Administrative Responsibility An Islamic Perspective

Abstract

Public bureaucracies, a general term including government agencies
and departments in the areas of public utilities, social services, regulatory
services, security, and law enforcement, are indispensable to our welfare;
we need them for the provision of these basic services. To provide these
services, bureaucracies need such resources as power and money. The
power of bureaucracies is compounded by their virtual monopoly of technical
expertise, which puts bureaucrats at the forefront of public policy
making.
Indispensable to our welfare though they are, public bureaucracies also
pose a potential threat. In view of the technical knowledge they have and
their consequent important role in policy making, they may dominate public
life. In other words, they may develop into a power elite and, as a result,
act as masters of the public rather than as its servants. More disturbingly,
they may not use the public trust to serve the public or respond to its needs.
Still more disturbingly, they may breach the public trust or abuse the power
entrusted to them.
All of these possibilities have given rise to a widespread fear of
bureaucracy. In some societies, this fear has reached pandemic levels.
Fear of bureaucracy is not unwarranted; there is a consensus and concern
in administrative and academic circles that the degree of bureaucratic
accountability has declined in both developed and developing
countries. A central issue with public bureaucracy has always been
how to make it behave responsibly or in the public interest. Despite a
plethora of mechanisms for ensuring administrative responsibility or
bureaucratic responsiveness, many public bureaucracies may still be unresponsive and unaccountable ...