In Search of the Machiavellian Milquetoasts: Comparing Attitudes of Bureaucrats and Ordinary People

Charles Goodsell (1983, p. 12) argues that the public image of government employees is highly contradictory but overwhelmingly negative. Bureaucrats are portrayed as fear-ridden yet arrogant, incompetent yet ominous, milquetoasts yet Machiavellians. His own reading of the research literature leads him to conclude that bureaucrats are just ordinary people, with demographic characteristics, political opinions, and personal attitudes quite similar to those of the general populace.