SJPG

VOLUME 40
NUMBER 1
JUNE 2017

Bureaucrats in Bangladesh Public

Policy Process: Are they only Power
Actors or Transformational Leaders
too?
Syeda Lasna Kabir and Mahjabin Sultana Mitul

Abstract
In the study of public policy and development, analysis of bureaucrat’s role is the most discussed
notion. It helps to reveal the dynamics of public policy process. This paper aims to lay out the
discourse about the forces indulging them to be dominant in public policy process in Bangladesh
as well as their transactional leadership, eroding the development initiatives. This study is based
on secondary source and done by content analysis method, which has found bureaucrats as influ-
ential power actor since the beginning of British rule over this land. It also implies the necessity of
making bureaucrats more capable as they are one of the prime pressure groups in public policy
dialogue.

Keywords
Bureaucrats, dominant power actor, public policy, transactional leadership, transformational
leadership

Introduction
In the complex diluted interactive public policy making process, bureaucracy is
one of the important actors playing significant role in Bangladesh. To understand
the dynamics of the policy process in Bangladesh, it is imperious to understand
the role of bureaucrats as power actors while it is more indispensable to deter-
mine the genre of their role whether transactional or transformational in attrib-

Corresponding Author
Syeda Lasna Kabir Email: lasnakabir@gmail.com
2 Bureaucrats in Bangladesh Public Policy Process
ute. Since they have a lion’s share in the entire leadership network in governance,
citizens need to realize the know-do gap regarding the critical role of bureaucrats
as power actors in the decision-making process. Different scholars have vividly
opined that the bureaucrats vis-a-vis the politicians play an elite, domineering
role in the governance system. In particular, the elected leaders began to rely
more and more on senior civil servants for advice on important issues. Public
servants in key positions in the secretariat and public enterprises replaced political
appointees and they began to handle the bulk of the decisions made (Ahmed,
1980). Another thing has been added to the tally, poor performance of the bu-
reaucrats. Taiabur (2002) stated the bureaucracy in Bangladesh is often alleged
with inefficiency, corruption, nepotism, lack of accountability and an assortment
of other ailments. It is sometimes portrayed as a hindrance to development. The
claim is often made that bureaucratic ills are associated with attitudes and men-
tality among the bureaucrats (Khan and Zafarullah cited in Jamil, 1998).Their
rising trend of obtaining power in policy making in Bangladesh joggles them to
the center of public policy discussions yet stuck in conventional approach of per-
formance. This paper aims to present the rationale of bureaucrats being more
transformational since they are leading policy formulation and implementation in
Bangladesh. The paper consists of two sections. First section including the intro-
duction deals with theoretical and conceptual ideas, method of inquiry and scope
of the study. The second section critically elaborates the findings, i.e. role of bu-
reaucrats as power actors in public policy-making process in Bangladesh.

