Establishing a Continuum from Minimizing to Maximizing Bureaucrats: State Agency Head Preferences for Governmental Expansion—A Typology of Administrator Growth Postures, 1964–98

• Date: 01 July 2004
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2004.00394.x
• Published date: 01 July 2004

Establishing a Continuum from Minimizing to Maximizing Bureaucrats 489

Cynthia J. Bowling

Auburn University

Chung-Lae Cho

Deil S. Wright

University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

Establishing a Continuum from Minimizing

to Maximizing Bureaucrats: State Agency

Head Preferences for Governmental Expansion—

A Typology of Administrator Growth Postures,

1964–98

Scholars have long suspected the blanket description of bureaucrats as “budget maximizers” is

simplistic and inaccurate. This article provides empirical grounds for questioning that description

and enhances our understanding of bureaucratic fiscal preferences. Bureaucratic preferences for

expansion are distributed along a continuum. A typology of agency heads’ expansion preferences

is developed and related to Downs’s typology of bureaucrats. Data from eight surveys of state

agency heads (1964–98) enable us to trace administrators’ preferences for expansion over four

decades. These preferences vary substantially in any single survey year and reflect trends across

these years. Notably, a substantial proportion of agency heads opted for no expansion in their

own agency’s programs and expenditures or in the state’s overall budget. This typology challenges

conventional conceptions of bureaucrats’ maximizing preferences, advances alternative interpre-

tations about budget minimizing, and fills an important gap in budget and bureaucracy theory.

In few arenas of public administration are the conflicts,

contentions, and competition more intense, subtle, and

complex than in the arena of budgeting. Kettl (2003, 171)

asserts that “budgeting is the nerve center of the political

universe—and it can often seem that this center is in chaos.”

For the better part of the last four decades, budgets, bud-

geting, and budget theory have been pivot points in this

chaos, around which reform, responsibility, accountabil-

ity, performance, evaluations, and control have revolved.

In this article, we describe the variety, variations, and

distributions of budgetary preferences. We contend that a

better understanding of budgeting behavior is possible if

we can better grasp the preferences (goals) that promote

actions. Budgetary preferences are relevant and significant

variables in the budget process. By describing the diverse

Cynthia J. Bowling is an assistant professor of political science at Auburn

University. Her research focuses on public administrators, bureaucracy, and

policy within the broader state and local government context. She is cur-

rently involved in research to identify and explain patterns of female repre-

sentation in state agency head positions over the last four decades. E-mail:

bowlicj@auburn.edu.

Chung-Lae Cho is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University

of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. His research interests are federalism, inter-

governmental relations, state government and administration, and method-

ology. His dissertation focuses on the dynamics of national influences on

state agencies through incentives (federal aid) and sanctions (mandates). He

served as the associate director of the 1998 American State Administrators

Project. E-mail: clcho@email.unc.edu.

Deil S. Wright is the Alumni Distinguished Professor of Political Science at

the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. E-mail: dswright@mindspring.

com.

preferences of public agency heads, we confirm that ad-

ministrative aspirations in the budget process vary substan-