ABSTRACT
Bureaucracy is a concept that has been widely written about. Scholars in various fields of social sciences, including sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, history, public administration and public policy, have produced a vast amount of literature pertaining to almost every angle of bureaucracy one could ever imagine. This chapter focuses only on studies from the field of public administration and public policy. The aim is to provide a description of important debates, theories and frameworks that explain the relationship between bureaucracy and the public policy process. The chapter starts with definitions of the bureaucracy, followed by explanations of bureaucratic roles in policy-making and policy implementation. In the latter half of the chapter, the discussion focuses on the role of bureaucracy in the era of governance and the chapter ends with the topic of heterogeneity of bureaucrats in the present.
