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Bureaucracy and its limits:accountability and rationality in highereducationMark Murphy aa Faculty of Education and Children's Services , University ofChester , Parkgate Road, Chester, CH1 4BJ, UKPublished online: 20 Oct 2009.

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British Journal of Sociology of EducationVol. 30, No. 6, November 2009, 683–695

ISSN 0142-5692 print/ISSN 1465-3346 online© 2009 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/01425690903235169http://www.informaworld.com

Bureaucracy and its limits: accountability and rationality inhigher education

Mark Murphy*

Faculty of Education and Children’s Services, University of Chester, Parkgate Road, Chester CH1 4BJ, UKTaylor and FrancisCBSE_A_423690.sgm(Received 13 February 2009; final version received 3 June 2009)10.1080/01425690903235169British Journal of Sociology of Education0142-5692 (print)/1465-3346 (online)Original Article2009Taylor & Francis306000000November 2009MarkMurphym.murphy@chester.ac.uk

Alongside debates concerning managerialism, marketisation and performativity,the question of accountability in higher education has come to the fore in recentcommentary. Discussion of the subject has tended to be divided into two distinctcamps. On the one hand, there are strong calls for more accountability to the publicpurse – a desire to witness more productive returns and efficiency on investmentin higher education. On the other, there are academics who rail against theoppressive, panoptican-like nature of the audit culture, emphasising the debilitatingeffects of quality assurance mechanisms on academic life. The paper suggests thatone way out of this impasse is to place the current accountability agenda – whatTravers refers to as the ‘new bureaucracy’ – in the context of Max Weber’s accountof bureaucracy and rationality. Habermas’ reconstructed version of Weber’s workis identified as a possible means of delineating the reaches and limits of modernbureaucratic accountability.

Keywords: bureaucracy; higher education; accountability; Habermas; rationality

Introduction

Over 100 years ago, the German Sociologist Max Weber published a number ofpapers that voiced concerns over the direction being taken by the German academicprofession at the time. Later published collectively as Max Weber on Universities(Weber 1974), these papers exhibit a strong disappointment at what he consideredGerman universities’ passive and subservient approach to the state. Shils, in his intro-duction to the collection (Weber 1974, 2), states that the key concern for Weber wasthe ‘complaisance of the German academic profession in its eager subservience to theauthority of the state and the erosion of its moral rectitude’. In one of the papers, ‘TheAlleged “Academic Freedom” of the German Universities’, Weber argued that univer-sity faculty concessions to government and market imperatives ‘take their revenge inthe ultimate weakening of the moral authority of the faculties’ (1974, 6).

This concern over the extent of government interference with academic freedom(Samier 2002, 33) was part of a more extensive exploration into the increasing bureau-cratisation of everyday life. The academic life, Weber perceived, was unable to escapethe fate of the bureaucratic iron cage of societal rationalisation – a fate that, in his famouswords, produced ‘specialists without spirit’ and ‘sensualists without heart’ (Weber1958, 182). The relentless march of bureaucratic rationality in capitalist societies was

*Email: m.murphy@chester.ac.uk

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sweeping everything before it, leaving organisations and cultural activities increasinglydevoid of freedom and empty of meaning.

Weber’s pessimistic take on rationalisation and the increasing instrumentalism ofsociety, has seen him referred to as a ‘liberal in despair’ (Mommsen 1984, 99). Sucha description could apply to any number of contemporary critics of higher educationpolicy. In particular, the encroachment of expansive quality assurance procedures –what Travers (2007) calls the ‘new bureaucracy’ – has seen a strong backlash fromcommentators who perceive a tangible corrosion of traditional academic values andwork practices (Milliken and Colohan 2004; Newby 2003; Salter and Tapper 2000).

This concern over the increasing prevalence of auditing, inspection and evalua-tion has as much to do with the rationale behind new forms of bureaucratisation as itdoes with the mechanisms of quality assurance themselves. At the heart of thedebate is the contemporary emphasis on the accountability of institutions, particu-larly towards the public purse. This fiscally-oriented version of accountabilityreaches its zenith with recent efforts to reconfigure the lecturer/student relationshipas one of producer/customer – a development that has inevitably been the subjectof some ire (Baldwin and James 2000; Carlson and Fleisher 2002; Lomas 2007;Sharrock 2000).

