Organizational Capacity, Regulatory Review, and the Limits of Political Control

Bolton, Alexander; Potter, Rachel Augustine; Thrower, Sharece

doi:10.1093/jleo/ewv025

Cited by 44 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…The public sector consequences of electoral politics are very important since significant departures can diminish the expertise in administrative agencies and damage the government's ability to carry out key functions. 1 Given the ubiquity of elections and their impact on the goals and mission of public sector workplaces, it is surprising how little is understood about the impact of elections on turnover 1 There is a large literature on this relationship in the private, not-for-profit, and public sectors (see, e.g., Bolton, Potter, and Thrower 2016;Boylan 2004;Hancock et al 2013;Hausknecht and Trevor 2011;Heavy et al 2013;O'Toole and Meier 2003;Park and Shaw 2013;Shaw 2011). 3 among career civil servants.…”

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confidence: 99%

Elections, Ideology, and Turnover in the U.S. Federal Government

Bolton¹,

Figueiredo²,

Lewis³

2016

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A defining feature of public sector employment is the regular change in elected leadership. Yet, we know little about how elections influence public sector careers. We describe how elections alter policy outputs and disrupt the influence of civil servants over agency decisions. These changes shape the career choices of employees motivated by policy, influence, and wages. Using new Office of Personnel Management data on the careers of millions of federal employees between 1988 and 2011, we evaluate how elections influence employee turnover decisions. We find that presidential elections increase departure rates of career senior employees, particularly in agencies with divergent views relative to the new president and at the start of presidential terms. We also find suggestive evidence that vacancies in high-level positions after elections may induce lower-level executives to stay longer in hopes of advancing. We conclude with implications of our findings for public policy, presidential politics, and public management.

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confidence: 99%

Elections, Ideology, and Turnover in the U.S. Federal Government

Bolton¹,

Figueiredo²,

Lewis³

2016

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“…And, of course, strategic timing undoubtedly affects policymakers' decisions in a number of other venues, from position-taking in Congress (Box-Steffensmeier, Arnold and Zorn, 1997), to judges' decisions about when to retire (Spriggs and Wahlbeck, 1995), to when local bureaucrats schedule elections (Meredith, 2009). 18 See Bolton, Potter and Thrower (2016) and Heinzerling (2014).…”

Section: Measuring Timing Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…22 Table 6.A1 in the Appendix to this chapter presents the results of the event history analyses. 23 Table entries are Cox proportional hazard coefficients, where a positive coefficient 21 Bolton, Potter and Thrower (2016). 22 Ideally, I would start the clock when the agency first put pen to paper to start working on a rule.…”

Section: Evaluating Strategic Timingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bending the Rules

Potter¹

2019

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Hi everyone, Thanks for taking the time to attend this workshop. I'm presenting from my forthcoming book: Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy. I've attached here three chapters from the book-Chapter 1 (intro), Chapter 3 (theory), and Chapter 6 (empirical chapter). This is a lot of reading (!) and I'm not expecting everyone to pore over every wordyou may want to read the introduction (Chapter 1) and skim through Chapters 3 and 6 to get enough of the argument and approach to have a good discussion. I'm particularly interested in how to extend the argument to other venues beyond rulemaking, but all feedback is welcome. Thanks again, Rachel

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“…1 For example, regulations must pass executive review by OIRA before being codified as binding law. For this reason OIRA has often been viewed as a regulatory 'gatekeeper' that can stifle and effectively veto agency policies (Bolton et al, 2015;Copeland, 2005). Additionally, agencies perpetually interact with individuals and firms that may challenge their actions in court.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working smart and hard? Agency effort, judicial review, and policy precision

Turner

2016

Journal of Theoretical Politics

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The lion's share of policy in the United States is made by administrative agencies. Agencies not only make policy choices, they must also implement policy effectively. Oversight institutions play an integral role in the policymaking process by monitoring, through review of agency policy actions, both policymaking tasks. Through analysis of a formal model I develop a theory of policymaking between agencies and courts and show that review can impact agency effort choices even when bureaucratic subversion is not a concern. At times the court has no impact on this effort and the agency is unconstrained. However, when the agency's effort dictates whether or not the court defers to the agency's actions judicial review does affect effort decisions. In this setting, review can either strengthen or, counter-intuitively, weaken agency effort incentives. Implications for executive and congressional oversight are discussed in light of these results.

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Organizational Capacity, Regulatory Review, and the Limits of Political Control

Cited by 44 publications

References 53 publications

Elections, Ideology, and Turnover in the U.S. Federal Government

Elections, Ideology, and Turnover in the U.S. Federal Government

Bending the Rules

Working smart and hard? Agency effort, judicial review, and policy precision

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