Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance

Given the influence of public bureaucracies in policymaking and implementation, Steven J. Balla and William T. Gormley assess their performance using four key perspectives―bounded rationality, principal-agent theory, interest group mobilization, and network theory―to help students develop an analytic framework for evaluating bureaucratic accountability. The new Fourth Edition of Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance provides a thorough review of bureaucracy during the Obama and Trump administrations, as well as new attention to state and local level examples and the role of bureaucratic values.
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New to this Edition:

• Interviews with two new cabinet secretaries―Christine Todd Whitman and Tom Ridge―with insightful quotes from them throughout the book.
• Added material on the battle over regulations, a battle that will loom large during the Trump administration, including midnight regulations and the Congressional Review Act.
• New examples demonstrate the activity and influence of constituencies of different kinds including the placing of women and minorities on US currency, a vignette that features the musical Hamilton, and the political protests surrounding the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines.
• A new discussion of the privatization of roads, the pros and cons.