The strength of feeling evident in these various commentaries suggests a highlevel of perceived threat – a perception that fundamental aspects of the academicprofession – whether they be values, work practices, identities, forms of relation – arein danger of being lost, smothered under the weight of audit-inspired data. In particu-lar, concern revolves around the fragile nature of institutional values and academicfreedom in the face of marketisation, increasing demands for ‘relevance’, and declin-ing public sentiment.

Such concerns chime strongly with Weber’s diagnosis of the problems facing theGerman academy, particularly given the level of resentment towards what is perceivedto be a monolithic bureaucratic regime. If it is accepted, however, for a publicly-funded sector that a degree of accountability is inevitable, even desirable, this overlydefensive posture towards government ‘interference’ becomes unhelpful. Denial ofthe state’s legitimacy to some leverage over the functioning of higher education effec-tively precludes a more effective realignment between the different sets of impera-tives, a realignment that recognises the ‘democratic potential’ of accountability(Biesta 2004) as much as it does fiscal responsibility.

Any effective realignment, however, requires a level of agreement as to whichforms of accountability are more desirable than others, a task that would appear unen-viable given the current impasse. In an effort to circumvent this, the current papershifts the debate away from the increasingly retrenched views of the modern era, andplaces the ‘new’ bureaucratic thrust of accountability in the context of the ‘old’bureaucracy of state administration so reviled by Weber. Specifically, the currentpaper explores the way Weber arrived at his pessimistic view of bureaucracy, inparticular focusing on his conflation of modernisation with instrumental forms ofrationality. The paper then appropriates Jürgen Habermas’ reconstruction of Weber’stheoretical model – of special interest here is Habermas’ distinction between func-tional and dysfunctional bureaucracy, a distinction that the paper argues can be trans-ferred to current understandings of accountability. The paper uses this distinction tooffer a more subtle analysis of accountability, one that allows some space for thedevelopment of dialogue over the reaches and limits of the accountable university inmodern democracies.

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Accountability in context: public policy and higher education

Unwittingly or not, much academic commentary on public-sector professionssuggests that Weber’s iron cage has been realised, with areas such as health and socialwork apparently over-burdened by the rise of performance mechanisms and otheraudit measures, in the pursuit of a reformed accountability culture (Clarke andNewman 1997; Exworthy and Halford 1999; Scrambler and Britten 2001; Stecher andKirby 2004). This is also a familiar argument in the context of schooling (Gewirtz2003; Thrupp and Wilmott 2003; Walsh 2006), where the proliferation of auditmeasures has encouraged the likes of Hoyle and Wallace (2005, 100) to argue thatprofessional autonomy is being replaced by accountability as the core principle ofschool management.

The drive for accountability in higher education has also witnessed a backlash; inparticular, from those concerned with the emphasis on students as customers. One exam-ple of such antipathy is Carlson and Fleisher (2002, 1106), who argue that accountabilityvia a student customer approach in US higher education has forced a ‘watering downof college curricula’. Findlow, exploring the effects of audit-driven accountability inthe United Kingdom (2008, 313), suggests it might ‘inhibit the long-term success ofother aspects of the quality agenda, such as innovation’. According to Gibbs (2001,93), the ‘capitalisation’ of higher education culture is negatively impacting the staff–student relationship. Similarly, Naidoo and Jamieson (2005, 279) argue that consum-erism, rather than empowering students, may ‘threaten academic standards’.

