Democracy, Autocracy, and Bureaucracy

这个项目通过汇集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决策过程——民主制度下的选举、委员会和立法机构中的投票，以及寡头政治下统治集团之间的互动。在此背景下，组织理论研究执行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，两者应该相互作用。政策制定应该认识到，决策不会由一个完美的韦伯官僚体系来执行，组织理论应该认识到，在执行阶段的激励将受到政治家或寡头的目标和约束的影响。研究包括对这种相互作用的理论建模。最直接的目的是研究这种相互作用如何导致民主和专制政权的经济结果差异。有两个这样的差异来源是相关的。首先，在两种类型的政体中，向官僚支付激励费用的成本是不同的。在民主国家，这仅仅是一个公民向另一个公民的转移；这可能代价高昂，因为传输桶可能会漏水。但是，试图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提供的激励更弱，接受的经济结果也比民主统治者差；例如，专制国家提供的公共产品比民主国家少或差。其次，如果某些类型的统治者和官僚有其他偏好，他们关心公民的福利，而另一些类型的统治者纯粹是自私的，那么仁慈的统治者雇佣利他主义的官员，盗贼统治的统治者雇佣自私的官僚，这可能是一种积极的匹配。这再次有利于民主国家。这一基本模型提出了更多值得探索的问题，例如，公共机构的激励来自机构的职业结构、官僚之间的标准竞争以及一个机构对另一个机构的监督，而不是（或除了）直接的激励支付。更一般地说，政治经济学和组织理论的整合有望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.