The Concept of Bureaucracy in Cameralism

Johnson, Hubert C.

doi:10.2307/2145906

Cited by 27 publications

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“…Discretion has no place in the Cameralist litany contra Carl Friedrich (1941) who championed administrative discretion in the twentieth century. The result was “the routine duty concept” (Johnson, 1964). When a king like Frederick the Great delegated to an administrator he wanted to be sure that his will was done.…”

Section: The Doctrines Of Cameralismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The eighteenth century antecedents of bureaucracy, the Cameralists

Jackson

2005

Management Decision

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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show that the master narrative of bureaucracy of Max Weber had deep roots in the development of public administration in Germany.Design/methodology/approachOne nearly forgotten predecessor of Weber's was Johann Gottlob von Justi, an eighteenth century Cameralist. This paper compares his work with Weber in order to shed new light on the evolution of the theory and practice of bureaucracy.FindingsBy taking von Justi as representative of Cameralism in general, the paper finds that there is in his work about half of the criteria of Weber's concept of bureaucracy as the rule‐bound application of rules. Although Cameralism focused on economic regulation, it was political science rather than economics (where it is usually dismissed as an inferior version of mercantilism), for it constantly stressed political control of the economy and the use of administration and management to achieve that control. It was political science in a second sense, too, in that it supposed that there was an underlying analytic order to the world to be discovered by scientific investigation and study. The unique historical circumstance of the dispersion of German‐speaking Middle Europe both provided the stimulus for Cameralism and ensured its failure.Research limitations/implicationsOf course, there is more to Cameralism that just one writer, and that limitation needs to be recalled. It would be timely to investigate further the development of administration in early modern Europe.Originality/valueThe scant research literature on Cameralism means that the comparison with Weber is seldom, if ever, made.

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Section: The Doctrines Of Cameralismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The eighteenth century antecedents of bureaucracy, the Cameralists

Jackson

2005

Management Decision

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Justi and the Post-Montesquieu French Debate on Commercial Nobility in 1756

Adam

2009

The Beginnings of Political Economy

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Cameralism, Josephinism, and Enlightenment: The Dynamic of Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1740–92

Szabo¹

2018

Austrian Hist Yearbk

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In his great 1848 historical drama, Ein Bruderzwist im Hause Habsburg, the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer has Emperor Matthias utter the words that have often been applied to understanding the whole history of the Habsburg monarchy: Das ist der Fluch von unserm edeln Haus:Auf halben Wegen und zu halber TatMit halben Mitteln zauderhaft zu streben.[That is the curse of our noble house:Striving hesitatingly on half waysto half action with half means.] True as those sentiments may be of many periods in the history of the monarchy, the one period of which it can not be said is the second half of eighteenth century. The age of Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II was perhaps the greatest era of consistent and committed reform in the four-hundred-year history of the monarchy. What I want to address in this article are some aspects of the dynamic of this reform era, and this falls into two categories. On the one hand, there is the broad energizing or motive force behind the larger development, and on the other, there are the ideas or assumptions that lay behind the policies adopted. As might be evident from the subtitle of my article, I propose to look primarily at the second of these categories. I do so because I think while Habsburg historiography has reached considerable consensus on the first, it has not looked enough on the second as an explanatory hermeneutic.

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The Concept of Bureaucracy in Cameralism

Cited by 27 publications

References 0 publications

The eighteenth century antecedents of bureaucracy, the Cameralists

The eighteenth century antecedents of bureaucracy, the Cameralists

Justi and the Post-Montesquieu French Debate on Commercial Nobility in 1756

Cameralism, Josephinism, and Enlightenment: The Dynamic of Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1740–92

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