Weberian bureaucracy and the persistence of unsustainability: the challenge of repurposing public administration - the experience of Wales

The ethic set out in the Brundtland Report called for united effort to govern for sustainable development, including recognising socio-ecological linkages, acknowledging uncertainty, rethinking institutional responsibilities, and engaging business, educators, and civil society in addressing the underlying drivers of unsustainability. In academic writing on the limited progress of this ethic, there has been little discussion of the structure, practice and narratives of public bureaucracy as a potential constraining factor. Drawing on practitioner experience in working with novel sustainable development legislation in Wales, UK, the limiting characteristics of bureaucratic practice and narratives are set out alongside their implications for governance. The present expressions of Weberian bureaucracy sustain a controlling and bounded rationality based in a narrow efficiency. This cannot recognise the needs of governing for sustainable development and is ill-equipped in the face of contemporary attacks on knowledge and on representative democracy. A detailed unpicking of these bureaucratic drivers of unsustainability can help to illustrate how the nature of bureaucratic governance needs to change to meet modern challenges.