To what expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the Constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constitutent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.
The Federalist, No. 51In the rent-seeking model of politics discussed in Chapter 15, politicians buy and sell legislation to interest groups. The legislature is a marketplace at which rents are bought and sold. Problems of bureaucratic discretion are ignored. The legislature is in complete control. In stark contrast, in the first model of bureaucracy discussed in the previous chapter, the legislature is at the complete mercy of an all-powerful bureaucracy. Both types of models are, of course, polar cases derived to illustrate certain features of the political process. In this chapter we take a further look at the relationship between the legislature and the bureaucracies charged with implementing the policies initiated in the legislature. We also consider the separate role played by the chief executive in presidential systems like that of the United States, and the role of the judiciary. We begin with a model that completely reverses the power relationship of the Niskanen bureaucracy model.
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