The literature review

This paper articulates three main concepts including public policy process, bu-
reaucrats as policy actors and their mode of operation as policy actors (whether
influential policy actors or transformative influential policy actors) in Bangladesh.
Anderson (1975) states “when a government takes a decision or chooses a course
of action in order to solve a social problem and adopts a specific strategy for its
planning and implementation, it is known as public policy”. He also argues that
“the term ‘policy’ is used to designate the behavior of some actors (e.g., an official,
a group, a government agency) or set of actors in a given area of activity” (Ander-
son, 1975). Easton’s (1965) ‘Political System Model’ views the policy process as a
‘political system’ responding to demands arising from its environment. It is effec-
tive to explain the public policy process, containing both environmental compo-
nents - actors and factors of public policy process and helpful to identify the con-
tinuous flow of influences or outputs from the political system into or through the
environments. Though Easton’s ‘Political System Model’ lacks the explanation of
 South Asian Journal of Policy and Governance 3
the power struggles within the policy process, bureaucratic politics approach in-
corporated in ‘state-centered model’ is more pertinent to analyze the power
struggles within the public policy process in emerging countries like Bangladesh.
In sooth to say, this model focuses on the understanding of intra-governmental
bargaining, conflict and decision-making, which illuminates the activities of deci-
sion makers. According to this approach, policy maker’s position is considered as
the prime determinant of policy decisions. Bureaucrats compete over a preferred
solution through their positions, which in turn is determined by hierarchy, access
to information, access to the decision makers. The autonomy of decision makers
is constrained by the power and bargaining skills of other bureaucrats, by their
own hierarchical position of power, their political skill and the bureaucratic and
personal resources available (Osman, 2005). Thus, it covers first two concepts of
public policy process and bureaucrats as policy actors but the third concept is
about the role of bureaucrats in policy process - are they only influential or trans-
formational influential actors. It drives inevitably the idea of transformational and
transactional leadership approaches.
James Mac Gregor Burns (1978) first introduced the concept of transforming
leadership in his descriptive research on political leaders, but this term transfor-
mational leadership has gained wide popularity among leadership researchers
during the past decade (Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996), because of its
qualitatively different approach to motivate followers as compared with other
leadership styles (Gardner & Avolio, 1998; Howell & Avolio, 1993; Yammarino,
Spangler, & Bass, 1993). According to Burns, transforming leadership is a process
in which "leaders and followers help each other to advance to a higher level of
morale and motivation". He also established two concepts: "transforming leader-
ship" and "transactional leadership". He noted that the transforming approach
creates significant change in the life of people and organizations. It redesigns
perceptions and values, and changes expectations and aspirations of employees.
Unlike in the transactional approach, it is not based on a "give and take" relation-
ship, but on the leader's personality, traits and ability to make a change through
example, articulation of an energizing vision and challenging goals. Transforming
leaders are idealized in the sense that they are a moral exemplar of working to-
wards the benefit of the team, organization and/or community. Burns theorized
that transforming and transactional leadership were mutually exclusive styles.
Transactional leaders usually do not strive for cultural change in the organization
but they work in the existing culture while transformational leaders can try to
change organizational culture (Burns, 1978).
4 Bureaucrats in Bangladesh Public Policy Process
Theoretical framework
The ‘Principle-Centered Leadership (PCL)’ paradigm
The ‘Principle-Centered Leadership (PCL)’ paradigm is indispensable in the
world of leadership theory to explain the concepts of transactional and transfor-
mational leadership styles. Stephen Richards Covey (October 24, 1932–July 16,
2012) world-renowned leadership authority, in his bestseller book ‘Principle-
Centered Leadership, suggests that transformational leadership “… focuses on
the ‘top line’”. He also explores the differences between transactional and trans-
formational leadership as in the following table:
Table 1: Differences between transactional and transformational leadership
(Covey, 1992 cited in Bolden and et al. in 2003)
Transactional Leadership Transformational Leadership
• Is preoccupied with power and posi- • Is preoccupied with purposes and
tion, politics and perks values, morals, and ethics
• Is mired in daily affairs • Transcends daily affairs
• Is short-term and hard data orien- • Is orientated toward long-term goals
tated without compromising human values
• Focuses on tactical issues and principles

• Relies on human relations to lubri- • Focuses more on missions and strate-

cate human interactions gies

• Follows and fulfills role expectations • Releases human potential – identify-

by striving to work effectively within
current systems
• Supports structures and systems that
reinforce the bottom line, maximize
efficiency, and guarantee short-term
profits
ing and developing new talent
• Designs and redesigns jobs to make
them meaningful and challenging
• Aligns internal structures and systems
to reinforce overarching values and
goals

The augmentation model of transactional and transformational

leadership
Bass and Avolio (1997) provided the augmentation model of transactional and
transformational leadership, depicting that the addition of transformational lead-
ership to transactional leadership works as the magic powder helps to produce
extra effort by the followers and replaces superior performance in place of initial
performance. The following figure shows this augmentation effect of transforma-
tional leadership:
 South Asian Journal of Policy and Governance 5

