... bureaucratic degree of influence depends fundamentally on a number of aspects related to the topic at stake as well as organisational factors such as size, managerial skills and goals of the bureaucracy. Empirical research has shown that whilst there has been a general increase in bureaucratic political power, their potential degree of influence depends substantially on the state's legal and bureaucratic traditions which makes bureaucracies in France and Germany considerably more dominant than in the Scandinavian countries where the ministerial administrative bodies' transparency and accountability to citizens leads to reduction in the civil servants' political influence. With reference to the Weberian and Wilsonian conceptions of the role of bureaucracy as a purely administrative institution where civil servants only implement decisions made by the legislature due to lacking democratic legitimacy, E. Page states that the influence of bureaucrats does certainly exceed their traditional role and has led to a dominance of bureaucrats ...

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