Over the last quarter of a century or so we have witnessed systematic attempts - influenced by public choice theory, and fuelled by popular resentment against bureaucratic power - to dismantle bureaucracies and replace them with organizational forms that are more 'flexible', more 'accountable', more 'responsive', more 'entrepreneurial', less 'hierarchical', and 'flatter'. However, in the meantime we also have a growing literature demonstrating that the measures designed to counter the dysfunctions of bureaucracy in general, and of the state in particular, themselves have problematic side-effects. The tightening of mechanisms of control designed to deliver accountability are said: • to corrode trust and solidarity within - and beyond - organizations;• to lead to a decline of the spirit of public service and the growing subordination of procedural to political concerns;• to encourage new and increasingly centralized and unconstrained governance styles;• are paradoxically themselves n
