Establishing a continuum from minimizing to maximizing bureaucrats: State agency head preferences for governmental expansion - A typology of administrator growth postures, 1964-98

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bowling, CJ; Cho, CL; Wright, DS
• 署名单位: Auburn University System; Auburn University; University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3352
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2004.00394.x
• 发表日期: 2004
• 页码: 489-499
• 关键词: reinventing government; american states; UNITED-STATES

摘要

Scholars have long suspected the blanket description of bureaucrats as budget maximizers is simplistic and inaccurate. This article provides empirical grounds for questioning that description and enhances our understanding of bureaucratic fiscal preferences. Bureaucratic preferences for expansion are distributed along a continuum. A typology of agency heads' expansion preferences is developed and related to Downs's typology of bureaucrats. Data from eight surveys of state agency heads (1964-98) enable us to trace administrators' preferences for expansion over four decades. These preferences vary substantially in any single survey year and reflect trends across these years. Notably, a substantial proportion of agency heads opted for no expansion in their own agency's programs and expenditures or in the state's overall budget. This typology challenges conventional conceptions of bureaucrats' maximizing preferences, advances alternative interpretations about budget minimizing, and fills an important gap in budget and bureaucracy theory.