The Political Economy of Public Administration

This book uses a transactions cost approach to explain the key institutional characteristics across the public sector. It defines the distinctive governance, financing and employment arrangements that characterize the common forms of public sector organization: the regulatory commission, the executive tax-financed bureau and the state-owned enterprise. It suggests why these forms are used to perform different administrative functions, and why legislators often leave very important decisions to be resolved at the administrative level.

• 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