Political Control and the Power of the Agent

Terry M. Moe

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2006, vol. 22, issue 1, 1-29

Abstract: In the study of public bureaucracy, the relationship between political authorities and bureaucrats is commonly understood as one of principal and agent, and analysis centers on how the authorities can try to overcome the information asymmetry at the heart of this relationship--arising from the bureaucrats' expertise and other private information--to exercise a measure of control over their subordinates. In this standard view, information is the source of bureaucratic power. There is a second basis of bureaucratic power, however, that the literature overlooks. Precisely because the authorities are elected, bureaucrats can take political action--especially if organized by public sector unions--to influence who gets elected and what choices they make in office. This gives bureaucrats a political capacity to control their own controllers, putting the usual principal-agent relationship in a very different light. The purpose of this paper, then, is to make a case for the political power of the agent, and to argue for a reorientation of the current theory. In the empirical analysis, the argument is applied to the electoral behavior and impact of public school teachers and their unions--showing that they are quite active and influential in choosing the key authorities that are supposed to be governing them. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewj011 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:22:y:2006:i:1:p:1-29

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization is currently edited by Andrea Prat

More articles in The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().