ABSTRACT
One of the most important issues for contemporary social theory and institutional design is concerned with the relative virtues of governmentally controlled decision and allocation processes as compared with more decentralized processes. This chapter describes research developments on the distinctiveness of public bureaucracies and their differences from other types of organizations, especially private firms. It gives examples of the approaches that researchers have followed in analyzing this issue, as well as examples of some of the streams of research on particular dimensions of public bureaucracies. In an article on bureaucratic reform published in 1980, Allen Barton argued that the absence of market-based performance measures, the history of patronage and corruption, and the power of organized special interests cause public bureaucracies to have rigid rules imposed on them and to have weak employee rewards, penalties, and professional service norms. Public bureaucracies apparently do frequently differ from private ones on structural dimensions influenced by jurisdiction-wide procedures and oversight bodies.
