Conclusions 219
could be harnessed for the collective good, but even he made no claims that this
was a universal possibility. If market mechanisms driven by self-interested actors
cannot protect the common interest, what can? As Hardin pointed out, modern
industrialized democracies tend to converge on a single answer to this question:
administrative agencies with the power to “legislate temperance.” As Hardin put
it, “Since it is practically impossible to spell out all the conditions under which
it is safe to burn trash in the back yard or to run an automobile without smog-
control, by law we delegate the details to bureaus” (1968, 1245).
Th is solution may fi t easily with the Wilson/Weberian perspective, but does
little to solve its inherent problems, especially its diffi culty in reconciling the
hierarchical, authoritarian nature of bureaucracy with democratic values and
the inevitable political role Weber assigned to mature bureaucracies. Rational
choice has played an important role in determining the limits of this orthodox
perspective, but has thus far met only limited success in establishing itself as its
intellectual successor. If there are unbridgeable diff erences between markets for
cars or soft drinks and markets for public goods, such as library, education, and
law enforcement services, economic theory may have limited use for scholars
of the public sector. To become the central paradigm of public administration,
rational choice requires markets to be somehow made synonymous with democ-
racy. Ostrom showed that this is not necessarily impossible, though subsequent
work raises doubts about whether it is probable.
Th ere are signs of an emerging synthesis between the orthodox perspective
and the challenge from rational choice. Rational choice scholars have expanded
and refi ned the concept of utility maximization since the 1970s in ways that allow
the committed public servant a place in formal models of bureaucracy (Ostrom
1998). Relaxing the assumptions that defi ne rational utility maximization to allow
a greater role for altruistic or group-oriented goals—for example, the desire to
help others or serve the public interest—considerably tempers the portraits of bu-
reaucracy created in early rational choice works, such as those of Downs and Tul-
lock. Teske and his colleagues show that, at least in theory, competitive markets
can exist under considerably less-than-optimal market conditions, though these
markets may require a strong regulatory role for public bureaucracies to mitigate
the social-democratic downside of market excess. Perhaps rational choice’s last-
ing contribution will be to redefi ne intellectually rather than to replace the role of
bureaucracy in public administration theory.
Clearly, as indicated in this and the previous chapter, research being con-
ducted in other disciplines is changing the theoretical framework surrounding
decision theory and rational choice. David Brooks (2011), political columnist for
the New York Times, has labeled the need for a broader look at human nature
as the “new humanism.” In order to fully understand the political process, how
people respond to incentives, and the human decisionmaking process, a more in-
terdisciplinary approach is needed. Others have also called for combining the nat-
ural and social sciences through a process of “consilience” (Wilson 1998). A brief