At its core, this book concerns the relationship between bureaucrats and elected public servants: a central topic of political science. This relationship has been a subject of analysis for as long as people have elected leaders to administer public functions. Invariably, those elected must rely upon numerous individuals that the vast majority of citizens have no role in selecting. This leads to tension between these civil servants' need for latitude to perform their functions effectively and the citizenry's right to determine the course of public policy in a democracy. What is the proper balance between administrative discretion and indirect popular control of government?

Woodrow Wilson posited a politics/administration dichotomy as an ideal to which governments should aspire (1887). The elected representatives determine public policy; the appointed bureaucrats implement it. This separates the politics of policy-making from the administration. But this separation – even in Wilson's account – was possible only when all parties were in agreement on the ends of government. This condition rarely comes about. Thus the ability of elected officials – in the federal context, Members of Congress or the President of the United States – to compel bureaucrats to carry out their will is constantly strained.

In recent years, discussion of the “bureaucratic control” problem has been strongly influenced by work in the field of economics. Starting with the seminal work of William Niskanen (1971), studies of so-called principal-agent problems in the public realm started to resemble analysis of principal-agent issues in private firms (e.g., Alchian and Demsetz 1972).