Tan, John Lester A.

PS0932

Philippine Bureaucratic Behavior: A Critique

According to Max Weber, bureaucracy is an “ideal-type” of organization. This leads to

the reason why bureaucracy is ideal to public organizations and extended even to
private organizations. This so called “ideal-type” of organization that Max Weber defined
is present in the Philippine set-up especially in public entities. Onofre D. Corpuz listed
some characteristics of Philippine bureaucracy after a careful study. For me, some of
these characteristics have more negative features than the positive features. I will take
for example one of the characteristics of Philippine bureaucracy which is vulnerability to
nepotism. It is evident that bureaucracy adheres the essentiality of a career system.
This pertains to the judgment of hierarchical superiority. But this nepotism shows
favoritism, bias, discrimination, inequity, and one-sidedness which are not present in a
bureaucratic behavior. This proves that the Philippine bureaucracy is not conforming in
the mere definition of bureaucracy. It just shows a contrasting characteristic of
bureaucracy to the Philippine bureaucracy and it is quite a huge difference between the
two. The Philippine bureaucracy also focus more on politics which must not be present
at all times in a bureaucratic system. This manifests that politicians are more present
than the bureaucrats which are the civil servants. Bureaucracy adheres the non-
interference of the politicians but the mere action of politics tackles in the Philippine
bureaucratic behavior. Basically speaking, bureaucracy favors the merit system in which
there is a clear defined hierarchy of offices but Philippine bureaucracy favors politics
more than the such existence of the merit system. The bureaucrats also in the
Philippine setting and in the bureaucratic system differ a lot. These bureaucrats or the
civil servants are not present anymore in the Philippine set-up of bureaucracy. Rather,
the government serves as the civil servants but they don’t act such. The existence and
dominance of the government proves that the essence of bureaucrats in a bureaucratic
system are not existing anymore. There are civil servants in this country but only a few
occurs. Perhaps, they can be only counted in bare hands. In addition, the bureaucrats in
the Philippine set-up have no permanent position in the society. In line with this, these
bureaucrats compose of persons with different experiences. These Philippine
bureaucrats doesn’t have any job specialization. They work in their field that it doesn’t fit
in their experience and training. For example, a nursing graduate works in a
government agency. Where is the mere essence of job specialization in this area? It
already violates one of the 6 Principles of Bureaucracy which is the principle of fixed
and official jurisdiction areas that Max Weber stated. In spite of the negative
characteristics of the Philippine Bureaucracy, Onofre Corpuz stated that bureaucracy is
an essential instrument of social change. This pertains that bureaucracy is thus used an
aid for the better government system in the Philippine setting. It only used in a wrongful
way in which the people blame it for the poor social services they receive to the
government. There are other certain factors in which bureaucracy is not that used
properly by the government. The Philippine bureaucratic behavior is thus a complicated
one. It is complicated to deal with on. It adheres and promotes efficiency in theory
especially in public entities but the proper way of applying this principle is the problem
itself which is in practice. This leads to the notion that the bureaucracy is an “ideal-type”
of organization. It may not be the best type of organization but it can be the best once
use and apply properly especially in the Philippine government set-up.