The Costs of Speaking Truth to Power: How Professionalism Facilitates Credible Communication

Abstract

This article examines how information or policy analysis can be credibly communicated between the bureaucracy and Congress. To investigate this issue, I develop a signaling model which shows that under certain circumstances—specifically when professionalized bureaucrats can impose observable costs on themselves that their politically inclined counterparts are unwilling to incur—credible communication between the bureaucracy and Congress is possible. A contribution of this article is that it provides a theoretical underpinning for the importance of professionalism and neutral competence in the bureaucracy as a means of promoting good governance. A promise underlies public policy: if the actions we recommend are undertaken, good … consequences rather than bad … ones actually will come about. (Wildavsky 1979, 35) The “political master” finds himself in the position of the “dilettante” who stands opposite the “expert,” facing the trained official who stands within the management of administration. (Weber, as quoted in Gerth and Mills 1958, 232).

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