Teacher's PAT? Multiple-Role Principal-Agent Theory, Education Politics, and Bureaucrat Power

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to current theoretical debates about political power and agency relationships in education and other public sector settings. In a recent clarion call for a major redirection of political principal-agent theories (PAT), Terry Moe has argued that standard information asymmetries ought no longer to be regarded as the sole foundation of bureaucrat power. According to Moe, current theories largely overlook the direct electoral power of agents and their unions (EPA) in voting for their own bureaucratic principals. Therefore, they are biased systematically towards under-estimating agent power. We critically address both Moe's theoretical arguments, and his empirical applications to Californian school board elections. We conclude that Moe over-estimates the power consequences of EPA on both counts. We outline a more balanced version of "multiple-role" PAT and of its potential implications for our understanding of the political power of public school teachers and bureaucrats more generally.

Keywords: Teacher unions, School board elections, Californian education, Political power, Bureaucratic agency, Rational choice theory, Democratic governance, Terry Moe