This is related to an issue I've studied a lot and recently written about. In "Don't make a fetish of having a flat organization" I try to address this in the context of business, making clear that a well-designed bureaucracy can empower an organization to be more flexible at scale, but for various reasons we don't often think of it this way:
But perhaps more relevant, in the context of government and policy, I've tried to make the point that we should think of government and bureaucracy as machines that produce policy. Every machine is optimized to produce certain kinds of policies. If you advocate for a great policy, and you've the facts on your side, and yet no one will listen to you, then you need to think about the structure of that machine, because it will take a change in the machine to get that machine to start producing the kinds of policy that you want:
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/dont-make-a-fetish-of-havin...
But perhaps more relevant, in the context of government and policy, I've tried to make the point that we should think of government and bureaucracy as machines that produce policy. Every machine is optimized to produce certain kinds of policies. If you advocate for a great policy, and you've the facts on your side, and yet no one will listen to you, then you need to think about the structure of that machine, because it will take a change in the machine to get that machine to start producing the kinds of policy that you want:
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part...