ABSTRACT
Though the growing interest in the application of economic models to politics seems to have bypassed the field of Soviet politics, there is one area in which both the analytical framework and theoretical conclusions have been surprisingly similar–the study of bureaucracy. Just as rational choice theorists have concluded that bureaucrats are one of the most significant threats to the functioning of free markets in capitalist systems. To explain the perpetual expansion of state intervention in the economy at the cost of declining economic growth, rational choice theorists turned to state bureaucrats as one of the prime culprits. In attempting to understand the tenacity of these patterns of individual choices, many rational choice theorists have turned to an analysis of institutions and politics. They have begun to examine how institutions shape the incentives and interests according to which individual choices are made.