Figure 1: Augmentation model of transactional and transformational lead-

ership (Bass& Avolio, 1997, p. 21)
Bass and Avolio (1994) characterized transformational leadership as being com-
posed of four unique but interrelated behavioral components: inspirational moti-
vation (articulating an appealing and/or evocative vision), intellectual stimulation
(promoting creativity and innovation), idealized influence (charismatic role mod-
eling), and individualized consideration (coaching and mentoring). Several empir-
ical and theoretical studies have found that leaders who display these four behav-
iors are able to realign their followers’ values and norms, promote both personal
and organizational changes, and help followers to exceed their initial perfor-
mance expectations (e.g., House & Shamir, 1993; Jung & Avolio, 2000). On the
contrary, James A & Ogbonna (2013) stated that transactional leadership, also
known as managerial leadership, focuses on the role of supervision, organization,
and group performance; transactional leadership is a style of leadership in which
the leader promotes compliance of his followers through both rewards and pun-
ishments. Unlike transformational leadership, leaders using the transactional ap-
proach are not looking to change the future; they are looking to merely keep
things same.
This paper is anchored on the above literature review and theoretical framework.
It has attempted to examine the nature of bureaucrats in public policy process in
Bangladesh. The specific objectives to be pursued in this study are: Firstly, to
identify whether bureaucrats are influential in public policy process in Bangladesh
or not, if they are then what are the reasons. Secondly, to find out the nature of
bureaucrats - are they transactional or transformational in leading public policy
process in Bangladesh.
6 Bureaucrats in Bangladesh Public Policy Process
Method of enquiry
For data collection, secondary source of data was followed and secondary materi-
als like books, journals, newspapers and Internet were used. To find data ‘Survey
of Documents’ method was followed and to review the published or printed facts
more critically and objectively, the content analysis method with the qualitative
approach was applied.

Scope of the study

The findings of this study would be beneficial for the analysis of the ‘Black Box’
concept within the public policy process in Bangladesh. In addition, it may assist
other participants and stakeholders of different public policies to understand the
politics in policy dialogue and to forward the message to the voters of Bangladesh
at the horizontal level.

Findings
The section ‘Findings’ has two sub-sections, which include analysis of bureaucrats
as power actors in public policy process and their role as ‘transactional or trans-
formational’ power actors in public policy process.

Bureaucrats as power actors in public policy process and why?

The term ‘bureaucracy’ came from the word ‘bureaux’ meaning public offices.
The original French meaning of the word ‘bureau’ was the ‘baize’ used to cover
desks. The Greek suffix ‘kratia’ or ‘kratos’ means "power" or "rule". So the lexical
point of view offers bureaucracy as the office power or office rule, the rule of the
officialdom (www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Bureaucracy). M.de Gour-
ney was a French economist, who used the word bureaucracy for the first time,
during the first half of the 18th century. Most affined scholar with the idea of
bureaucracy is Max Weber (1864-1920), described bureaucracy as “an adminis-
trative body of appointed officials” and in bureaucracy he included explicitly
appointed officials only leaving out the elected ones (Lakshmanna & Rao, 1989).
Therefore bureaucrats are appointed with legal authority to perform administra-
tive functions of the government. Since the very beginning, bureaucrats, the im-
portant wing of the executive machinery of the government, is responsible for the
conduct of the entire range of government activities and potent through the for-
mulation of policy proposals to the management of the implementation phases. A
significant proportion of the political leaders have working experience of serving
in a government and or elected positions - which makes them dependent on the
 South Asian Journal of Policy and Governance 7
career civil servants in making policy decisions. Therefore, the senior civil serv-
ants tend to get an upper hand in making critical policy decisions (Khan, 2010).
This section of the paper unearths notable causes behind bureaucrats becoming
an influential policy actor in public policy process in Bangladesh.

