Voters rarely get to choose the exact level of spending on a public good. Instead, they are provided with two options a proposed spending level posed by the government and a default (or reversion ) level that would be enacted if the proposal were rejected by voters. The Leviathan theory suggests that governments will intentionally select large proposed spending levels and default levels that are well below the desired level of spending. Why is this behavior consistent with a size-maximizing government?

Ministers and public servants have a substantial opportunity to optimize their results and hence their budgets in reference to size-maximizing government theory. Most bureaucrats are interested in maintaining and increasing their jobs, with big-spending budgets, whereas citizens don not concur with such huge spending rates. This is one of the reasons they rarely get to choose public spending levels. By establishing deficient default levels, voters become compelled to select between high levels of government expenditure and inadequate expenditure levels. Many government services, like protection by the police, education, and road construction, are viewed by citizens as crucial. The likelihood of the government reverting to a limited, default level of public expenditure threatens not to provide these vital services. In case the government is jeopardizing its taxpayers by rejecting necessities or significant cuts in popular initiatives, then the citizen will be pressured to select between the low budget and the high budget; therefore, the expenditure will be higher than their preference. Therefore given an option, voters will endorse the presented higher budget since the preferred smaller budget would make them significantly more miserable.