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IN THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM, Max Weber warned that the rationalist spirit ushered in by asceticism had achieved a momentum of its own and that, under capitalism, the rationalist order had become an iron cage in which humanity was, save for the possibility of prophetic revival, imprisoned “perhaps until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt”(Weber 1952, 181–82). In his essay on bureaucracy, Weber returned to this theme, contending that bureaucracy, the rational spirit’s organizational manifestation, was so efficient and powerful a means of controlling men and women that, once established, the momentum of bureaucratization was irreversible (Weber 1968).

The imagery of the iron cage has haunted students of society as the tempo of bureaucratization has quickened. But while bureaucracy has spread continuously in the eighty years since Weber wrote, we suggest that the …