Bureaucrats and Budgeting Benefits: How do British Central Government Departments Measure Up?

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Abstract
Many economics-based theories of bureaucracy build on the assumption that public bureaucrats reap utility from a large budget. This article examines what evidence may be marshalled for bureaucratic appropriation of budgetary funds, by reference to measurable changes in British central government departments from the early 1970s to the early 1980s, both at the civil-service-wide level and at the level of departments taken separately and severally. This evidence indicates that, while the budget/utility approach cannot be dismissed entirely, the link between budgetary increases and bureaucratic utility is neither clearly demonstrable nor universally applicable. At the least, a more refined type of budget/utility theory seems to be called for.