The Budget‐Minimizing Bureaucrat? Empirical Evidence from the Senior Executive Service
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6366159 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julie Dolan (Macalester College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 42-50 |
| Publication date | 2002-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Public Administration Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0033-3352 • E-ISSN: 1540-6210 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1540-6210.00153 |
| OpenAlex | W2061682659 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 22 |
| References cited | 16 |
In a representative democracy, we assume the populace exerts some control over the actions and outputs of government officials, ensuring they comport with public preferences. However, the growth of the fourth branch of government has created a paradox: Unelected bureaucrats now have the power to affect government decisions (Meier 1993; Rourke 1984; Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman 1981).In this article, I rely on two competing theories of bureaucratic behavior‐representative‐bureaucracy theory and Niskanen's budget‐maximization theory‐to assess how well the top ranks of the federal government represent the demands of the citizenry. Focusing on federal‐spending priorities, I assess whether Senior Executive Service (SES) members mirror the attitudes of the populace or are likely to inflate budgets for their own personal gain. Contrary to the popular portrayal of the budget‐maximizing bureaucrat (Niskanen 1971), I find these federal administrators prefer less spending than the public on most broad spending categories, even on issues that fall within their own departments' jurisdictions. As such, it may be time to revise our theories about bureaucratic self‐interest and spending priorities
Bureaucracy · Control (management · Democracy · Economics · Executive branch · Federal budget · Fiscal year · Government (linguistics · Government spending · Management · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Public economics · Public service · Service (business · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Finance · Law · Local Government Finance and Decentralization · Public Administration · Public Policy and Administration Research
Public Sector Negotiations
Trends and Gaps
Altruism, accountability, and transparency
The Use of Discretion in a Rule-Bound Service
Local Authority Bureaucracies
The Public/Private Sector Cleavage Revisited
Public Sector Growth
United We Stand? A Household Perspective On The Impact of Public Employment on Attitudes towards Retrenchment of Welfare Spending
Dialogical Values in Public Goods Provision
Multilevel governance and organizational performance
Counterbalancing Perspectives on the Current Administrative Telos of American Bureaucracies
Ideology, Vote Choice, and Bureaucracy Across Time
Unraveling Representative Bureaucracy
Gender, Representative Bureaucracy, and Law Enforcement
Race, Sex, and Clarence Thomas
What Do Bureaucrats Like Doing? Bureaucratic Preferences in Response to Institutional Reform
Taking Tough Choices Seriously
Bureaucratic Posture
From Maximizing to Minimizing
Political Orientations and Behavior of Public Employees
Are Public Sector Managers a “Bureaucratic Burden”? The Case of English Public Hospitals
Designing the public sector to promote sustainability transitions
Bureaucrats and Politicians
The Impact of Representative Bureaucracies
Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies
Representative Bureaucracy and Policy Preferences
The Promise of Representative Bureaucracy
Testing the Bureau Voting Model
Teachers, Students, and Discrimination
Representative Bureaucracy
The Senior Executive Service
Bureaucrats, Policy Attitudes, and Political Behavior
The Politics of Bureaucratic Discretion
Bureaucracy and Constitutionalism
Representative Bureaucracy
Black Representation in Urban School Districts
| Unique citing works | 22 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,96 |
| Citation span | 2003 - 2020 (18) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 22 |