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Abstract:
Our study focuses on two research questions. The first is what is government effectiveness? This relates to how we measure government effectiveness or performance in terms of the whole government, not just in terms of an agency or several networked agencies. The second research question is how countries compare in terms of perceived government effectiveness. We use the World Bank dataset Governance Matters VI, which covers 212 countries and measures six dimensions of governance (voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption) from 1996 until 2006. We focus on government effectiveness to investigate the variation in government effectiveness across both countries and time, and show that much of the variation in effectiveness is explained by national income. After we account for this, we identify those countries that are relatively high and low performing. Finally, we draw conclusions about the focus of the next generation of research on government effectiveness in public administration.

government effectiveness, comparative bureaucracy

Abstract:
Efforts to explain corruption have increased dramatically over the last few years. The interest stems from the increasing weight economists assign to corruption when explaining economic growth and from the availability of data that measure it. Much of the effort centers on how political institutions influence perceptions of corruption. We move this debate in a new and fertile direction by addressing a previously ignored dimension: ideological polarization. Specifically, we contend that perceptions of corruption are determined not only by specific institutional features of the political system - elements of voting systems, ballot structures, or the existence of checks and balances - but by who sits at the controls. We employ pooled cross-sectional data for a broad variety of countries to test our theoretical argument. Contrary to recent findings by both economists and political scientists, we show that ideological polarization is a robust predictor of corruption.

Corruption, political institutions, political polarization

Abstract:
Pure incentive schemes rely on the agent's self-interest, rather than more coercive control, to motivate subordinates. Yet most organizations, and in particular public agencies, rely very little on pure incentive contracts and instead use coercive mechanisms of monitoring and sanctioning that many theorists find objectionable. We use principal-agency theory to investigate the problem. Principal-agency theory has tacitly assumed throughout that it is in the principal's interests to find a set of incentives that induce efficient levels of effort from the agent. We show that this is not necessarily the case. We identify a problem we denote as "the principal's moral hazard constraint" in which bonuses large enough to produce the efficient incentive effect are prohibitively expensive for the principal. Potential solutions to this problem - involving penalization or joint ownership - are unavailable in the public sphere. This means that for a large class of control problems in agencies, the principal's self-interest will result in the inefficient use of monitoring and oversight rather than outcome-contingent incentives. Although monitoring is often thought of as resulting from the agent's moral hazard, it can just as reasonably be seen as resulting from the principal's moral hazard.

Abstract:
Pure incentive schemes rely on agent self-interest, rather than more coercive control, to motivate subordinates. Yet most organizations, and in particular public agencies, rely very little on pure incentive contracts. Most organizations rely on the primarily coercive mechanisms of monitoring and sanctioning that many theorists have found objectionable about hierarchy. We identify a problem we denote as "the principal's moral hazard constraint" which can result in an inefficient reliance on monitoring and sanctioning: even when the agent's behavior can be efficiently shaped by a straightforward incentives scheme, the principal's self-interest may stand in the way of implementing it. In these cases, the bonuses large enough to produce the efficient incentive effect are prohibitively expensive for the principal.

One way out of this trap - the penalization of the agent for poor performance - faces general legal restrictions in the public workforce. Another - to form an ownership agreement with the agent - is impossible due to the ownership structure of government. This means that for a large class of control problems in agencies, and hierarchical control problems more generally, institutional designers must rely on more coercive monitoring-based mechanisms for controlling agents. While monitoring is often thought of as resulting from the agent's moral hazard, it can just as reasonably be seen as resulting from the principal's moral hazard.

hierarchies, principal-agency, risk aversion

Abstract:
Principal-agency theory has analyzed "the principal's problem" - how to write a contract so that incentives will induce an agent to provide the principal with the maximum feasible expected gain. In practice, principal-agent contracts are negotiated not imposed. This paper reports an experiment which reveals that agent compliance is determined less by the negotiated terms of the contract than by expectations shaped by the negotiation process itself. These results justify further research on the politics of negotiation and of bureaucratic politics. The experiments also extend the study of negotiation beyond the construction of an agreement between parties to an examination of the post-negotiation implementation of that agreement.

