This study suggests a key element of the principal-agent relationship involves communication between potential principals and their agents. We suggest communications often resemble a signaling process in which potential principals indicate their interest in policy matters through multiple venues. This study models changes in the levels of rulemaking activity by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as a function of increased salience in public, congressional and executive venues.

Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) has reoriented the study of public policy and American politics in particular. In this study, we documented how a policy punctuation that appears to take hold at the macro level of the polity in the form of a policy regime has difficulty penetrating subsystem politics. We drew on subsystems theory, PET, and the latest work on policy regimes to document the resistance of the agriculture subsystem to efforts to add a civil rights dimension to agriculture policy between 1935 and 2006. We concluded that the issue evolution of agricultural support programs, and their insulation from civil rights policy, is a prime example of how subsystems use negative feedback to resist change.

This article critically examines the key assumptions of the positive the0 y of political control. The authors argue that the key assumptions of the t h e o y are flawed and that these flaws seriously limit the importance of much research in the field of regulato y studies. The authors develop a set of new assumptions which would reorient the regulatory studies and force researchers to give greater attention to the role of the bureaucracy in politicalbureaucratic relations.

A wavering equilibrium theory of subsystem politics is developed to distinguish between three types of subsystem politics. I suggest that subsystem players' ability to control the policy agenda varies with changes in subsystem politics. This article uses correlation analysis with data on bill sponsorship and referral to examine the impact of subsystem variation on policy making in three subsystems. I find that subsystem political variation is associated with changes in subsystem players' ability to control bill introduction and referral.

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