Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy!

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 147369

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "starjackson1" <starjackson1 at y...> wrote:
>
> Here is an abstract from an interesting article published on the 
> Social Science Research Network about Government in the Harry Potter 
> universe:
> 
> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=830765
> 
> Author:  Ben Barton
<snip>
 Speculating about the effects of Rowling's portrait of 
> government is obviously dangerous, but it seems likely that we will 
> see a continuing uptick in distrust of government and libertarianism 
> as the Harry Potter generation reaches adulthood.
>

Libertarian? I don't think so. The non-publishing related links on JKR's
website are all to advocacy organizations: Amnesty International, the MS
Society and One Parent Families, which exist in large part to put 
pressure on government bureaucracies to establish programs and/or
regulations which respond to their concerns. Laudable work, but hardly 
libertarian.

In the paper itself, which you can download from the link above, 
the author's effort to show that most of Rowling's bureaucrats are ineffective
or evil led him to ignore the possibility of spy!Percy, for which I can't
blame him, but also the existence of Amelia Bones, Kingsley Shacklebolt 
and Tonks. 

Pippin