Government Bureaucrats Are Different

AT the sound of the word bureaucrat the man in the street will probably imagine some time-serving Post Office clerk or a power-hungry New Dealer. At the same time a sociologist will conjure up the ideal type of an official occupying a defined position within a large scale, rational organization (be it church, army, trade union, or telephone company), where he plays out his role according to prescribed rules and becomes more like those rules day by day. Perhaps it is a fault of our language that one word carries two such different meanings, yet there is a common referent. Both layman and academic would agree that a GS-9 Qualifications Rating Examiner in the U.S. Civil Service Commission is a bureaucrat. But which is the more appropriate characterization? How might we distinguish government bureaucrats from their opposite numbers in the business world? Or are they both running the same race under different colors?