Introduction

The quest for control of the public machinery has accompanied the entire history of political life, insofar as “the utility function of the agents is not identical with that of the ruler” (North, 1981, p. 25). Today, when we contrast the ramification of public action with the effectiveness of parliamentary control, it is easy to see that the quest is still going on, and if anything is more impelling. Should we conclude that the growth of the welfare state and the widening of democracy has brought about the dethronement of the voter? And who has gained effective power? The notion of bureaucratic capture is one answer, though it is difficult to assign the roles of captor and captive when the rules of the bureaucratic game are concocted inside the political game. Why should representative bodies accept to be dispossessed if they can enact new rules, deny money, and redress the balance of power at any time? Mathew McCubbins and Thomas Schwartz (1984) suggested that the control of the elected assemblies materializes through either “fire-alarm” or “police-patrolling” devices, the former being the case of the U.S. Congress called to act when needed, the latter of the more systematic control exerted by parliaments. Both systems, however, seem to face similar problems, and it is not easy to assess whether that metaphor effectively expresses real differences or generalizes scattered pieces of evidence. In either case, the intriguing question is to ask why the controls and the features of bureaucracies should be different under different democratic systems.