Anecdotes about government agencies suggest that the typical civil servant is lazy and incompetent, a clever schemer for his own aggrandizement, or an officious martinet. Occasionally one even hears stories of efficient, honest professionalism to offset the reports of corruption, pettiness, and stupidity. The diversity in the popular impressions of bureaucracy may reflect diverse characteristics of different bureaucrats and agencies. 1 After all, this is a complex world full of complex people, so it would not be surprising to find differences among government agencies in competence and commitment to the legislated task. But unless we can find some way to organize that diversity conceptually, we are left with little basis for predicting the behavior of bureaucrats.
Gordon Tullock attempted to shortcut the problem in his pathbreaking study, The Politics of Bureaucracy. 2 He restricted his analysis to a particular group; i.e., the able, ambitious, and amoral 'climbers' (to use Downs' term) who rise to the top ranks of any large organization. Tull0ck's technique of looking at the choices open to the individual and explicit decision to stress the role of those who are able and determined to rise within the organization permit him to develop a very general model that is applicable to practically every form of government, to all levels of officials, and every era of history. Such generality has its costs, of course; the limitation examined here is the restriction of Tullock's model to the eager schemers who surround every head of state, and to those who are able and aspire to join or succeed them.
If hierarchical control were perfect, it would be enough to concentrate on the decisions of the leaders; but it is one of the implications of Tullock's own model that the leaders cannot fully control the behavior of their subordinates. Certainly one can assert that control is far from perfect in the U.S. federal government. This implies that government activity will be influenced by the behavior of lower level bureaucrats who may be indolent, unambitious -or even moral! Clearly, a richer model is necessary to accommodate a variety of possible personal goals and different degrees of competence in pursuing them.