For the same reasons, and to avoid risks, the bureau-shaping model also predicts that senior government bureaucrats will often favour either 'agencification' to other public sector bodies by having policy determination and advice separated from the implementation of the legislated practices of government (as in the UK 'Next Steps' programme, Australian Department - Agency system) or off-loading functions to contractors and privatization.
It was propounded in response to William Niskanen's harsh criticism of Public Bureaucracies in his Budget Maximising Model.
Patrick Dunleavy, a British political scientist who set out to demolish the public choice arguments on bureaucracy, came instead in the end to develop a public choice model of bureaucratic behaviour which combines elements of Peacock’s insight with the original American model.
The first three are consistent with Niskanen’s model: (i) bureau policies are set by bureaucrats interacting with the government; (ii) governments largely depend on information from bureaus about the costs and value of producing within given ranges of output; and (iii) bureaucrats maximise their personal utilities (by satisfying "self-regarding, relatively hard-edged preferences") when making official decisions.
Dunleavy therefore discards Niskanen’s assumption that a bureau’s behaviour will be wholly in line with the preferences of a single senior bureaucrat.