BureaucracyECO 362 19/11/2013Dr. Watson

What is a bureaucrat? Formal systems Work for government

Universities, large corporation Hierarchical structure Office Insiders

Public servant/civil servant Human resources, management, administration, Police, public school teachers, welfare, fuel

subsidy…

Fracture: Minister vs. Bureaucrat According to the Minister:

Minister makes decisions Bureaucracy carries it out

According to the Bureau PR – justification to the government, public Bring in the money Advocate – get policies passed

Civil Service Groups

ManagementManagers

Street-Level

I like big budgets and I cannot lie Big budget Big building Lot of staff (underlings)

“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy”

Appearance vs accomplishment Bureaucracy has real decision-making power Have to spend your budget every year How democracy actually functions

Budget-maximizing bureaucracy Niskanen (1971)

Produce something, a lot more of it than would be the socially optimal outcome

Labor insider/outsider Thing you’re producing does not have to be results,

but WORK Contracts of awarded (size or number), meeting

with clients, producing paperwork (Gogol’s Dead Souls and The Nose) Spend your budget or lose it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-annual-agency-battle-to-spend-the-rest-of-their-budget/2013/09/28/3121d6d0-289e-11e3-bae5-e0807a60a6aa_graphic.html

Lipsky (1980) – Street-Level 1. Come in contact with the public 2. Real world constraints that prevent them from

fulfilling the public service ideal 3. Discretion in how they do their jobs This is the reality of policy

A lot of burnout

Corrupt bureaucrats Banerjee and Baul (2013) https://

editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=FEMES12&paper_id=500 find that students who want to go in to civil service are more corrupt than those who want