ABSTRACT
Agency bureaucrats are likely to maximize their bureau budgets based on their superior information about bureau budget and program details. When agency bureaucrats have accurate data on the amount of resources their legislative supervisors would allow for their bureau programs, how much cost is incurred from delivering the programs and they will attempt to obtain the maximum resources possible. According to budgetary incrementalism, budget actors are self-moderating when they request budgets for their organizations, although they are likely to request resources that are more than what they might actually need. Niskanen contended in Bureaucracy and Representative Government that much of governmental budget growth is attributable to government bureaucrat's budget-maximizing behaviour. Senior Executive Service members either mirror the attitude of the general public of bureau budgets terms or inflate their bureau budgets as predicted in Niskanen's model. Niskanen's theory of budget-maximizing bureaucrats is based on the assumption that agency bureaucrats tend to maximize their bureau budgets based on their rational computation.