These critical takes on accountability culture reflect deeper concerns over thenature of state control in higher education, and as a result find much in common withmore established debates in higher education, including ‘managerialism’ (Thrupp andWilmott 2003), definitions of ‘quality’ (Milliken and Colohan 2004), conflicts over‘professional identity’ (Beck and Young 2005) and the ‘audit culture’ (Strathearn2000). Another established debate concerns the relationship between performanceindicators and research outputs, with some arguing that bureaucratic initiatives suchas the Research Assessment Exercise in the United Kingdom have a deleteriousimpact on the culture and values of higher education. According to Wilmott (2003,132), the Research Assessment Exercise has ‘further eroded’ the fragile ethos of colle-giality, ‘deepening divisions between individual staff, departments and institutions’.

Strong echoes of Weberian despair can be found in these accounts, in particularhis assertion that, alongside the decline in academic freedom, the spread of bureau-cratic rationality results in a loss of meaning in academic life. It would be unjust,however, to view the current debate purely as one between the state and higher educa-tion professionals, or as Lomas puts it ‘between government’s views of customer-orientation and marketisation and academic views’ (2007, 42). There have been somevocal supporters within higher education of the new accountability. These includeEvans (1999), who wishes to call ‘academia to account’. Moore (2006, 19), in thecontext of US higher education, states that a call for increased accountability ‘rein-forces the view that we are providers of a public good, and our work is a means to anend, not an end in itself’. According to Wellman (2006, 116), the US public is ‘seri-ously questioning higher education in terms of quality, value for money spent andinstitutional values’.

Even in the heightened student/customer debate, there is evidence to suggest thatthe state/academic divide is not as clear cut as Lomas suggests. Scott, in a measuredbut critical essay on whether the customer is always right in higher education (1999,

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193), argues that educators ‘would do well to devote more attention to ascertainingjust what the expectations of their customers are’. Redding (2005, 415) makes thepoint that, while academics may ‘never agree on the true nature of customers withinhigher education’, academics should accept that ‘as students change, so must practi-tioners. As the customer base evolves, quality must also take on new meanings’(Redding 2005, 416).

While clearly debatable, these relatively positive attitudes towards governmentinfluence offer something of an antidote to what could be considered overbearingaccounts of government accountability agendas. As with critiques of higher educationagendas such as ‘marketisation’ (Gibbs 2001), ‘commercialisation’ (Willmott 2003)and even ‘commodification’ (Doti 2004), the level of antagonism is to some extentunderstandable, but does not contribute a great deal to debates concerning how univer-sities should function in contemporary societies. As Sharrock rightly stated in hisaccount of customers in higher education, ‘denunciations of management add little tothe debate about how universities might operate as large, complicated institutionspursuing a plurality of missions’ (2000, 156).

Positive contributions to the debate are required now more than ever, as the currentera presents higher education with ‘politically legitimate demands for accountability’(Zumeta 2001, 157). The legitimacy of claims to accountability are at least tacitlyacknowledged by some academics, and Morley arguably echoes the sentiments ofmany educators when she states that ‘I am not opposed to accountability nor doI embrace romantic notions of a golden age of autonomy and collegiality in academia’(2002, 126). It is essential that some form of workable balance is fostered between thedifferent sets of competing imperatives.

In this regard, Halstead was foresighted enough in 1994 to argue that any‘adequate account of educational accountability must … steer a middle groundbetween control and autonomy’ (1994, 174). This is reflected strongly in someaccounts of accountability in US higher education, with Burke (2005, 5) arguing thatthe ‘dual role’ of universities ‘demand both autonomy and accountability’, the dualrole being to ‘simultaneously serve and scrutinize the society that supports them’.Such tension, according to Nettles and Cole (2001, 216), is ‘healthy and desirable’ inmoderation, where it can ‘serve as a creative force for improvement and innovation’(Nettles and Cole 2001, 216).

In the current context, Burke (2005, 24) identifies the crux of the problem, whenhe states that the key is to clarify the ‘reaches and limits of accountability and todevelop effective and integrated systems of accountability’. However, clarifying thereaches and limits of accountability is a complex and challenging task – any suchendeavour must at some stage explore the theoretical reaches and limits of both thestate and higher education. The question then becomes one of how to sustain a criticalperspective of government bureaucracy, à la Weber, while simultaneously avoidingWeber’s pessimistic take on all forms of government control and influence. It issuggested that a potential ‘way out’ of the iron cage may be offered by Habermas’careful reconstruction of Weber’s theory of bureaucratisation – a description of whichis presented below.

