Bureaucratic Ambition

Manuel Teodoro offers a whole new way of thinking about the motivations of policy entrepreneurs, tying the urge to innovate with career ambition. This book breaks new ground, and does so with an effective blending of new theorizing and new empirical work. This is sound scholarship that is original and exciting. -- Michael Mintrom, author of People Skills for Policy Analysts and Policy Entrepreneurs and School Choice Teodoro uses sensible theorizing, compelling case studies, and unique data to show that two masters, current employers and potential future employers, influence how and whether administrators innovate. Going well beyond conventional principal-agent approaches, Bureaucratic Ambition is among the most important books on bureaucracy in recent years and is one of the best written. -- Robert Maranto, 21st Century Chair in Leadership, University of Arkansas

Its lessons will enrich debate among scholars and inform policymakers and career administrators.Political scientists and public administration scholars have long recognized that innovation in public agencies is contingent on entrepreneurial bureaucratic executives. But unlike their commercial counterparts, public administration "entrepreneurs" do not profit from their innovations. What motivates enterprising public executives? How are they created? Manuel P. Teodoro's theory of bureaucratic executive ambition explains why pioneering leaders aren not the result of serendipity, but rather arise out of predictable institutional design. Teodoro explains the systems that foster or frustrate entrepreneurship among public executives. Through case studies and quantitative analysis of original data, he shows how psychological motives and career opportunities shape administrators' decisions, and he reveals the consequences these choices have for innovation and democratic governance. Tracing the career paths and political behavior of agency executives, Teodoro finds that, when advancement involves moving across agencies, ambitious bureaucrats have strong incentives for entrepreneurship. Where career advancement occurs vertically within a single organization, ambitious bureaucrats have less incentive for innovation, but perhaps greater accountability. This research introduces valuable empirical methods and has already generated additional studies. A powerful argument for the art of the possible, Bureaucratic Ambition advances a flexible theory of politics and public administration. Its lessons will enrich debate among scholars and inform policymakers and career administrators.