Convergence Theory Revisited: Kafkaesque Global Bureaucracies of Our Times with an Example of a Tool for Measuring whether Approaches to Accountability are Real or Sham
Journal Title: Social Evolution & History - Year 2014, Vol 13, Issue 1
Abstract
This article briefly re-examines the theories and hypotheses about the comparative trajectories of industrial administrative bureaucratic systems through the end of the Cold War (convergence, diffusion, co-dependency, and other kinds of social evolution), reviews system comparisons and measures that are available to test these theories of evolution and change, offers a form of evidence that anthropologists and social scientists can collect to test processes in these complex social systems in ways that other social scientists are unable (or unwilling) to test, and offers an example of an indicator that can objectively standardize such data and that can be used to test the quality of oversight and accountability of the systems of the administrative state. The piece then offers some speculations – a short cultural critique as a result of observa-tions – about whether human societies are caught in inflexible bureaucratic systems that are unable to plan for the future and that will continue to crash and re-emerge in the same forms, along with some suggestions for creating a more desirable human future.
Authors and Affiliations
Brooks Duncan
Keywords
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