Andrew Dunsire

Bureaucrats and Budgeting Benefits: How do British Central Government Departments Measure Up?

Many economics-based theories of bureaucracy build on the assumption that public bureaucrats reap utility from a large budget. This article examines what evidence may be marshalled for bureaucratic appropriation of budgetary funds, by reference to measurable changes in British central government departments from the early 1970S to the early I98os, both at the civil-service-wide level and at the level of departments taken separately and severally. This evidence indicates that, while the budget/ utility approach cannot be dismissed entirely, the link between budgetary increases and bureaucratic utility is neither clearly demonstrable nor universally applicable. At the least, a more refined type of budget/utility

Bureaucracies in Retrenchment Vulnerability Theory and the Case of U.K Central Government Departments 1975-85

This article tests some received ideas on bureaucratic vulnerability to cutbacks, using data drawn from U.K central government departments over the period 1975-85. It looks at vulnerability at the level of programs, of groups within the bureaucracy, and of department, and tests three approaches to explaining vulnerability: party-political influences on political outcomes, the impact of prior history, and the influence of bureaucratic processes. Party-political influences and prior history seem to have low power in predicting vulnerability to cutbacks, but bureaucratic process influences have some predictive power for these data, particularly at the group and departmental levels of vulnerability.