IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v81y1987i03p873-896_20.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Stacking the Deck: Bureaucratic Missions and Policy Design

Author

Listed:
  • Bendor, Jonathan
  • Taylor, Serge
  • Van Gaalen, Roland

Abstract

Empirical studies suggest that mission-oriented bureaucrats bias their design of program alternatives to increase the odds that a superior will choose the kind of program the officials want. However, political executives may anticipate this manipulation and try to reassert control. These struggles are examined in three models. In Model 1 a senior bureaucrat is interested only in missions; the bureaucrat's political superior controls him or her by rejecting inferior proposals and entertaining new options from other policy specialists. Model 2 is a principal-agent analysis. Here the official is interested only in budgets; the official's superior reduces search bias by creating an ex ante incentive scheme. In Model 3 the bureaucrat cares about both budgets and programs; the superior uses both his or her final review authority and ex ante incentives to reduce agenda manipulation. The models' contrasting implications for the political control of bureaucracy are examined.

Suggested Citation

  • Bendor, Jonathan & Taylor, Serge & Van Gaalen, Roland, 1987. "Stacking the Deck: Bureaucratic Missions and Policy Design," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(3), pages 873-896, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:81:y:1987:i:03:p:873-896_20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400203511/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Miltos Makris, 2003. "Administrative Bureaus with Standard Operating Procedures," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 03/062, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    2. Carlsen, Fredrik, 1996. "A note on budget schemes in the public sector," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 149-156, April.
    3. Bendor, Jonathan & Glazer, Ami & Hammond, Thomas H., 2000. "Theories of Delegation in Political Science," Research Papers 1655, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:81:y:1987:i:03:p:873-896_20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.