Introduction
Bureaucracy is the antithesis of democracy.
Jo Grimond -- British politician.
This is a fairly common view, it appears, similar things have been said by others at various times, often by politicians.
It is also, fairly clearly not true. If we define bureaucracy in a way stripped of the negative connotations it is often politically useful to give it, to be merely the requirement for actions to be recorded and/or to only take place within a set of rules, it is fairly clear that it is, far from being the antithesis of democracy, essential for it.
Necessity
Bureaucracy is the common shorthand for the existence of rules, and the requirement for people to follow these rules. It is therefore essential for democracy. One cannot have a democracy without a rule that says that the opinion of the majority present and voting shall be taken as the opinion of the entire population.
Once one has that rule, there is a great temptation to add further rules, to prevent democracy from being abused. Deadlines for submission of business, for example, one can make a very strong case for, to prevent people sneaking something controversial in to a meeting they know will be quiet.
And so it goes on, to protect democracy from incautious decisions, and those wishing to exploit the system to their ends, it becomes necessary to build up a large framework of rules, setting out how decisions are brought to the people, and how the people express their opinions.
Complexity
This framework becomes complex, with rules added in to cover unusual cases, and to close loopholes. To someone looking at it for the first time, it seems hugely unnecessary - why should there be all these restrictions? Though each one can hopefully be explained, it is a rare person who has the patience to listen to the explanations.
Balancing
Therefore, a balance is necessary. The rules need to be sufficiently robust to defeat attempts to use the democratic system to produce an undemocratic result. If these attempts cannot be made due to the rules, it saves the need to spend greater effort to stop or reverse the effects of those attempts.
Equally, the rules need to be sufficiently simple that someone coming to them for the first time can almost certainly do what they want, if their intentions are honest.
And so is the core of the problem - the rules must stop the dishonest, while protecting and encouraging the honest, but the rules cannot account for or know intent, only deduce it from people's actions.
The rules must be as complex as necessary, and as clear as possible.
Unnecessary Bureaucracy
One must distinguish between necessary and unnecessary bureaucracy. Unnecessary bureaucracy should be removed as quickly as possible, and replaced by something similar.
Unnecessary bureaucracy is something that does not protect the honest against exploitation, or does so in a far more complex way than necessary - for example, one could prevent issues from being brought up without notice by requiring that the submitter personally informs everyone who would be entitled to vote, or one could do this by requiring that the issue be submitted a reasonable amount of time before the discussion for the publicising of it.
An extreme example, naturally, but an important one. Likewise, many feel that the requirement for people standing for election to have a proposer and seconder is unnecessary bureaucracy, as it does not prevent even the worst candidates from standing - everyone has two friends, or at least two sympathetic people who haven't met them - but can be discouraging to the new and inexperienced.
A Service of Abstraction
There are things that will always need to be tracked, recorded and accounted for. However, where possible, this should be carried out behind the scenes, in a way that is transparent to the constituency. For example, one can have a complex policy classification system, that requires submitted policies to state which part of the policy is in which class.
Alternatively, one can have a set of rules for determining this, that can be applied by administrators later. Provided these rules are sensible, logical, and designed to give maximum effect to a policy, there is no need for the policy writer to be particularly aware of them (provided, of course, that they can see these rules if they want to).
Providing this service of abstraction is an important service, and one that all with the gift of administration should attempt, both to make things easier for people, and to make things appear easier for people.
Conclusion
There are, sadly, many people who will attempt to subvert democracy to achieve their own ends regardless of democratic opinion. Therefore, it is often necessary to have a complex set of rules to deal with situations they can create, and to avoid loopholes they could abuse.
However, it is also necessary to ensure that the most commonly used rules are clear and easy to both understand and follow, and the complexity is hidden.
To do this separation requires the administration to be helpful, and while being aware of the rules, to use them only when necessary. Simply phrasing things in terms of what people can do, rather than what they cannot do, is a start, but where there is a complex structure supporting a simple surface, it is often necessary to act as an interface between the two.
This is not an easy task, but it is an essential one if the dual requirements of a democratic process to be fair and to be easily usable are both to be met.