From Maximizing to Minimizing: A National Study of State Bureaucrats and Their Budget Preferences

Abstract

Abstract Since the 1960s, public choice theorists have stigmatized bureaucrats as budget maximizers who only care for expanding their own agencies. Despite evidence revealing much more diverse budget behaviors, scholars have almost exclusively focused on studying budget maximizing and its associated factors. To address this limitation, this study employs a multi-level cross-classified logistic regression model to explore factors associated with budget-minimizing preferences or goals instead. While budget preferences may differ from actual budget requests, where administrators may ask for higher or lower funding, they are the initial goals for strategic budgetary requests and deserve attention. Using four decades of the American State Administrators Project (1974–2008), we analyzed responses from eight surveys reflecting the views of approximately 9,500 state agency administrators across all years. We found a notable number of state administrators holding no aspirations for agency or state budget expansion—budget minimizers. As is the case when administrators formulate their actual strategic budget requests, agency heads’ ultimate goals are shaped by not only the characteristics and internal attitudes of administrators but also by the entire context in which agency heads are embedded. Governors, clientele groups, state budgeting rules, and the fiscal environment all played a role when state administrators formed minimizing budget preferences. Interestingly, while some of these actors continually helped shape budget minimizing over time, others had more limited or time-bound effects.