Budget-maximizing model

The budget-maximizing model is an influential stream of public choice theory and rational choice analysis in public administration inaugurated by William Niskanen, in 1971. It argued that rational bureaucrats will always and everywhere seek to increase their budgets in order to increase their own power, thereby contributing strongly to state growth and potentially reducing social efficiency. The bureau-shaping model has been developed as a response to the budget-maximizing model. Niskanen's inspiration could also have been Parkinson's law sixteen years earlier (1955).