accountability and bureaucracy

A good question from an amusing and insightful essay.

There can be bureaucracy without accountability, but can there be accountability without bureaucracy?

An important question way beyond the Higher Ed community it's written from. It's a principalities and powers sort of question, and so has interested me. Is bureaucracy a necessary evil or can it be a kind of nervous system? And what distinguishes the two cases? I have to say I have come across instances of benign bureaucracy and, off the top of my head, would say that they have been to do with putting welfare of people first and balancing the needs of users and workers and have been marked by a humane approach rather than the petty form-filling jobsworth attitude. So I would add bureaucracy to my list of principalities, theologically understood to be part of God's purposes for good but capable of fallen behaviours.
Jonathan Wolff on accountability and bureaucracy | comment | EducationGuardian.co.uk