Sheet 2
HISTORY BEHIND THE STATUS OF GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
It is a straightforward matter to describe the status of government officials today, but this has only been established quite recently. It is perhaps more interesting to look at how their status has changed over the ages.
1 Public Work
Communities are said to have originally developed from groups of blood relations or people sharing the same territory. From these early days, certain people provided specialist skills such as fortune telling, hunting or distributing food, for the benefit of the entire community. The origin of the word "public" stems from fair distribution among a group of people related to one another. People have thus since early times been aware of the concept of public work.
2 Bureaucracy in Ancient Times
Certain communities progressed and developed into sizable kingdoms. Through conquest, they expanded their realm and grew in scale to become powerful empires. Ruling over a wide territory, officials were employed to collect taxes from the people governed therein. This is the foundation of the bureaucracy we have today. Originally there were strong bonds between individual bureaucrats and the rulers. Appointment and promotion were determined entirely by the monarch. In times of financial crisis, rulers were known to have sold posts in their government for personal gain. Taking advantage of the authority attached to their government posts was considered due remuneration for public officials. Certain bureaucrats privatized their own territory and set themselves up as governors of their own land. When the power of monarchs diminished, these independent rulers revolted against their central governments and in many cases the authorities were forced to concede defeat.
3 Absolute Monarchy and Bureaucracy
Following the bureaucracy of ancient times, feudalism arose to combine the sovereignty of central and regional powers. Under feudalism, the relationship between the monarch and feudal lords was tentative and double-sided. It depended greatly on the benefits provided to the lords from the territories that they ruled and their military services to the monarch in return. As commodities came to figure more prominently in the economy, a greater need arose to establish public order across a wide spectrum. The monarch was forced to control the power of feudal lords and reorganize the central government. In the process of centralization, some lords were integrated into the central government as bureaucrats. The number of officials engaged in public functions such as national security or tax collection increased in comparison with those handling the private affairs of the monarch. In response to this phenomenon, the status of public officials changed from underlings of the monarch to government agents.
