ABSTRACT
Rationalist bureaucracy has been one of the greatest inventions of the modern age. In the nineteenth century the Weberian state allowed the rationalism of elites to prevail over the whims of monarchs. In the twentieth century it allowed rationalist democratic discourses to prevail over the whims of elites. It enabled the organization and delivery of services by the state on an unprecedented scale (Peters, 1996, p. 13). It ensured the state could match forces with the emerging industrial economy, though critics certainly say that, having done so, it became merely industrialization's handmaiden. The liberal, impersonal state slowly but steadily mitigated the deadly appetite of Britain's dark satanic mills. The Weberian model gave birth to the appropriate phrase 'machinery of government', and the machine's capacity for governing at a distance made possible state enterprises as diverse as world war, social welfare for millions, and journeying to the moon.