Weber on bureaucratisation

While concerned about the bureaucratisation of German higher education, Weberacknowledged that the university, while relatively traditional and charismatic in

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character, was swayed by the broader context of societal rationalisation, ‘making itmore amenable to conspiring in its own transformation into an instrument of politicaland economic interests’ (Samier 2002, 33). Weber’s bleak and pessimistic outlookreflected his belief that institutions such as universities could not maintain their uniquevalue orientation in the face of increasing rationalisation. As Weber put it, the ‘ulti-mate, most sublime values have withdrawn from public life, either into the transcen-dental realm of mystical life or into the brotherhood of immediate personalrelationships between individuals’ (2004, 30).

This ‘devaluing’ of universities was one example of a broader process of socialfragmentation, a process Weber argued resulted in both a loss of meaning and a lossof freedom, the latter of which Weber attributes to the former (Horowitz 1994, 200).According to Weber, the roots of the loss of meaning lay in disenchantment with reli-gious explanations of the world. Famously, Weber argued that the protestant workethic, distilled in the Calvinist doctrine of a calling, providing a platform upon whichcapitalism could flourish in the West. Paradoxically, this very success ushered in adisenchantment, allowing the flourishing of autonomous cultural spheres of value.This transformation provided the necessary condition for the institutionalisation ofdifferentiated systems of knowledge, via the establishment of the scientific enterprise,the institutionalisation of law and the institutionalisation of artistic endeavour.

It is the double-edged nature of this rationalisation process, however, to whichWeber attributed the loss of meaning. The disenchantment with religious worldviews,while ushering in the differentiation of cultural value spheres and allowing for thedevelopment of modern structures of consciousness, also meant that the meaning-giving unity of these religious world-views lost its legitimacy, thereby falling apart.As a result, these spheres of life drift ‘into the tensions with one another which remainhidden in the originally naïve relation to the external world’ (Weber 1958, 328).

According to Weber, the value rationality generated by the Protestant ethic couldnot hold its ground in the light of the development of sub-systems of purposive ratio-nal action (state administration and the market). The laws governing capitalist expan-sion and the widening of state power (through bureaucratisation) helped to expandthese sub-systems, and as a result, sounded the death-knell for the value-rationalgrounding of purposive-rational action in modern society. In this disconnection ofpurposive-rational action from a grounding in value rationality, Weber depicts a para-dox in the process of societal rationalisation. Hand in hand with the development ofthe highest form of societal rationalisation (as in the development of sub-systems ofpurposive-rational action) comes the loss of freedom that arises when these sub-systems detach themselves from their value-rational grounding.

According to Weber, the loss of meaning owes its origin to the development ofindependent cultural value spheres. The loss of freedom, on the other hand, owes itsbeginnings to societal, rather than cultural, rationalisation. In summary, the loss offreedom entails the subsumption of individuals under the bureaucratisation of organi-sations central to the economy and the state (i.e. the Iron Cage). These bureaucraticorganisations comprise the autonomous sub-systems of purposive-rational action.This process of bureaucratisation provides the key to understanding both societalrationalisation, and the accompanying loss of freedom.

The question arises, however, as to why this development signifies a loss of free-dom. What is being lost exactly? The key issue for Weber is the shift from a purposiverationality grounded in values to one without roots. The bureaucratisation of economicand administrative activities means that the purposive rationality of actions has to be

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secured separately from the values of individuals. The function of coordinating andregulating actions is assumed by the organisations themselves. This ‘liberating’ ofsubjectivity from a grounding in moral–practical rationality is at the heart of Weber’sjuxtaposition of ‘specialists without spirit’ and ‘sensualists without heart’. The loss offreedom therefore derives from the inability of individuals to orient themselves tovalues due to the domination of means-ends rationality. Once the ‘rug’ of value ratio-nality has been pulled, people are stuck on a never-ending carousel of instrumental-ism, effectively doomed to live in a bureaucratically regulated world.

