Bureau Shaping

Bureau shaping involves molding a bureaucracy in a manner that maximizes the utility of a rational self-interested official.

Economic theories, in particular public choice theory, assumed an increasingly significant role in political science during the latter part of the twentieth century. Prominent within this was the analysis of bureaucracy. New-Right thinking advocated free market mechanisms in many areas of previously state-provided goods. New-Right thinkers argued that bureaucracy was wasteful and inefficient. Their [Page 62]arguments were often premised on the neoclassical economic assumption of individuals as instrumentally rational utility maximizers. One of the primary claims was that bureaucrats were budget maximizers. That is, they were assumed to maximize the budgets of their departments so that they could achieve higher status and salaries. This highly influential work, and Anthony Downs's more pluralist account of the workings of bureaucracy in 1967, became the basis of the critique of public choice from which Patrick Dunleavy's bureau-shaping model was developed in 1985, which, he argued, provided explanation of changes in the British civil service in the 1980s. Dunleavy argued that bureaucrats were more concerned with enhancing the status and quality of their work; in addition, senior bureaucrats sought to play a policy advisory role. Utility maximization could therefore be achieved by maximizing core budgets, rather than the overall budgets suggested in earlier models. Dunleavy believed maximizing overall budgets for instrumentally rational bureaucrats would be a risky strategy, which would produce low payoffs. Therefore, top bureaucrats would be better served shaping departments into small agencies, removed from direct line management. They would consequently be less likely to be affected by spending reductions in their specific policy areas.

In the bureau-shaping model, Dunleavy differentiates between type of budget and type of agency. The former highlights a core budget, consisting of running costs; a bureau budget, which includes the core budget and payments made to private sector, for example, for contracts; a program budget, which includes the bureau budget and monies passed to other public-sector bureaucracies (and that can only be included if the bureau retains some control over the spending of this money); a super-program budget, comprising the agency's program budget and spending by other bureaucracies over which the bureau has some control. In contrast, type of agency includes delivery agencies, which directly deliver services and are labor intensive because they provide the manpower to implement policy; regulatory agencies, which are concerned with the regulation of other agencies or enterprises; transfer agencies, which are money-moving organizations that handle payments of government subsidy or entitlement to individuals or enterprises; contracts agencies, which focus on developing service or capital specifications and then contracting out to private-sector firms; and control agencies, which supervise grant provision to other public-sector bureaucracies. These differing analytic categories highlight the complexity of government bureaucracies that are highly differentiated. This also suggests a less-hierarchical organizational structure of bureaucracy than earlier public choice accounts assumed. This is done, for example, by recognizing that policy responsibilities and implementation are fragmented between layers of government and decentralized to quasi-governmental agencies.

Having highlighted this complex framework, the bureau-shaping model then makes assumptions in respect of the bureaucrat, the individual within the bureaucracies. First, Dunleavy differentiates between different levels of bureaucrat. The bureau-shaping model then suggests that rational self-interested bottom and middle-level officials are more likely to be concerned with maximizing core budgets, whereas senior bureaucrats may be more inclined to increase bureau budgets, mainly to protect their core budgets from potential challenge. This model also suggested that the incentive to maximize core budgets is strongest in delivery agencies, given that they have the largest core budgets and staffs. Dunleavy believes that utility maximization is best achieved through bureau shaping, rather than through the maximization of generic budgets. Senior bureaucrats can shape bureaucracies in their favor. Bureaucrats pursue strategies to shape their bureaus that include the shaping of internal work practices and relationships with external partners. Bureaucrats may engage in reorganizational strategies and are able to assign less favorable, low-level work to others. This model also accounts for why senior officials may accept budget cuts; privatizing and hiving off routine work may enable the bureaucrat to shape their bureaus favorably so that their utility can be maximized. This model, then, draws attention to the focus of bureaucrats in increasing their policy advisory role. It also suggests that changes within the [Page 63]British civil service were driven by utility maximizing officials.

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