Th e Rational, Self-Maximizing Bureaucrat 199
In this chapter we briefl y examine the impact of rational choice on the three
areas mentioned earlier in this section. We also provide a discussion of how
recent advances in behavioral economics, experimental economics, social psy-
chology, and psychology are redefi ning the ways in which public administration
scholars view the contribution of rational choice to these areas, and more gener-
ally are changing the way scholars theorize about utility.
Th e Rational, Self-Maximizing Bureaucrat
One of the earliest and most far-reaching impacts of rational choice theory was in
explaining the actions of bureaucrats and bureaucracies. Picking up the intellec-
tual foundation laid by Buchanan and Tullock, several scholars extended the ra-
tional choice framework into a model of organizational behavior that challenged
traditional scholarly perspectives on bureaucracy. Th e best known of these works
are Gordon Tullock’s Th e Politics of Bureaucracy (1965), Anthony Downs’s In-
side Bureaucracy (1967), and William Niskanen’s Bureaucracy and Representative
Government (1971).
Following the core assumptions of rational choice theory, all these works
begin with the presumption that what bureaucracies do can be understood by
viewing bureaucrats as self-interested utility maximizers. Th ey also borrow
heavily from the Weberian picture of a mature bureaucracy, particularly in the
sense that a bureaucracy is an organization that enjoys an information advantage
over its supposed political masters. Given these starting presumptions, Tullock,
Downs, and Niskanen presented a picture of public administrators far removed
from the neutrally competent agents of implementation that populate traditional
public administration folklore.
Tullock sought to explain what a bureaucracy would look like if bureaucrats
were self-interested utility maximizers. He argued that a rational, self-interested
bureaucrat maximizes utility through career advancement, and that advancement
in the merit-based systems of public bureaucracies oft en depends upon the favor-
able recommendations of superiors. If this is so, Tullock reasoned, the rational
bureaucrat will seek to please superiors and put himself in as favorable a light as
possible. Th us, a rational bureaucrat will highlight information that refl ects favor-
ably upon himself and will repress (perhaps even suppress) information that does
not. Distorting information in this way will create a host of problems. Lacking ac-
curate and/or complete information, agency leaders and external political actors
will form skewed expectations about an agency’s performance and capabilities.
Th e same lack of information will concurrently diminish their ability to hold the
bureaucracy accountable. Th e net result is an agency prone to mistakes, diffi cult
to manage, and hard to control.
Traditional managerial responses to these problems in public agencies em-
phasize replacing or restructuring the bureaucratic hierarchy. Tullock’s argument
suggests that such reforms will be ineff ective because, although they may alter the