The organization of government has been heavily influenced by the ideas of Max Weber about bureaucratic organizations. Political leaders can use bureaucracies as instruments to develop and implement policies. These instruments should - according to the design principles of Max Weber - obey their principals and thus civil servants are tied to the will of democratically elected leaders. Government bureaucracies, therefore, have centralized structures and are characterized by formalization in order to promote accountability. The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) raises questions concerning the interference of characteristics- of ICTs with parameters of bureaucracies. Scheepers (1991) argues that the introduction of ICT in governmental agencies leads to bureaucratization (and thus to increased formalization and centralization). However, there is also evidence that the use of ICTs can weaken government bureaucracies in terms of their original purposes, Frissen (1996) indicates that the use of ICTs can transform government bureaucracies through processes of horizontalization and fragmentation.
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