Habermas on Weber and rationality

Such talk of dominating rationalities inevitably invokes memories of the FrankfurtSchool of Critical Theory, in particular the way Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer(1972) argue that the dialectic of enlightenment resulted in a ‘totally administered’world. This world was one in which citizens suffer a loss of freedom at the hand of amerciless means-end rationality – the iron cage metaphor unsurprisingly being centralto the early Frankurt School’s despair (Lavine 2000, 141).

The conclusions of both Weber and the Frankfurt School were pessimistic ones.The work of Jürgen Habermas, a later incarnation of the Frankfurt School, however,endeavoured – most notably in The Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas1984, 1987) – to reconstruct the ideas of the above-mentioned theorists in order toprovide what he considers to be a more effective ‘diagnosis of the times’.

In this regard, and as with the work of Adorno and Horkheimer, Habermas reliesheavily on Weber’s analysis of societal rationalisation and its troubling side-effects.Indeed, Habermas has argued that ‘neither of the principal components of Weber’sdiagnosis of the times has become any less relevant … since he formulated them’(1987, 301). At the same time, however, he criticises Weber for equating capitalistmodernisation with societal rationalisation in general. Key to this critique is the factthat Weber was guided by the restricted idea of purposive rationality, a criticism healso levels at Adorno and Horkheimer.

According to Habermas, Weber’s reliance on the model of the purposive-rationalactor leads Weber to provide an inaccurate diagnosis of the times. In order topresent what Habermas considers to be a more effective diagnosis, it is necessary toprovide a substantial restructuring of Weber’s theory. This re-structuring was basedon two grounds: first, Weber emphasised the idea of purposive rationality to theexclusion of other forms of rationality; and second, he confused action theoretic andsystem theoretic concepts. To counter the first problem, Habermas proposes theintroduction of the concept of communicative rationality ‘tailored to the lifeworldconcept of society and to the developmental perspective of lifeworld structures’(Habermas 1987, 305).

In relation to the second problem he identified in Weber’s explanation, Habermasproposes a two-level concept of society, which would allow for both an action-theoretic and a systems-theoretic analysis of the process of societal rationalisation.Here, he introduces the concepts of the lifeworld – denoting the background consen-sus of everyday lives, the vast stock of taken-for-granted definitions and understand-ings of the world that provide coherence and direction to people’s lives (Welton 1995,141) – and the system – that aspect of society where political and market imperativestake precedence; that is, the state administrative apparatus (steered by power) and theeconomy (steered by money). This two-level concept of society allows Habermas to

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examine the ‘growing autonomy of systematically integrated action contexts overagainst the socially integrated lifeworld’ (1987, 305).

Having re-structured Weber in this way, Habermas could then tackle the core issueat the heart of Weber’s theory – bureaucratisation. According to Weber, bureaucrati-sation signified the institutionalisation of purposive-rational action. Habermas,however, argues that bureaucratisation ‘should be regarded as the sign of a new levelof system differentiation’ (1987, 307). It is the anchoring of the steering mechanismsof the economy and the state – money and power, respectively – in the structures ofthe lifeworld that signifies bureaucratisation for Habermas.

Habermas clarifies this bureaucratisation thesis in terms of a clash between socialand system integration. This distinction, greatly influenced by the classic work ofDavid Lockwood (1964), represents the co-existence of two sets of relationships, onebetween actors and one between parts of the system. For Habermas, the clash betweenthese sets of integrative relations has implications for the loss of freedom thesis:

This constitution of action contexts that are no longer socially integrated means thatsocial relations are separated off from the identities of the actors involved. The objec-tive meaning of a functionally stabilized nexus of action can no longer be brought intothe intersubjective context of relevance of subjectively meaningful action. At the sametime, it makes itself felt as a causality of fate in the experiences and sufferings of actors.(1987, 311)

Weber interpreted the trend towards bureaucratisation in action-theoretic terms. Forhim, the paradox of societal rationality lay in the relations between two different typesof action orientations; that is, value-rational action and purposive-rational actionorientations. Habermas, however, argues that bureaucratisation and the paradoxes thatstem from it should instead be understood in terms of a relation between two differenttypes of societal integration, namely social and system integration.