Historical cause
Though bureaucracy is a concept in sociology and political science, it encourages
to go back in the history of bureaucracy of Bangladesh to reveal the root of bu-
reaucrat’s influence over public policy process in this land. During the pre-British
era, the land ‘Bango’ was ruled by multiple influential dynasties remarkably the
Mauryan dynasty (c.322-185B.C.), the Gupta dynasty (c.320-550) and the Mugh-
al Empire (c.1526-1707). The contribution regarding innovative statesmanship of
the great rulers Chandragupta (founder of the Mauryan Empire) and Ashoka
(grandson of Chandragupta) from Mauryan dynasty is indispensable to note
among others. They left lasting imprints on the organization and development of
the civil service system in the new states of sub-continent (Ahmed, 1982).

With the decline of Muslim rulers to the East India Company, British Raj started
ruling and established a unitary centralized government system when a highly
capitalistic elitist administration emerged with the aim of maintaining law and
order; extracting revenue and subjugating the native population with a view to
strengthening and perpetuating the British colonial rule. For instance, Taiabur
(2002) mentioned the bureaucracy was the single most prime institution in the
hands of the British to pursue the policy (economic policy) of extracting resources
from India by establishing a stable political environment. Consequently, servants
who were kept to serve the East India Company turned to the civil servants and
administrators of this territory. Besides, it increased salary, opportunity to get
commission from the collected revenue and authority to rule over citizens, which
all made the civil servants as the upper class people; instilled the dominant ap-
proach of working in their minds. This aptitude of being influential continued
later during the Pakistan period and in present Bangladesh. As precedent, during
Ayub’s regime, market-oriented economic policy was adopted where bureaucrats’
interest was dominant. Eventually, the evolution of bureaucracy had implications,
as bureaucrats were a few civil servants but always the apparatus of ruling parties
in the policy process.

Legal cause
The legal cause behind the bureaucrats as influential policy actors denotes their
constitutional or legal protection from arbitrariness of the government. At pre-
sent, legal protection for bureaucrats in Bangladesh is far better than the previous
8 Bureaucrats in Bangladesh Public Policy Process
Pakistan when the only protection provided in the Constitutions of 1956 and
1962 was-
No civil servant central, all-Pakistan or provincial could be dismissed or removed from
office or reduced in rank by any authority subordinate to that by which he was appoint-
ed. Nor could a civil servant be dismissed or removed or reduced in rank without being
given a reasonable opportunity for self-defense (Government of India Act, 1947, Sec-
240, Sub-section 1and 3 cited in Obaidullah, 1999).

There are some citable constitutional provisions like Article 29 Clause (2) and (3),
Article 133-136 along with legal protection beyond constitutional provisions in-
cluding the Administrative Tribunal Act 1980 which provided for one or more
tribunals with jurisdiction to hear and determine applications made by any per-
son in the service in respect of his terms and conditions of service (including pen-
sion right) or in respect to any action taken in relation to him as a civil servant. It
also provides for an Administrative Appellate Tribunal to hear and determine
appeals against an order or decision of an Administrative Tribunal (Obaidullah,
1999). Unlike civil service, other professions and professionals have no such spe-
cific legal and constitutional protections in Bangladesh, which eventually creates a
psychological ascendency among the bureaucrats in Bangladesh.

