Directing the Whirlwind

Parshall, Lisa K.; Twombly, Jim

doi:10.3726/b17495

Cited by 2 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Yet this theory fails to account for the neglect that persists across administrations and partisan lines. Moreover, this theory does not adequately explain the deconstructive tendencies of conservative presidents (Durant 1992;Parshall and Twombly 2020).…”

Section: American Presidents and Administrative Capacitymentioning

confidence: 95%

“…This partisan or ideological view draws support from the recent experience of the Trump Administration (see, e.g., Freeman and Jacobs 2021;Skowronek, Dearborn, and King 2021). Like other conservative administrations (Durant 1992), the Trump Administration sought to advance a deregulatory agenda by dismantling the effectiveness of the federal bureaucracy (Parshall and Twombly 2020).…”

Section: American Presidents and Administrative Capacitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increasing capacity requires presidents and their staff to identify capable leaders, advocate for targeted appropriations, and mitigate procedural constraints that impact performance. Deconstruction may require presidents to find ways to circumvent civil service laws, cut budgets, or flood an agency with busy work (Freeman and Jacobs 2021;Parshall and Twombly 2020;Skowronek, Dearborn, and King 2021). The sheer size of the administrative state prevents presidents from meaningfully investing in every agency.…”

Section: When Do Presidents Invest In Capacity?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Countless failures-from the mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina to the spread of COVID-19-trace their roots to poor management in neglected agencies. Second, President Trump's vow to "deconstruct the administrative state" suggests that presidents, at times, have political incentives to undermine capacity (Benn 2019;Durant 1992;Parshall and Twombly 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The focus on agencies has the effect of averaging across these different emphases within an agency. The overall categorization of build, neglect, and deconstruct could usefully be applied to administration approaches within agencies, particularly large agencies with dozens of statutory responsibilities.3 In other cases, the White House diminishes capacity by appointing ineffective leaders(Lewis 2008), leaving leadership positions vacant, allowing the agency's workforce to wither(Richardson 2019), and actively dismantling agency capacity(Parshall and Twombly 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Presidential Investment in the Administrative State

Bednar

Lewis

2023

Am Polit Sci Rev

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In this paper, we explain how presidents strategically invest in administrative capacity, noting that presidents have few incentives to invest effort in capacity building in most agencies. We test our account with two analyses. First, we examine the time it took for the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations to nominate individuals to appointed positions. We find that presidents prioritize appointments to policy over management positions and that nominations occur sooner in agencies that implement presidential priorities. Second, we examine the responses of federal executives to the 2020 Survey on the Future of Government Service to see whether perceptions of presidential investment in administrative capacity match our predictions. We find that federal executives perceive higher levels of investment when the agency is a priority of the president and when the agency shares the president’s policy views. We conclude with implications for our understanding of the modern presidency and government performance.

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Section: American Presidents and Administrative Capacitymentioning

confidence: 95%