According to Habermas, then, phenomena related to the loss of freedom thesisnow count, in the light of his reformulation of Weber’s thesis, as ‘effects of the uncou-pling of system and lifeworld’ (Habermas 1987, 318). Because the media of moneyand power function independently of language, they are not tied to the communicativestructures of the lifeworld, which are dependent on language as the means to reachingunderstanding. As a result, these media allow the uncoupling of formally organiseddomains of action from the structures of the lifeworld, which in turn unleash theirfunctionalist reason of system maintenance onto the lifeworld structures. It is thispathological side-effect of societal rationalisation that Habermas refers to as the ‘colo-nization of the lifeworld’.

Significantly however, Habermas qualifies this idea by indicating (1987, 318) thatbureaucratisation, in the shape of separate formal domains of action, has to be seen asa ‘normal’ component of modernisation processes. Because of this belief, Habermasmust make a distinction between functional (in the context of modernisation) anddysfunctional forms of bureaucratisation; in other words, he must be able to distin-guish the normal mediatisation of the lifeworld from the pathological colonisation ofthe lifeworld. According to Habermas, it is only when the economic and politicalsystem, via the media of money and power, attempt to reify the symbolic structures ofthe lifeworld that pathologies arise.

Only domains of action that fulfil economic and political functions can be convertedover to steering media. The latter fail to work in domains of cultural reproduction, social

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integration, and socialisation; they cannot replace the action-coordinating mechanism ofthese functions. Unlike the material reproduction of the lifeworld, its symbolic repro-duction cannot be transposed onto foundations of system integration without pathologi-cal side-effects. (Habermas 1987, 322-323)

It is this ‘systematically induced reification’ (Habermas 1987, 327) of the symbolicstructures of the lifeworld that Habermas views as generating a loss of freedom.Although Habermas does not provide a precise clarification of what exactly is beinglost, freedom wise, it can be deduced that he is referring to the loss of the ability toorient oneself to processes of reaching understanding. Putting it another way, the free-dom to act communicatively is under threat from systemic imperatives, which, via themedia of money and power, reify those structures of the lifeworld that are based oncommunicative action. Habermas (1987, 326) terms this reification of everydaycommunicative practice a ‘one-sided rationalisation’, a restricted rationality usheredin by the process of capitalist modernisation, a process with origins in ‘the growingautonomy of media-steered subsystems, which not only get objectified into a norm-free sociality beyond the horizon of the lifeworld, but whose imperatives also pene-trate into the core domains of the lifeworld’ (1987, 327).

Weber equated capitalist modernisation and its pathological side-effects with theprocess of rationalisation in general. Habermas (1987, 330) argues, however, thatthe process of rationalisation, as identified in the secularisation of worldviews and thestructural differentiation of society, does not have ‘unavoidable side-effects per se’.Of course, by adopting this stance, Habermas takes a much different route from notjust Weber, but also from Marx, Horkheimer and Adorno. Rationalisation, accordingto Habermas, is not inherently paradoxical; nor does it take the form of a reconcilia-tion between nature and spirit; and nor is it necessarily a process of reification.Rationalisation, for Habermas, is both the secularisation of worldviews (the rationali-sation of the lifeworld) and the structural differentiation of society (the uncouplingof system and lifeworld), but where both purposive-rationality and communicative-rationality are given equal weight. The process of capitalist modernisation, however,has utilised one type of rationality, namely purposive-rationality, at the expense of arationality based on an orientation to mutual understanding. In the following quote,Habermas clarifies his loss of freedom thesis, and at the same time distinguishes histheory of capitalist modernisation and his theory of rationalisation:

It is not the uncoupling of media-steered subsystems and of their organizational formsfrom the lifeworld that leads to the one-sided rationalization or reification of everydaycommunicative practice, but only the penetration of forms of economic and administra-tive rationality into domains of action that resist being converted over to the media ofmoney and power because they are specialized in cultural transmission, social integra-tion, and child rearing, and remain dependent on mutual understanding as a mechanismfor coordinating action. (1987, 330)