Political cause
Most of the political regimes since the British period provide the insight that
changes in political leadership deepened the root of bureaucratic domination in
public policy process and produced bureaucrats as the most influential actor in
policy networks. To explain one needs to look back at the governing relationships
between politicians and civil servants of this land. During the colonial rule, under
the Indian Act 1919, British bureaucrats were to serve under politicians (first
Indian ministers appointed at the provincial level). But to prevent this initiative,
some of the bureaucrats resigned. Then during the Pakistan regime, it became a
normal practice that appointed officials would preside over the elected officials.
For example, a new post ‘the secretary general of government’ was created, who
played presiding role over professed political heads in the name of coordination of
government (Alavi, 1982).
Finally, in independent Bangladesh though there was an important step to control
and to subdue the bureaucracy from the government was faded and leadership
began to rely more and more on senior civil servants for advice on significant
public policies (Khan, 2005). This trend was made more consolidated after 1975,
by the share of power between military and bureaucracy. As an example, the
formation of Council of Advisor to the President and National Economic Council
 South Asian Journal of Policy and Governance 9
were dominated by the bureaucrats. After the military rule, democracy has been
institutionalized and bureaucrats are still performing as powerful policy actors in
a new appearance of ‘Iron Triangle Model’ where animus-governing relationship
has been replaced by amicable governing relationship between these two major
policy actors politicians and bureaucrats.

Figure 2: Iron triangle model of policy actors

The figure on Iron Triangle Model of policy actors illustrates the dynamics of
policy-making between politicians, special interest groups, and governmental
agencies (bureaucrats) where at the tip bureaucrats dominate, at the bottom two
separate classes politicians and pressure groups maintain coalition. Now-a-days,
the intercommunion among them is derived based on mutual understanding and
barter system. Privatization policy process during the authoritarian regime is
notable evidence. As Ahmed (2011) mentioned the military rulers and donor
community were not the only members of policy network to support privatization
to its success, success of privatization process shows the effect of donor, ruler and
bureaucrats' unity in an authoritarian policy network - for good or for bad. He
also mentioned that a survey conducted by Islam and Farazmand (2008) showed
that out of 120 senior civil servants interviewed, 60.8% found privatization posi-
tive for administrative development; and 84.6% believed that 'privatization of
public sectors has positive effects on job performance'.

Cultural cause
The administrative culture of the bureaucracy in Bangladesh is the sum of tradi-
tional Samaj (the society) and British colonial culture. The Samaj system (the
social system) in Bangladesh is similar to another South Asian country Nepal.
Samaj system is an informal social organization based on neighborhood which
includes members from the same or different kin groups, intermediate between
bari and the village, responsible for settling village disputes, to help other mem-
bers of the village with money (loans) and advice. There are several number of
Samaj in a village each competing for influence over villagers and struggling for
resources from local administrative and development offices (Shrestha, 1980).
This authoritative and elitist nature of Samaj culture more or less impact on the
10 Bureaucrats in Bangladesh Public Policy Process
state machinery ‘bureaucracy’ hence bureaucrats are administrative but social
beings too.

Besides, in terms of the colonial legacy, Bangladesh along with two other South-
east Asian countries Malaysia and Singapore under the British rule borrowed
foreign administrative models which did not reconcile with the local conditions,
rather created elitist administrative systems and reinforced the power of bureau-
crats in those developing countries. Therefore, it is an unavoidable fact that two
cultural inputs elitist ‘Samaj’ (internal factor) and ‘imperial colonial rule’ (external
factor) are totally responsible for the current dominant role of bureaucracy in
public policy process.

