Abstract: | While interest in the correlation between the size and structure of social institutions traces back at least to the days of Herbert Spencer, not all social scientists have subscribed to the view that significant changes in size lead to changes in structure, and vice versa. Most of the available literature on Kenya, for example, suggests that the state bureaucracy has undergone little or no structural change since formal independence in December 1963. This paper reevaluates that view, both deductively and empirically. It is concluded that while many prominent and prestigious positions in the Kenyan state hierarchy carry the same titles as they did during the colonial era, thereby creating an imposing facade of bureaucratic-structural continuity, the truth is that important changes have been taking place, and the bureaucratic structure we see now is significantly more extensive and more complex than what was inherited seventeen short years ago. And not because of any revolutionary reorientation in the dominant ideology. Ref., tab. |