With his reformulation of Weber’s theory, then, Habermas liberates reason from, asLavine puts it (2000, 141), the ‘pessimism of Weber’s exclusive monological instru-mental rationality and from the darker pessimism of Horkheimer and Adorno’.Bureaucratic regimes, whether ‘old’ or ‘new’, do not necessarily lead to a loss of insti-tutional freedom or meaning; rather, these occur only when the state or the marketoverstep their boundaries. In this way, Habermas can be seen to provide an alternativeto critiques of public policy that can only take the shape of ‘a condemnation of thepresent, with appropriate political conclusions being drawn’ (Schnadelbach 1991, 20).

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Discussion: bureaucracy and its limits

In terms of the present discussion on the limits to bureaucracy, the main significanceof this liberated reason is that it also liberates notions of ‘freedom’ and ‘meaning’from bureaucratic organisation. This disconnection allows for a clearer distinction tobe made between institutional autonomy and control, two forms of organisation thatin Weber’s theory, and arguably in current debates, have become conflated. Thisdistinction, when applied to the new bureaucracy of accountability, suggests a numberof important implications regarding the governing of higher education.

The first implication is the need to develop awareness of the reaches and limits ofbureaucratic accountability. It is arguably the case that, using Blaug’s (1995) phrase,academics engage in dual-aspect activity; that is, they operate at both the instrumentaland communicative levels. It could also be argued that the university straddles theboundary between lifeworld and system, inhabiting the space where the ethics of careand accountability are most likely to come into contact/conflict. Bolan (1999, 82)makes the useful point that, while the ‘linguistic, communicative base of all rational-isation processes’ needs to be recognised, modern public-sector management requiresthe fusion of both instrumental and communicative rationality ‘in ways that recognisethe dynamic processes of change occurring within each while being sensitive to thecontradictory and often conflicted intermixing of each’ (Bolan 1999, 81).

In publicly-funded sectors, it is difficult to deny that a degree of accountability isinevitable, even desirable. Acceptance of such an idea is one reason why public-sectorreforms have often been met with ambiguous, even confused responses from profes-sionals themselves, including academics. Such responses beg the question: what arethe limits to the new bureaucracy of accountability? This question leads to anotherpossible implication of the current study, which relates to the impact of this newbureaucracy on arguably the core professional relationship at the heart of highereducation – that between students and academics. It could be argued that the newbureaucracy encounters, or should encounter, its own functional limits in the existenceof this core relation.

While much of the literature on professionalism places emphasis on core values,core work practices or core identities, and how they are affected by marketisation andcommercialisation, it might just be the case that the ‘fault line’ of accountability – inHabermasian terms, where system imperatives overstep their boundaries – can befound existing between the key people in this professional relationship, a relationshipthat by its nature is at least partially embedded in lifeworld values and practices ofintersubjectivity, mutual understanding and recognition. If that is the case, the increas-ingly strident calls for replacing this traditional relationship with the notion of‘customer’ might need to be more strongly resisted than is currently the case.

Combining these implications, it becomes possible to see how Habermas’ take onWeber’s iron cage can offer criticisms of both the proponents and detractors ofaccountability in higher education. For those who emphasise value for money, thedevelopment of a permanent auditing and performativity culture, and university as ameans to an end, Habermas’ Weberian-inspired diagnosis offers a warning that limitsto power are there for a reason; any destruction of these boundaries can only come ata cost, one that is not necessarily measurable, but potentially highly damaging.

For those who view accountability in education as a monolithic surveillanceregime, an unwelcome and overbearing distraction from core university activity,Habermas’ distinction between forms of bureaucratisation offers an interesting and

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possibly awkward parallel to the accountability debate. Notions of surveillance andself-auditing individuals lose some of their attraction when placed alongside a moremeasured account of management and the use of legitimate control mechanisms. It isdifficult to see how some form of workable accountability mechanism could beconstructed from such a one-sided view of state management.