Environmental cause
According to the Congruence Model for understanding organizational dynamics
and change, capital, people, knowledge and technology are some of the available
resources in an organization. From this standpoint, bureaucracy is a repository of
a wide range of skills and expertise, resources that make it a premier policy actor.
It also has access to vast quantities of information on the different aspects of socie-
ty along with the long tenure give it an edge over politicians (elected executives)
and other policy actors.
For instance, the Five Year Plan incorporating the health policy decisions are
prepared by the bureaucrats and not even submitted to the Parliament or to the
other institutions representing the rest of the stakeholders. Although National
Economic Council (headed by the Prime Minister with 9 Ministers as members
assisted by 6 secretaries) is the supreme authority to approve the Five Year Plan
and such approval is only symbolic. Another example depicts the real power of
allocating resources lies with the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health and
Planning Commission, which are dominated by the members of Bangladesh Civil
Service (Osman, 2004). A study on ‘Understanding the Role of Evidence in Poli-
cy Making in Bangladesh’ has been done by the International Centre for Diar-
rhea Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B) in 2009. According to the Re-
port (No. 1): ‘An Analysis of Interviews with Health Sector Decision Makers’ of
this study, one respondent puts some light on the role of bureaucrats. According
to that respondent, ‘all of the different groups [Ministers, lobby groups, legisla-
tures, academics, and professionals] influence and in that order but you did not
mention the bureaucrats: the government, actually the policy makers are the bu-
reaucrats. The policy-making authority is the ministry. The initial idea comes to
the Ministry and is handed down from Minister to Secretary to joint secretary to
assistant secretary and then a brief is made. The Ministry has great power. No
 South Asian Journal of Policy and Governance 11
policy decisions can be made by bypassing the bureaucratic chain’ (Koehlmoos &
et. al., 2009).

Are bureaucrats transactional or transformational

power actors?
The rationale to study the genre of bureaucratic leadership is cardinal because it
is corroborated that bureaucrats are very often considered as the keystone, have a
major share in leadership in the policy process. Bureaucrats in Bangladesh have
stagnancy, play role of routine managers sometimes coined as the transactional
leaders. It is indisputable that in Bangladesh, the bureaucracy, to a large extent,
conforms to the Weberian Model and patrimonial in character. It follows man-
agement by rules, has a large hierarchy; its officials are salaried and has written
documents too. On the contrary, there are four main syndromes which substanti-
ate it violates the plank of Weberian model of bureaucracy.
Firstly, the neutrality of the bureaucracy is critically threatened because of undue
influence of the political leaders. Such situation contributes to the unfairness and
poor distribution of public service, which tends to boost the practices of corrup-
tion, collusion and nepotism (Khan, 2012). Secondly, the principle of division of
labor denotes authority and responsibility should be clearly defined and sanc-
tioned. It means that administrators must have enough authority for assigned
responsibilities. In Bangladesh, this division of labor is composed with uneven
authority-responsibility equation, resulting in highly centralized bureaucracy. In
particular, a secretary to the government puts forward a file to his Cabinet Minis-
ter seeking sanction of a paltry sum of Tk. 25,000 (equivalent to US$ 350) to be
disbursed for the repair/maintenance of a small building in a remote village of
Bangladesh (Karim, 2007). Thirdly, ‘personnel should be hired on grounds of
technical competence’ got contravened in Bangladesh Civil Service because of
politicization of recruitment process and sluggish bureaucrats having no intent in
national interest. If the government of Bangladesh could be armed with more
technical and appropriate knowledge, then the government would not probably
have signed the Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) with the International Oil
Companies (IOCs) where 72% of the revenue earnings were given to the IOCs in
foreign currencies (Karim, 2007).

