Abstract:

In response to sweeping critiques of bureaucracy in Western intellectual discourse, the neo-Weberian tradition has adopted a global perspective to examine how bureaucratic institutions take shape across diverse institutional and cultural contexts. Seeking to recover the constructive potential of bureaucracy, this body of work reconsiders Weber's canonical features and explores their pragmatic and normative adaptations. Within this framework, particular attention has been paid to two themes—personal ties and adaptive rule-bending—both of which hold significant relevance for governance practices in China. This article traces the historical origins of the neo-Weberian research, reviews representative empirical studies centered on these two elements, and excavates the theoretical assumptions and normative commitments that underpin them. I argue that the so-called "revival of bureaucracy" is, at its core, a search for how value rationality might be re-integrated into systems increasingly dominated by formal rationality. The use of personal ties or adaptive rule-bending is treated as a strategic means through which morally conscious bureaucrats might absorb, recalibrate, and ultimately incorporate anti-bureaucratic elements into a rationalized administrative order. Yet this technocratic vision of bureaucratic moral agency rests on a universalizing assumption: that commitment to the public sphere, distinct from private interests, constitutes the sole legitimate foundation of bureaucratic ethics. This assumption overlooks the plural moral orders embedded in distinct institutional and historical contexts and forecloses the possibility of alternative sources of organizational legitimacy beyond the bureaucratic form itself. While the neo-Weberian framework offers valuable reparative insights, it remains confined by the limits of its own theoretical imagination. For scholars of Chinese governance, this calls for a renewed effort to locate moral and institutional foundations for bureaucracy that are rooted in indigenous historical experience and ethical traditions.

Key words: bureaucracy, neo-Weberianism, personal ties, adaptive rule-bending, organization studies