Agency Design, the Mass Media, and the Blame for Agency Scandals

Abstract

I investigate whether formal presidential authority over agencies moderates attributions of responsibility for agency activity. Using a survey experiment that manipulates news coverage of a major agency scandal, I find that providing details about formal presidential control in news coverage significantly increases attributions of responsibility to the president. I then explore broader questions of accountability by assessing mass media attention to agencies. I use a unique data set of over 150,000 newspaper articles, matched to agency design and regulatory activity data sets, and find considerable variation in total coverage and coverage that mentions the president along with the agency. Combined, the results suggest that media coverage of agency design affects how voters allocate blame for agency actions and that political accountability is hindered by minimal media attention to a large number of agencies that wield significant regulatory powers.Government agencies are responsible for the regulation and enforcement of laws that affect nearly every aspect of society. Their responsibilities range from the implementation of major health care and financial reform to the criminal enforcement of antitrust laws and the collection of taxes. Yet democratic institutions rarely provide a direct electoral check on bureaucrats. Political accountability of agencies thus requires that voters credit or blame elected officials with formal authority over those agencies.The process by which voters learn which elected officials are responsible for an agency is complicated by institutional structures that feature multiple political principals, layers of bureaucracy, and complicated decision-making procedures often hidden from public view. A large body of research has thus focused on institutional design features that enhance the clarity of responsibility for agency actions (e.g., Kagan 2001). However, even with this research, we know little about how these features moderate voter attribution of blame. Are responsibility attributions for agency actions influenced by the institutional clarity of responsibility?

Bureaucratic accountability in third‐party governance: Experimental evidence of blame attribution during times of budgetary crisis

“…Therefore, cues can shape citizens’ perceptions of the prescriptions for a given event, where cues about the context may shape citizens’ expectations given the change in the environment. Information cues influence citizens’ blame attributions, especially when the information affects the controllability or distance from the event (Ruder , ). For example, blame is higher for a state governor who performs poorly when the state legislature is the same political party as the governor (Rudolph ), illustrating how cues influence perceptions of controllability.…”

Citizen Attributions of Blame in Third‐Party Governance

“…In a pair of studies that estimate the structure → blame model, Ruder (, ) tests two hypotheses concerning how details about the design of federal agencies affect the amount of blame that individuals attribute to the president for agency behavior. In the first, which focuses on antitrust enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Ruder () uses a survey experiment to examine whether information about the FTC's structural independence affects the amount of blame that subjects attribute to the president for FTC enforcement activities.…”

“…In the second study, which focuses on oversight of the oil and gas industry by the Minerals Management Service (MMS), Ruder () uses a similar experiment to test whether subjects who are given information implying presidential control attribute more blame to President Barack Obama for the MMS's role in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Ruder finds that subjects in this “presidential control” condition do indeed attribute more blame to President Obama than subjects who are given no information implying presidential control of the MMS.…”

Can Hierarchy Dodge Bullets? Examining Blame Attribution in Military Contracting

“…Ruder (2014) varied the agency types in a survey experiment and found that participants were less likely to attribute blame to a U.S. President when there was no causallinkage present with an agency. Similarly, Ruder (2015) conducted an experiment concerning the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and found that survey participants were more likely to attribute blame to the U.S. President if a causal-linkage was established. This research collectively suggests that blame associated with bad policy outcomes can be diffused when there is no clear causal-linkage at the Federal level, perhaps this is due to issue saliency at the Federal level with a greater clarity in hierarchy and program control.…”