Negotiation, Agency Theory, Social Exchange

Abstract:
Numerous recent studies have addressed how the investment choices of firms depend on elite perceptions of the quality of national regulatory regimes. Likewise, other studies show that government structures can help to support credible commitments that protect market mechanisms. We provide the first analytic discussion of elite perceptions of national regulatory quality as a function of the independence of regulators in a country's political system. Our central claims are that market operations depend on perceptions of regulatory quality and that independent regulators facilitate elite perceptions of regulatory quality because they check actors in domestic political systems. Cross-national statistical evidence suggests that regulatory independence supports elite perceptions of high regulatory quality. We also provide evidence that regulatory independence is more likely where political competition shapes incentives to intervene in business markets.

Regulatory quality, regulatory independence, political economy

Abstract:
This essay discusses an integrative economic theory that reconciles rank-order tournaments with the traditional public administration concern for accountability in government. Recent reforms have concentrated on organizational designs that flow from piece-rate approaches to employee compensation and have ignored the incentive-compatibility aspects of traditional personnel systems. My claim is that promotion tournaments in public organization hierarchies are perhaps more efficient than the pay-for-performance systems often called for in traditional principal-agent approaches.

Agency theory, public organizations, pay for performance, organizational design

Abstract:
In this paper I describe the effects on authority when organizations shift from product-line to matrix structures. My method of analysis is based on how political scientists study agendas in committees. I first recount that moving from a functional to a product-line structure increases the types of conflict referred from lower to higher levels of the hierarchy, but does not increase the amount of conflict referred. I then show that moving from a product-line to a matrix structure increases the amount and the types of conflict referred to higher levels of the hierarchy; that it is possible in matrix forms that no conflict is resolved at the lowest levels of the hierarchy; and, that accountability is reduced for who are able to refer conflict. One implication is that organizational leaders who use matrix forms strategically alter information flows. It also suggests that matrix structures reduced those benefits originally perceived in the shift from functional to product-line structures. This analysis fits with the recent history of matrix forms in a variety of organizations.

Agenda-setting, authority, conflict resolution, hierarchy, matrix

Abstract:
This essay quantitatively investigates several possible foundations for environmental sustainability, as measured across countries with varying geography, development patterns, social customs, and political arrangements. We first test two central hypotheses about the roles of democratization and federalism. We find little evidence for variation in sustainability levels given variation in either democratization or federalism. However, we find that the effects of environmental interests, development paths, and religious orientations vary across our three measures of sustainability.

Sustainability, federalism, democracy, economic development, religion, environmental policy

Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to test the direct effect of the structure of the civil service on public perceptions of corruption. Numerous studies suggest a relationship between the design of civil service systems and corruption, but few studies actually test this theoretical link. We hypothesize that corruption levels depend on the presence or absence of particular civil service policies, including job duties, tenure and security provisions, discipline policy, and rules on rewards and bargaining rights; we also assess the impact of wages on corruption levels. We test these hypotheses using World Bank data from a collection of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Central and Eastern European countries. Using a variety of univariate and multivariate tests, we find no statistically-significant relationships between civil service structure and corruption; however, we find occasional evidence that corruption levels are lower in countries with higher total government wage bills. While our conclusions are largely exploratory, we argue that there is no strong and significant evidence that the variations in civil service systems we observe in our data are causing public perceptions of corruption.

Civil service, corruption, institutional design

Abstract:
We examine how a principal implements a joint forcing contract for a team of two agents, whose joint product determines the value of the principal's asset. We focus on the "agents' problem": whether to contribute to a public good when one's costly contribution is unobservable. Our experiments show that agents provide higher levels of effort than predicted given the principal's imposed contract. While principals governing teams of agents sometimes do use incentives, in cases where incentives are not present - if agents trust one another - they are each more likely to contribute high effort.

Principal agency, teams, experiments, trust

Abstract:
How does the informational role of interest groups interact with institutions in the political control of the bureaucracy? In 1992, Banks and Weingast argued that bureaucrats hold an informational advantage vis-a-vis political principals concerning variables with direct policy relevance, and that an agency can exploit this information if it chooses to do so because politicians and bureaucrats interact in a world of asymmetric information. They show that when the politician's cost of auditing the agency is high, the agency can extract more, and politicians anticipate this by adapting to it in their design of agencies. Auditing cost depends on the technology available for monitoring, and the ability of an interest group to monitor the agency's choices and performance and relay that information to politicians. The informational advantage is reduced - the agency is more likely to "tell the truth" - when a low-cost monitoring technology is available, and when the group is cohesive enough to participate in monitoring.

