Introduction

As a label, the word bureaucrat is easily misleading, because a typical bureaucrat is at once a subordinate and a superior. This dual role of bureaucrats implies that it is not possible to formulate an adequate theory of bureaus unless at least three levels are distinguished in hierarchies. Let us call these levels i, j, k and label the bureaucrats at each level Bi, Bj, and Bk. Typical bureaucrats Bj, are at once the subordinates of Bi and the superiors of Bk. In a bureau with N levels, the bureaucrats at the N - 2 intermediate levels are all Bj - bureaucrats; hence the word typical. Moreover, if we recognize that the decision makers at the highest level in the hierarchy are not bureaucrats at all, but politicians in governments and managers in businesses, then our typical superior-subordinate, dual-role bureaucrat is to be found at N - 1 levels in hierarchical structures.

The dual role of bureaucrats plays virtually no part in the general literature on bureaucracy and is seldom recognized in the economic literature on that subject. However, it is central to the discussion that follows and, we suggest, to a clear understanding of the workings of bureaucracies.

A theory of bureaucracy, as we emphasize in Chapters 5 to 7, must deal with the nature and outcome of competition between bureaucrats and between the bureaus that constitute the whole.