This governance arena refers to the issues of how the policy implementation machinery is organized. Public servants working in bureaucratic type of organizations are engaged in formulating, implementing policy and delivering services. Their public impact, however, comes foremost from their role in carrying out policy. This is the most visible part of their role. How bureaucracy is structured and how it relates to the political leadership have been issues of great significance to academics and practitioners alike ever since the days of Max Weber some hundred years ago. The idea that rules must be legal-rational, i.e. formal and logical, has dominated especially in modern democracies.
It is important that the bureaucracy is included in any governance assessment. The democratization literature typically ignores this arena; yet, it is very important in shaping overall perceptions of how a political systems functions. At the same time, by placing it side by side with the other five dimensions of governance, any public impressions of its performance is not blown out of proportion as the case easily is when "graft" or "improper practices" are chosen as major indicators of malgovernance.