I test this hypothesis using data on bureaucratic statements on the importance of a series of public policy problems using a cross-section of state-level environmental agencies. I show that importance statements are aligned with objective circumstances when both conditions are satisfied: when the technology is present and as the interest group becomes concentrated. The bureaucracy's informational advantage collapses under these conditions, and the statements conform to those in a "truth-telling" equilibrium.

Political control of the bureaucracy, environmental policy, right to know, asymmetric information

Abstract:
We describe a simple mechanism for achieving two goals: (1) to encourage firms to take environmentally friendly action, and (2) to make environmental protection regime-proof. We assert that there is wide evidence now that firms adopting an environmental management system (EMS) like ISO 14001 improve their environmental performance. This is because ISO 14001's third-party audits reduce the chance firms will willfully fail to comply with regulations, and the EMS procedure reduces the chances firms will be in noncompliance due to ignorance. Our mechanism is intended to harness the power of EMS systems within firms, while reducing the chances that political change will nullify our solution. To achieve these goals, make firms' participation in public procurement programs contingent on their adoption of an EMS such as ISO 14001.

Environmental policy, environmental enforcement, environmental regulation, public procurement

Abstract:
The principal-agent problem is fundamental to organization design. A principal must negotiate an incentive contract to motivate a more risk averse agent to undertake costly actions that cannot be observed. In rational choice theory, the problem is solved through an inefficient shifting of risk from principal to agent. However, neither field studies nor prior experiments have observed the types of contracts nor the agent response predicted by this theory. Two experiments were conducted to test a modular social cognition theory explanation for this discrepancy. According to this alternative to rational choice theory, individuals have evolved specialized cognitive capabilities for dealing with exchange relations. These very human capabilities do not operate by the same logic as rational choice. Both a study of individual agent decisions to a series of hypothesized contracts in experiment one and the interactive bargaining of experiment two yielded results consistent with the modular theory. The logic of social exchange is quite different from the logic of individual choice or game theory. Implications for theory and practice are considered.

Negotiation, Gift Exchange, Principal Agent Theory

Abstract:
We offer a comparative study of the differences in civil service systems across countries in order to observe how these systems relate to one another. We compare the civil service systems of twenty-six countries from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and eight non-OECD countries from Central and Eastern Europe to identify how different configurations of civil service systems are revealed through their shared attributes. Our data are drawn from the contents of civil service legislation and the status of those civil servants covered by the civil service laws of these countries. We use cluster analysis to identify several groups of countries whose civil service systems share similar features. We find that the estimated topography, or similarity among systems, depends on both subjective decisions about the number of groups and the variables used to estimate the space. However, we draw important conclusions about the value of certain cases, like the United States, for learning about other systems, and the need for expanded knowledge of systems from Central and Eastern Europe.

civil service systems, organizational configurations, comparative bureaucracy

Abstract:
We assess Hirschman's theory of exit, voice and loyalty in the context of voluntary exit from organizations in the public workforce. Specifically, we test the effects of loyalty and voice on the likelihood a person states their intention to leave. We assess these relationships using data from the Federal Human Capital Survey. Our statistical analysis provides evidence that perceptions about voice and loyalty limit exit at all levels of the organizational hierarchy. Yet, dissatisfaction with pay is also a substantial cause of intention to leave - and this effect is greatest for executive-level employees. We also show evidence for "motivation crowding" when pay-based motivation is emphasized.

Exit, voice, loyalty, public workforce, survey

Abstract:
This manuscript examines the relationship between political veto points, credible commitments and regulatory compliance costs. We extend the work on credible commitments in comparative political economy and apply this framework to environmental compliance costs in the American states. Our central purpose is to assess whether different types of political veto points credibly constrain regulatory change, and thus lower compliance costs. We conceptualize veto points broadly, including legislative oversight, gubernatorial powers, and direct democracy. We analyze state-level environmental regulatory compliance costs from 1988 to 1994 as a function of the structure of state political institutions and state political and economic characteristics. Our results suggest that a key veto point, the authority for legislators to review bureaucratic behavior, consistently reduces compliance costs. In comparison, citizen initiatives, gubernatorial powers, and stringent discharge rules do not systematically influence compliance costs.

