Civil service and the growth of government

摘要

I study a model of elections which links the scale of government activity to civil service rules. Without tenure protections, bureaucrats' career prospects are tied to the electoral prospects of the party that hires them. To avoid wasteful partisan spending, voters only consent to minimal taxation. If bureaucrats are protected by tenure, they have no incentive to favour one party over another, and governments only produce public goods. In turn, voters consent to high taxes. However, because higher tax revenues increase the ability of governing parties to co-opt the bureaucracy through favourable compensation, large-scale government activity is accompanied by inefficiently high public-sector wages. Crown Copyright (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.