Last but not the least, there is an informal organization besides every formal or-
ganization including beliefs, values and social system, which is very crucial for the
effectiveness, responsiveness of any institution. These values cannot be separated
from morality and ethics. If formal, legal or institutional control over civil serv-
12 Bureaucrats in Bangladesh Public Policy Process
ants is either nonexistent or ineffective then civil servants have an ethical obliga-
tion to respond to the values of the people in whose name they govern (Rohr,
1978). But in Bangladesh, reality is quite different from this philosophy and much
more matches with the prismatic economy where price for public services depend
on the exchange relationship between public officials (sellers) and citizens (buy-
ers). It is noteworthy that all the political institutions including the bureaucracy,
the army, political parties, media, the parliament, the police and the courts (to
some extent) are politicized and hence their credibility and performance are held
in low esteem by the common people (Rahman, 2005). For instance, law en-
forcement administration was found as one of the biggest corrupt sectors (75.8%
corruption rate) in Bangladesh (The Daily Prothom Alo, 2012).
This exploration communicates that bureaucrats are power actors in both public
decisions making and implementation but public interest in Bangladesh gets
compressed due to the deterioration in bureaucratic leadership. Today, it envis-
ages a threat from the self-interested, profit oriented, corrupt and less efficient
personnel who must be reformed and guided by the transformational leadership.
In this regard, the felt need of the hour is how to develop a more transformational
leadership in Bangladesh civil service. This study provides some recommenda-
tions at three levels - individual, organizational and social. These include:
i. Reforms should be started at the outset. Following merit, fairness and
openness in recruitment, a prospective citizen-oriented civil service can
be developed. Equally, individuals who have metamorphosed from citi-
zens to civil servants require the confidence to work as change agents. To
grow the confidence and trust of civil servants to be evaluated in terms of
performance, elected officials should abandon the patronage system and
embrace a creative recruitment process where another phase of test on
the technical skills can be included in the process for getting competent
human resources to complete a designated task in a real, not theoretical
way.
ii. A holistic approach of leadership implies, L= IQ+ EQ+SQ+PQ. Here,
L=Leadership, IQ=intellectual intelligence, EQ=Emotional Intelligence,
SQ= Spiritual Intelligence and PQ=Physical Intelligence. To develop
true leadership, each one of these components is important. But particu-
larly emotional intelligence (EQ) and spiritual intelligence (SQ) drive
leaders to give zenith performance. EQ has self-awareness, self-
regulation, social skill, empathy and motivation constructs; SQ adds the
inner and outer peace of an employee. Therefore, for transformational
leadership development, Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) requires strate-
 South Asian Journal of Policy and Governance 13
gies to increase both EQ and SQ of civil servants since EQ helps to min-
imize conflicts between superior and subordinate or specialist and gener-
alist civil servants and SQ helps to stop indulging in wrongful, unethical
and corrupt actions.
iii. It is unassailable that transformational leaders are made through a pro-
cess where social factors also have influence over it. Social factors can
range from socialization at both primary and secondary levels, culture of
community, ethical public life and opportunity to be guided by a motivat-
ing personality in society. All these factors influence an individual’s val-
ues, deep-seated assumptions, beliefs and attitudes along with which she
or he enters into an organization. If it can be ensured that these social
factors have positive impact on human resources of the Bangladesh civil
service then it will assist the organization to facilitate the environment to
create more transformational leaders within it. It renders that process of
creating transformational civil servants begins much earlier than their ar-
rival in the civil service.

Conclusion and future research

Bureaucrats to a large extent have been playing the role of power actors in public
policy process in Bangladesh. The aim of this study is to find out the rationale of
bureaucrats being more transformational in Bangladesh. The above is the result
of secondary research, which has been done by collation, synthesis and analysis of
existing researches on the role of bureaucracy in Bangladesh. It provides that
there is a much wider range of historical, political, legal and cultural forces that
the bureaucrats indulge in to be dominant policy actors. More precisely, this pa-
per entails that bureaucrats are leading yet failing to yield suitable aged public
policies and efficient administration, rather they are more centered on power
grabbing. To change this policy context in Bangladesh, it highly requires re-
placement of colonial authoritative bureaucracy by indigenous, cooperative and
participatory culture, increasing social networking (one of the three major para-
digms of public sector reforms in Asia) and changes in bureaucratic leadership
too. On top of that, the study findings advocate for the plantation of emotional
and spiritual intelligence in Bangladesh civil service to raise the transformational
leadership, which will take aside the conventional system of governance and fos-
ter good governance in Bangladesh.
In fine, the findings of this paper discuss the dominant and transactional leader-
ship of bureaucrats in Bangladesh. But this could not go into the impact of trans-
formational executive leadership in implementation of public policies. Thus, re-
14 Bureaucrats in Bangladesh Public Policy Process
search in this aspect can be done in the future to ensure efficient policy materiali-
zation in Bangladesh.

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