Democracy, Autocracy, and Bureaucracy

这个项目通过融合政治经济学和组织理论的思想和方法，提高了我们对制定和实施经济政策的政治过程的概念性理解。政治经济学考虑的是政策制定的过程--在民主国家的选举、委员会和立法机构中投票，以及寡头政治中统治集团之间的互动。在这种背景下，组织理论研究实施经济政策的机构或官僚机构，关注官员的内部结构和激励。然而，这两者应该是互动的。政策制定应该认识到，决策不会由一个完美的韦伯官僚机构来实施，组织理论应该认识到，实施阶段的激励将受到对政客或寡头的目标和约束的影响。本研究包括这种相互作用的理论模型。最直接的目的是研究这种相互作用如何导致民主国家和威权政权的经济结果不同。两个这样的差异来源是相关的。首先，这两种政体向官僚支付激励性薪酬的成本不同。在民主国家，这仅仅是从一个公民到另一个公民的转移；这可能代价高昂，因为转移桶可能会漏水。但寻求从经济中榨取私人利益的独裁者或寡头必须承担激励支付的全部成本。这种更大的成本导致独裁者给予比民主统治者更弱的激励，接受更糟糕的经济结果；例如，独裁政体提供的公共产品将比民主政体更少或更差。其次，如果某些类型的尺子和一些官僚在关心公民福利方面存在其他偏好，而其他类型的官僚纯粹是自私的，那么就可能出现积极的匹配，即仁慈的尺子雇佣利他主义的官员，而盗贼统治的尺子雇佣自私的官僚。这再次有利于民主。这一基本模型提出了更多需要探索的问题，例如，公共机构的激励来自机构内的职业结构，官僚之间的尺度竞争，以及一个机构对另一个机构的监督，而不是(或除此之外)直接激励薪酬。更广泛地说，政治经济学和组织理论的结合有助于加深对这两个领域的理解和丰富。

This project improves our conceptual understanding of the political process of making and implementing economic policy, by bringing together ideas and methods from political economy and organization theory. Political economy considers the process of policymaking - voting in elections, committees and legislatures in a democracy, and interaction among ruling groups in an oligarchy. Organization theory in this context studies the agencies or bureaucracies that implement economic policy, paying attention to the internal structure and incentives of the officials. However, the two should interact. Policymaking should recognize that the decisions are not going to be implemented by a perfect Weberian bureaucracy, and organizational theory should recognize that the incentives at the implementation stage will be influenced by the objectives and constraints on the politicians or oligarchs. The research consists of theoretical modeling of this interaction. The most immediate aim is to examine how this interaction leads to differences in economic outcomes of democracies and authoritarian regimes. Two such sources of difference are pertinent. First, the costs of giving incentive payments to bureaucrats differ for the two types of regimes. In democracies this is merely a transfer from one citizen to another; that may be costly because the transfer bucket may be leaky. But an autocrat or oligarch who seeks to extract private benefit from the economy has to bear the whole cost of the incentive payments. This larger cost leads the autocrat to give weaker incentives and accept worse economic outcomes than the democratic ruler; for example fewer or worse public goods will be provided in autocracies than in democracies. Second, if some types of rulers and some bureaucrats have other-regarding preferences where they care for the citizens' welfare while other types are purely selfish, then there can be a positive matching where benevolent rulers hire altruistic officials and kleptocratic rulers hire selfish bureaucrats. This again favors democracies.This basic model suggests more issues to explore, for example instead of (or in addition to) direct incentive payments, incentives in public agencies come from career structures in agencies, yardstick competition among bureaucrats, and monitoring of one agency by another. More generally, integration of political economy and organizational theory promises deeper understanding and enrichment of both fields.