John S. Dryzek, The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 79–83

Administrative Rationalism in Crisis

Among those who have recently reflected upon administrative rationalism in an environmental context, increasingly few have done so in order to defend or advance it. Part of this is due to the association with bureaucracy: it is hard to find anyone who actually likes bureaucracy (recall that even Max Weber did not welcome the bureaucratic world whose arrival he announced; indeed, he described it as an ‘iron cage’, a ‘polar night of icy darkness and hardness’). It is more common to find bureaucracy defended as necessary rather than attractive. Still, a discourse can soldier on without reflective defenders – indeed, particular discourses may persist precisely because nobody at all is reflecting on them, whether in attack or defense. Unfortunately for administrative rationalism, it is meeting with reflection, much of which turns out to be very critical.

Prosaic and uninspirational though it might be, administrative rationalism could always sustain itself so long as it delivered the goods. […]