Credible commitment, regulatory compliance costs, environmental policy

Abstract:
In this study, I argue that in the United States the primary effect of the 1973 oil crisis, initiated by OPEC's embargo of Western nations and enhanced by a rise in crude oil prices, was the increased political attention paid to the structure and performance of oil and natural gas markets - along with consideration for the government's support for energy conservation. The primary effect of these price signals in the U.S. was the emergence of a political agenda, accompanied by a number of policy interventions. To support this argument, this study brings together three pieces of evidence: data on the long-term structure of consumption and prices; a detailed narrative of the administration's role in stabilizing markets through sequences of policy bids; and, quantitative evidence on the legislative agenda and its shift after these events. This means that just as the domestic affairs of countries may drive their international positions, broad international changes in commodity prices systematically affect their domestic agendas.

Oil, policy agenda, OPEC, institutional change

Abstract:
In this study, we build upon the work of Ducat and Dudley's 1989 examination of presidential power and the federal judiciary. Whereas they focused upon presidential fortunes before the federal district courts in cases involving the formal constitutional and statutory powers of the president, we apply a similar model to the voting records of United States Supreme Court Justices in such presidential power cases. Additionally, we offer an extended model of justice voting on presidential power cases that we believe affords a better explanation of the decision-making process. We find that justices' decisions to support the president are conditioned upon presidents' public approval ratings and the justices' ideological inclinations. We also find that presidents receive more voting support in cases involving foreign policy and military affairs than in domestic/nonmilitary cases, thus, lending support to the two presidencies thesis.

President, supreme court, ideology, presidential approval, foreign policy, constitutional

Abstract:
Numerous studies argue that law affects behavior "expressively" - such as when states create focal points that overcome the coordination difficulties firms face. We argue that governments help firms overcome coordination dilemmas when they explicate a preferred strategy for firms weighing investment in voluntary regulation. Firms seeking the advantages of self-regulation would prefer to coordinate on a common strategy as a way of reducing the costs of voluntary regulation and increasing its benefits. We test our hypothesis about the efficacy of focal point selection within the context of the European Union's advocacy of the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) over a rival environmental management system, ISO 14001. Our data are from a broad variety of nations both inside and outside the EU, and our statistical analysis accounts for other institutional factors thought to cause the adoption of both environmental management systems. EU nations have statistically significantly lower rates of ISO 14001 certification than comparable countries and higher adoption rates of EMAS. These results emphasize the role the state plays in coordinating business behavior even when such policy is simply expressive.

Voluntary regulation, compliance, environmental management system, expressive law

Abstract:
This paper assesses the use and value of decision-making (or deliberative) teams in the form of advisory committees for regulation by the FDA. Our theoretical framework is common principles offered in organization theory for the design of such coordination mechanisms. Specifically, we examine the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee (DSaRM) with regard to its composition and performance using standard criteria of effectiveness, efficiency, and fairness of deliberations.

Teams, Regulation, Pharmaceuticals, Advisory Committees

Abstract:
We examine data from a laboratory test in which pairs of subjects are given the task of negotiating a wage-labor agreement. We find limited evidence for gender differences in the content of wage agreements and differences in trusting behavior.

Experimental economics, Gender, Principal-Agency

Abstract:
The central question in modern regulatory states is how to balance the sword of public enforcement with the setting of incentives for firms to comply with the law - broadly, to pursue the public good - just because it is in their interest to do so. We assess the ability of the state to encourage firms to take such socially responsible action in the case of the worldwide voluntary environmental protection standard ISO 14001. We argue that across a broad variety of countries the incidence of compliance is fundamentally constrained by technological development. Yet, a small subset of countries (with high regulatory stringency) can shift some of the burden of regulatory oversight to the firms themselves. By separating out the effects of technology and regulatory stringency, we offer a unique multilevel approach that allows us to move beyond past studies and to better understand the consequences of what designers can and cannot control.

Voluntary regulation, compliance, environmental management system, technology

Abstract:
It is a widespread conventional wisdom that presidential pardons - the only way for offenders to remove or eliminate all disabilities that arise from a federal or military offense - are political. We move beyond this belief and assess five broad ways that federal pardons may be systematically influenced by the policy agendas present in a separated powers system. We model the aggregate dispensation of clemency appeals (requests for pardons) using Prais-Winsten regression and find that the probability of denials for executive clemency reflects the president's own agenda and ideological position, Congressional attention to criminal justice issues, and the homicide rate. In sum, both policy signals and the political processes they signify permeate the presidential pardons process.

