Abstract
This research’s central focus is the regulation of top officials in pre-modern administration of the Dutch Republic. These officials had more say in how they performed their duties than they would in modern, bureaucratic, organisational embedding. Whether this meant that civil servants were completely free to do their work according
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to their own views remains to be seen. This historic-administrative study therefore focuses on the way in which officials’ work was regulated. In order to answer this question, two models of regulation are used: bureaucratic and professional. Bureaucratic regulation is based on a fixed set of rules, procedures, and supervisory relationship, on the basis of which the work within an organisation is standardised. Professional regulation, on the other hand, depends on regulation carried out by the professionals themselves. Together, they construct and uphold rules and standards considered important in their line of work. In the book, both mechanisms will be expanded upon, in addition to the way in which they relate to each other. Based on an analysis of primary and secondary sources, this study shows that pre-modern top officials were regulated both bureaucratically and professionally. Bureaucratic regulation has mainly to do with the way the organisation was structured. Professional regulation played an important role in the knowledge, skill, and experience that was developed by top officials according to ever recurring patterns. This way, the work was not only regulated through bureaucratic mechanisms, the collective of officials and administrators also regulated the work by means of standardised training and careers. Their background and, with that, their upbringing will also have played a part. There are also certain differences in how the functions involved in this study were regulated. The work of the sheriff (Dutch: schout) was hardly bureaucratically regulated, in contrast to the work of the Grand Pensionary (Dutch: raadpensionaris) and other top positions in the Dutch Republic. Inspired by the analysis of pre-modern administration we end this book with an eye on modern public administration. Herein we will focus on the bureaucracy paradox, with which we mean a bureaucratic organisation where civil servants are selected on the basis of knowledge and skill, while discretionary power, which can optimise the use of this knowledge and skill, is reduced as much as possible through procedures and standards. The conclusion of this book draws the picture of an even balance of bureaucratic and professional regulation of the work of officials in order to be able to optimise knowledge and skill, serving the public interest. This indicates a framework of competencies on the one hand, and professional baggage, meaning education, on the other. In this fashion, embedded constraints offer a possible detour from the bureaucracy paradox.
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