In contrast, Habermas’ theory of a one-sided off kilter rationalisation potentiallyoffers a normative grounding upon which to deliver a more measured critique ofaccountability. Just as significantly for our current discussion, the double-layerednotion of bureaucracy allows the debate over accountability a potential way out of thecurrent impasse, validating Burke’s call for a middle ground between autonomy andaccountability, or ‘service without subservience’ (2005, 5). It also parallels, to somedegree, du Gay’s (2005) praise for bureaucratic forms of management and administra-tion. Kallinikos, in a review of du Gay’s work, makes the similar claim to the one putforward, when he states that, ‘rather than being a vice, the neutral, often negativelyviewed, proceduralism of the bureau constitutes an indispensable means to a re-valuedaccountability’ (Kallinikos 2006, 617). While space does not permit a more detaileddiscussion of the topic, this middle ground may also offer opportunities to balance thecompeting demands when it comes to research output, alongside issues concerningstaff–student engagement. In either case, the key issue here is the manner in whichbureaucracy can and should operate in both accountable and social responsive ways.

The work of Habermas, it must be said, has not been without its detractors. Oneissue that has been viewed as problematic is the apparent inability of Habermas’theory to account for action at the systemic level. Some authors have commentedcritically on Habermas’ insistence on a norm-free sociality in the sub-systems, withHorowitz (1998, 9) arguing that the media of money and power are ‘anchored in a life-world saturated with the norms appropriate to their existence’. And McCarthy (1991,125) argues that, while it might be correct to characterise the market as ‘norm-free’,given its functional integration of individual decisions on the basis of profit utility, itis questionable whether it provides an adequate description of political life, with itsin-built capacity for ideological machinations. On this note, Carr and Hartnett providean excellent account of the way in which British education was transformed via thenew right offensive of the Thatcher years, resulting in, amongst numerous other trou-blesome outcomes, the replacement of traditional educational policy-making with ‘anattempt to portray all educational issues as technical issues and to reduce consultationto a public relations exercise’ (Carr and Hartnett 1996, 173).

In contrast, Weber’s analysis of bureaucratic procedures was very much focusedon the actions of Germany’s civil servants, whom he believed had specific interests oftheir own. They were also the object, according to Scott (2000), of Weber’s ‘some-times barely controlled contempt’. Special mention should also be made of thosegroups of individuals that, in Broadbent and Loughlin’s words (1998, 407), operate asthe ‘personification’ of steering media at the institutional level, acting as ‘absorbers’of system colonising tendencies. While they were referring specifically to headteach-ers and general practitioners in the context of schools and the National Health Service,respectively, a similar case could be made for differentiated approaches to bureau-cracy and colonisation at the university level.

More nuanced approaches to action such as these arguably find themselvesabstracted out of Habermas’ complex theory, and Weber’s critique of bureaucraticpersonification may be more viable given his emphasis on action-theoretic concepts.Without immersing the current debate even further into methodological debates in

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social theory, Harrington (2000, 100) might be correct to suggest that Habermas andWeber offer ‘complementary perspectives in which the strengths and weaknesses ofthe one can be productively played out against the other’. Whether or not this is thecase, the parallels between the Weber/Habermas debate over bureaucratic control andthe current concern with accountability are illuminating. Apart from anything else, theknowledge that concerns over academic freedom are nothing new and not exclusiveto modern, neo-liberal forms of governance should give pause for thought, especiallygiven the common association between the marketisation of education and Thatcherist/New Labour policy. This suggests that the development of an accountability cultureis only the latest way in which the tension between higher education and the state hasplayed itself out. While the question of autonomy versus control is certainly a strongfocus of contemporary debate, it is still the same question asked by Weber over 100years ago. And although he may have been overly pessimistic about the future ofuniversities to control their affairs in the face of bureaucracy, the fact that he asked thequestion in the first place was a significant event in itself. And in reconstructingnotions of bureaucracy around competing rationalities, Habermas might just offer aviable solution to this question.

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