority of workers themselves who were commonly doing their work from home.

Following Putting out system, Factory System of Production was implemented replacing putting out system, in which workers were primarily grouped together, by the factory ...