Ever since “bureaucracies” have been talked about, state administration has been criticized for being cumbersome, overbearing or non-transparent. However, public administrations are not simply an evil to be remedied, an encroachment to be fended off: according to their mandate, administrations first and foremost create legal security. They are official bodies whose decisions are binding throughout the state and whose decisions are based on a particular rationality: on the basis of a complex paperwork of notes or reports, protocols or files. Calls for reforms of state administration under the banner of “de-bureaucratization”, streamlining and greater efficiency usually ignore one thing: the downside of shrinking public bureaucracies is almost always the proliferation of their administrative procedures beyond the organization. The project understands such administrative practices, which were previously still entrusted to civil servants in a sovereign mandate, but are now increasingly in the hands of self-governing citizens, as “bureaugraphies”. Their proliferation has led to a surge in control and micromanagement in the social and private spheres, as the recent dismantling of US administrative authorities shows, which threatens to be flanked by the installation of privately run companies endowed with parastatal authority. In the end, the project, which examines the administrative cultures of Austria, Switzerland and the Federal Republic of Germany from a historical perspective, revolves around a paradox: the taming of “bureaucratic” routines leads to the proliferation of “bureaucratic” procedures on a political, technical and aesthetic level.
