Bureaucracy at its best is the art of ensuring work never flows backwards in a system where nobody can see very far, by overengineering the output at every stage. It’s the essence of good fat.
Q: what is the relationship between bureaucracy and institutions (eg “The Electoral Process”)? How does the survivability of bureaucracies make institutions more survivable? Does it?
It’s the overlapping boundary lines btw bureaucracies (which are clearly organizational) and institutions (which are cultural/cognitive/behavioral). I’m using the term “institution” in the “institutional theory” sense here.
You’ll have to work it out then for the definition that interest you. There are too many flavors of “institutional theory” to count. See Powell and DiMaggio intro for a survey