Burning Archive Podcast #6 – The true history of the bureaucracy gang

I have posted episode 6 of The Burning Archive Podcast, – the true history of the bureaucracy gang. You can listen to this podcast on Spotify, Apple and other platforms.

In this episode I discuss the history of the bureaucracy in the UK, USA and Germany, and its relationship to political decay. And I ask, is the bureaucracy to blame for our republics in distress?

I do so by discussing Francis Fukuyama’s Political Order and Political Decay – Volume 2 From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, and his account of the importance of a capable state and relatively autonomous bureaucratic institutions to stable, successful political orders. Perhaps, I also practise Leo Strauss’ writing between the lines in talking about the bureaucracy from a historical perspective informed by my own lived experience.

Do please check out my podcast and if you find it interesting you might also like to read some of my other writings on bureaucracy such as:

• 13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat
• Human frailty in governing
• A very modern charge of the light brigade, which you will learn has relevance to the history of the civil service
• Do we repair republic with big ideas or ordinary virtues?, and
• Bureaucratic utopianism

Image Credit: Promotional Image for The True History of the Kelly Gang, movie based on a Peter Carey novel, based on the life of Ned Kelly, Victorian outlaw, and his gang