Liberty Fund Books

Description

Bureaucracy provides access to two important and influential books on bureaucracy by Gordon Tullock: The Politics of Bureaucracy (1965) and Economic Hierarchies, Organization and the Structure of Production (1992).

When The Politics of Bureaucracy was published in 1965, bureaucracy was viewed by many people as benign—serving the public good with objectivity and omniscience.

In Economic Hierarchies, Organization and the Structure of Production, Tullock looks at bureaucracy in a different but related way, basing his new book on developments in the theory of the firm that had occurred during the intervening period. By comparing the politics of bureaucracy with the economics of industrial organization, Tullock demonstrates that corporations perform with greater economic efficiency than do government bureaus.

Charles K. Rowley is Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He is also General Director of the Locke Institute.

The entire series includes:

Volume 1: Virginia Political Economy
Volume 2: The Calculus of Consent
Volume 3: The Organization of Inquiry (November 2004)
Volume 4: The Economics of Politics (February 2005)
Volume 5: The Rent-Seeking Society (March 2005)
Volume 6: Bureaucracy (June 2005)
Volume 7: The Economics and Politics of Wealth Redistribution (July 2005)
Volume 8: The Social Dilemma: Of Autocracy, Revolution, Coup d'Etat, and War (December 2005)
Volume 9: Law and Economics (December 2005)
Volume 10: Economics without Frontiers (January 2006)

Table of Contents

Introduction, by Charles K. Rowley ix

THE POLITICS OF BUREAUCRACY
Foreword, by James M. Buchanan 3

PART 1. INTRODCUTION
1. What This Book Is About 13
2. Preliminaries 19

PART 2. THE POLITICIAN’S WORLD
3. The General Atmosphere 39
4. Spectators and Allies 51
5. The Politician’s World—The Sovereigns 57
6. The Single Sovereign Situation 70
7. The Group Sovereign 89
8. Multiple Sovereigns 109
9. Peers, Courtiers, and Barons 115
10. The Followers 125

PART 3. LOOKING DOWNWARD
11. Subordinates and Inferiors 131
12. Know Thyself 140
13. Parkinson’s Law 145
14. Whispering Down the Lane 148
15. A Mental Experiment 153
16. The Experiment Continued 160
17. Limitations on Organizational Tasks 168
18. Relaxing Requirements 176
19. The Problem of Control 189
20. Enforcement 197
21. Judgment by Results 205
22. Labor Saving Devices—Cost Accounting 210
23. Labor Saving Devices—Miscellaneous 217
24. External Checks 224

PART 4. CONCLUSION
25. What to Do? What to Do? 235

ECONOMIC HIERARCHIES, ORGANIZATION
AND THE STRUCTURE OF PRODUCTION
Preface 241
1. Introduction 243
2. Why Hierarchical Organizations? Why Not? 248
3. Parallel Problems 263
4. In the Belly of the Beast 279
5. Life in the Interior 295
6. Structural Reform 313
7. Termites 327
8. A General Picture 340
9. Random Allocation 353
10. Rent Seeking and the Importance of Disorganization 375
11. Restricted Scope 387
12. Incentives 400
13. Summing Up 416

Index 423