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The moral justification for bureaucracy in systems of democratic self-government is stronger in Eastern thought than in Western philosophy and practice. In East Asia, moral justification for bureaucracy is broadly understood to be based on the work of Confucius and his followers. Modern scholars confirm that the primary countries of East Asia have distinctive bureaucratic cultures tracing to Confucian ideology. Distinctive elements of Confucian ideology include rule of man versus rule of law, distinctive characteristics ofgood public officials, the nature of moral conventions and practices in governing, the importance of education and merit for public officials, how good officials should deal with those in political power, the logic of civil reciprocity, and the nature of order in society. Following descriptions of each of these elements of Confucian moral justification for bureaucracy, the article closes with a comparison of Western and East Asian approaches to the moral justification for bureaucracy.
There is little foundation in Western thought on which the moral justification of bureaucracy might rest.1 There have been attempts to build a public administrative morality on constitutional, legal, economic, political, and professional foundations, but as a moral basis of bureaucracy, all are weak.2 In Eastern thought, by comparison, there is an ancient, robust, and durable moral justification for public administration.
The sociology of bureaucracy will be found in Weber's ideal type, which is still remarkably accurate (Weber, 1947). But, the moral justification for bureaucracy cannot be found in the West; it can be found in East Asia. The larger countries of East Asia-China, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and Korea-are often referred to as having bureaucratic cultures-- cultures- particularly influenced by the thought of Confucius.
Confucius is to the ethic of bureaucracy as Weber is to the structure and behavior of bureaucracy. The paragraphs that follow present evidence that the moral basis of public administration can be found in the thinking of Confucius and his followers. Section 1 is the contention that there is such a thing as bureaucratic culture and that it is uniquely associated with Confucianism and particularly evident in the countries of East Asia. Section 2 presents the primary moral positions in Confucian ideology. These moral positions will be, in almost all cases, compared with Western concepts of bureaucracy and morality. In Section...