Building a state apparatus with sufficient power to defend itself against other states and planning an increasingly complex society compel the centralization of the state, in the managerial perspective. To gain greater control over the society, the central state must achieve dominance over its subnational units. To offset the forces of fragmentation imposed by dominant interest groups and their bureaucratic allies within the state, power must increasingly move out of the parliamentary arena into the hands of the executive. Rationalization requires centralization.

Whether the bureaucratic state is capable of controlling democratic participation and of managing the capitalist economy, while simultaneously maintaining internal rationality, is a central issue. How such a state has emerged and the conditions for its control by political, administrative, and economic elites are also central problems within the managerial world view. Class conflicts and crises of legitimacy are seen as problems to be managed by the appropriate elite strategies, not as way stations on the path to modernization or as endemic features of capitalism. The “society” remains indistinct, either as a set of external constraints or as “problems” defined by elites.

The historical establishment of bureaucratic states: the societal level

The establishing of centralized bureaucratic states controlling a continuous territory and monopolizing the means of coercion within it provided their political and administrative elites with control over resources and therefore considerable autonomy.