[2] According to the budget-maximizing model, rational bureaucrats will always and everywhere seek to increase their budgets in order to increase their own power, thereby contributing strongly to state growth and potentially reducing social efficiency.
It will therefore be the legislature, or Government, the agent which defines the department's budget, depending on the quantity which it supplies.
Therefore, the bureaucrat's objective will be to maximize the quantity of services supplied, subject to a social welfare break-even constraint.
This means that the dead weight loss generated by excessive production of services must never be higher than the elector's consumer surplus (otherwise, the Legislature would notice that something was wrong with the department's activity, which would be causing social losses and not gains).
In Niskanen's model, he would predict that average costs and benefits would be equated instead of the marginals.