"The Political Economy of Public Administration: Institutional Choice in the Public Sector" by Murray J. Horn

This book applies the basic ideas and models of economics to develop a single transactions framework to explain the key institutional arrangements across the whole range of public sector organization: the regulatory commission, the executive tax-financed bureau, and the state-owned enterprise. This book also explores the link between agency form and administrative function, agency independence from the legislature, the rights extended to private interests to influence administrative decision making, the role of civil service arrangements that are so often seen as simply frustrating efficiency and responsiveness, and the boundary between public and private sectors. This book should be of value to those with a practical interest in public administration as well as students of political science, public administration, economics, and public policy.




• Explores a very wide range of public sector activity within a single analytic framework • Extends the current ‘rational choice’ theoretical approaches in a way that substantially increases their explanatory power • Breaks new ground in a field that is perhaps more traditional (and theoretically stagnant) than any other in political science

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Basic theory and method: a transactions cost approach
3. Regulatory institutions
4. Bureaus and the budget
5. Bureaus and the Civil Service
6. Public versus private enterprise
7. Public enterprise versus Public Bureau
8. Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography.