Max Weber and Franz Kafka are seminal writers on bureaucracy and administration. While Weber suggests the technical superiority of a bureaucratic “iron cage,” Kafka speaks from within that cage, seeing its repressive rationality as being confounded by recalcitrant citizens searching for freedom. However, if individuals are embedded in a bureaucracy that limits the parameters of actions from which they can choose, how could they ever defy structural control? Articulating the conditions for human liberty, this article uses critical realism to reveal the potential emancipatory nature of bureaucracy as a way out of Kafka’s powerlessness and Weber’s iron cage via citizen engagement.

马克斯·韦伯 (Max Weber) 和弗朗茨·卡夫卡 (Franz Kafka) 是官僚主义和行政方面的开创性作家。韦伯提出了官僚“铁笼”的技术优势，而卡夫卡则是在铁笼内说话，认为其压抑的理性被寻求自由的顽固公民所混淆。然而，如果个人被嵌入限制他们可以选择的行动参数的官僚机构中，他们怎么能违抗结构控制？本文阐述了人类自由的条件，运用批判现实主义揭示了官僚主义的潜在解放本质，这是通过公民参与摆脱卡夫卡的无能为力和韦伯铁笼的一种方式。