The political economy of bureaucracy

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1984
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 113 KB
• Volume: 44
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0048-5829
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00118774

✦ Synopsis

massive expansion of the state to provide the third inputs (working capital, marketing services, farming advice) necessary for profitable farming and now commonly provided by landlords, overseers, and various middlemen.

If the author had incorporated public choice logic into his argument, I doubt that he so blithely would call for an expanded state in LDC's. In an aside, he recognizes that the state is not always benign, but he attributes "this to the subserviency of the state to landlords (p. 218). I wish that he had considered the state as subservient to none, in the South Asia case largely freed from both local special and general interests by massive infusions of foreign aid, and growing rapidly in its supported sector, economic regulation. If he had,q think that he might have gotten closer to the true political economy of agrarian reform in South Asia (to quote his subtitle). In that case, he would have concluded that a government reform (reduction) rather than land reform promises the largest payoff in LDC's.