You will prepare and submit a term paper on Why Is Bureaucracys Relationship to Democracy So Conflicted. Your paper should be a minimum of 1500 words in length. In this respect, bureaucracy makes it difficult for democratic governance to succeed, considering that it makes it more and more difficult for the people to access the social and political institutions which are established to serve them (Ray, 1999:177).

Where a system applies excessive bureaucracy, a citizen is likely to take longer and employ more resources in order to access the services of the social or political institutions that have been established to serve the citizenry. This is because, the existence of many bureaucratic agents between the citizen and the social or political institutions means that the individuals will consume time going through each of the bureaucratic agents before they finally reach the institutions in which the citizens seek services (Fournier & Grey, 1996:123). This way, the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy can be perceived as the one where bureaucracy stifles democracy, thus making it difficult to operate.

However, bureaucracy has been defined as a tool for realizing democracy, because it is perceived as a neutral instrument that enables people to achieve routine functions without the influence of external forces that may cause instability (Madsen, 1999:n.p.). It enhances democracy through acting as the means through which the political and social policies in the society are mediated and realized. This is because, bureaucracy is structured in a way that allows the fair and balanced response to social values, which are implicit, thus avoiding the conflict involved in the operation of free will, which is associated with breeding chaos, on the event that people operate against the set standards.

Thus, bureaucracy defines how problems should be conceptualized and solved in a manner less likely to cause any conflict, meaning that it is one of the major instruments.