ABSTRACT

Economic theories of bureaucracy begin with the assumption that people who act in a self-interested way in the marketplace are the same people who vote, run for office, and are employed in the public sector. Government officials and civil servants are portrayed as acting to advance their own private agendas in the name of the "public interest." The primary implication drawn from this perspective is that the collective political process fails because participants are responding to incentives other than those assumed by conventional theory. Economic reasoning promises a logical deductive model of how public agencies behave with clear directions for policy analysis and simple normative recommendations for reform.