The Political Life of Documents: Notes on bureaucrats, politics and paper

Abstract

Introduction:

The article addresses a theme still scarcely debated within studies on bureaucracy and public policy: documents as material artifacts and their effects on bureaucrats, public policies, and politics within the State. It aims to promote a debate on the importance of documents as instruments of public action, as well as to propose a new classification for a subtype of middle-level bureaucrats, labeled back-office bureaucrats.

Materials and Methods:

The research stems from an ethnography on documentation practices that was undertaken during three years in which both authors took park on a wide-scope administrative reform on documentation practices at São Paulo’s City Hall. As means of information gathering, it involved participant observation, multiple interviews and a selection of legislation and administrative case files.

Results:

From this research, we have found that the interaction between the time of politics - which relates to the interactions between incumbent, government officials, bureaucracies and civil society – and the time of paperwork – which is related to the set of rules that establishes modes of record-keeping for bureaucratic activities, degrees of mandatoriness for such activities, and disciplinary control – on back-office bureaucrats is decisive to understanding their behavior, which is aimed at mitigating professional risks. Secondly, we have observed that the set of practices promoted by these bureaucrats reflects a mobilization of a particular set of properties that documents carry within the broader context of bureaucracy: the production of truth, the transposition of old solutions into new contexts and the (lack of) evidence of a political deal.

Discussion:

As a result of these findings, we point to three implications. The first one, the dynamics of bureaucratic action can help explains the tendency for inertia within bureaucracies and public policies, highlighting the need for extensive negotiations and the set of new landmarks of documentation so that innovative projects can succeed within bureaucracies. The second one, the promotion of documentation practices may produce further opacity, as opposed to what open data policies might expect. Finally, this approach points to new issues for the debates of bureaucratic capacities and coordination. When the State is regarded not just from the individual action of its agents and the intertwining of personal networks, but also from the ways the materiality of instruments of action within them can influence said relations, the challenges of political leadership, as well as the task of understanding it, become more complex.

Keywords:
documents; middle-level bureaucrats; bureaucracy; public policy; instrumentation of public action