Review 2: Bureaucracy and Public Economics, by William A. Niskanen (1994)
Reviewed by:
R. Kelly,
Fairfield University,
Choice, Vol. 32, No. 11/12, 298 (July/August 1995)
"This volume is a reissue of Niskanen’s Bureaucracy and Representative Government (originally published in 1971), supplemented with two previously published journal articles on the economics of bureaucracy and on bureaucrats and politicians, along with a brief reassessment of his original work in bureaucratic behavior. Niskanen’s theory of bureau behavior employs a rigorously developed model that is unlikely to be accessible to readers not comfortable with the algebra and geometry of maximization problems in microeconomics. He concludes that in representative democracies bureau-industry complexes (an extension of Eisenhower's farewell warning about the military-industrial complex) are likely to arise, resulting in the provision of public goods and services that are more than optimal from the overall perspective of society. Moreover, Niskanen is skeptical that either executive or legislative review is likely to successfully restrain bureau budget maximizing efforts. The current public policy debate over agency terminations makes the reissue of Niskanen’s work a useful addition to upper-division undergraduate and graduate collections of libraries not owning Niskanen’s previous edition. "
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