DEMOCRACY, BUREAUCRACY AND CREDIBLE COMMITMENT

Our commitment to democracy has led to a concern about bureaucratic accountability. We envision bureaucrats as being held responsible by elected officials, in the hope that the desires of elected officials embody the public interest. But there are reasons to expect that elected officials will systematically deviate from the public interest, especially when voting over multi-dimensional issues, when groups of the electorate are inequitably organized for political lobbying, or when the public is rationally ignorant on the issues. This paper offers a rationale for using independent bureaucracies as one component of a constitutional scheme of checks and balances, to improve overall democratic accountability. Delegation to bureaucracies can be shown to produce credible governmental commitment to property rights and the rule of law, but only if the bureaucrats are not responsive in the short run to the re-election goals of public officials.