Presidency, executive branch, pardons, clemency, executive privilege, criminal justice, separated powers, policy signals, policy agendas

Abstract:
It is a widespread conventional wisdom that presidential pardons - the only way for offenders to remove or eliminate all disabilities that arise from a federal or military offense - are political. We move beyond this belief and assess the relative contribution of the president's own policy agenda, other policy agendas present in the separated powers system, and external social conditions on the president's dispensation of federal pardons. We estimate a time series model of the president's aggregate dispensation of clemency appeals (requests for pardons) and find that the probability of denials for executive clemency reflects the president's own agenda and ideological position. We show that evidence appearing to support direct effects of Congressional attention to criminal justice issues and the homicide rate is spurious. In sum, while the president dispenses pardons as part of a system of separated powers, how he exercises this unilateral power depends mostly on his own policy positions.

Clemency, president, unilateral power, Constitution

Abstract:
Numerous recent studies contend that public health agencies in the U.S. are in a state of turmoil because their organizational form causes them to take on conflicting mandates. One reason is the tradeoff in design between creating stand-alone agencies for health and environment, and creating super agencies that combine the two. Using data on the organizational form of state health and environmental agencies, we assess the choice of organizational form as a problem of institutional design and employ statistical models intended to uncover the roots of these choices. Our results suggest that historical development and latent community factors can help explain the choice of combined or independent agencies. We believe that this case provides useful information about the roots of organizational design for resolving competing demands, and provides insight into concerns about the delivery of health and environmental protection in the states.

Organizational design, public health, environmental health

Abstract:
This paper develops a regime-splitting process model of decentralized policy implementation in order to integrate two theoretical approaches rooted in the tension between local flexibility and national control. I estimate a model that simultaneously assesses the ability of each approach to explain the outcome it is meant to map onto (case-level discretion for local flexibility, and aggregate responsiveness for national control) as well as each approach's extensibility to the other approach's domain. My data for the study come from the implementation of eight primary statutes by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's regional offices. The results are counter-intuitive: the national control approach largely explains case-level discretion, the domain of local flexibility, but retains some power for explaining aggregate responsiveness. The local flexibility perspective contributes to both case-level discretion and aggregate responsiveness. Both models work outside their traditional domains, but neither is a sufficient explanation for decentralized policy implementation.

policy implementation, decentralization, political control of the bureaucracy, environmental policy

Abstract:
Substantial attention has turned to the elimination of racial health disparities, the role of race in health care provision, and the socioeconomic determinants of public health outcomes in the United States. We shift the focus to the organizational structure of minority health resources and advocacy at the federal level in the United States. We compare and contrast the two agencies most responsible for this issue area: the Office for Civil Rights and the Office of Minority Health. Our purpose is to evaluate their ability to coordinate efforts with other organizations and agencies in the pursuit of eliminating health disparities.

Minority health, organizational structure, public agencies

Abstract:
In this article we assess the ramifications of the Court's decision in Bush v. Gore for the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Presidency and the Court. In Part I, we briefly explore how the Court came to help determine the outcome of the election, and reflect on several short-term political effects of the decision. In Part II, we examine the political institutions of the Supreme Court and the presidency in light of the Bush v. Gore decision. In Part III, we briefly discuss the theoretical link between institutional legitimacy and effectiveness and examine the impact of Bush v. Gore on public perceptions of institutions' legitimacy. In Part IV, we reconsider the potential consequences of the decision for the Court and the presidency. We conclude that while the decision may have had important short-term effects for both the Court and the President, these institutions' long-term credibility will remain intact.

law, legal, bush, gore, president, court, empirical, survey, election, confirmation, nomination, justices

Abstract:
We examine forces for the descriptive representation of women in ministerial and sub-ministerial positions. We offer a unified model in which portfolio allocation makes political forces for descriptive representation more important in the case of ministerial lines; in contrast, labor market forces determine the extent of descriptive representation in sub-ministerial lines. We provide evidence for this claim from data for 72 countries and show that the advancement of women into ministerial posts depends on the form of electoral system and presence of women in the legislature (conditional on being in a parliamentary system). In contrast, the sub-ministerial representation for women depends on the supply of women in the workforce. Additionally, the increased incidence of women in ministerial lines is associated with an increase in representation in sub-ministerial lines.

Descriptive representation, gender, cabinet, bureaucracy, portfolio allocation

Abstract:
Political reorganizations like that of the National Performance Review in the United States fundamentally alter hierarchical relations within public agencies. This study includes a set of formal exercises to examine two logical consequences of reinvention: the increased likelihood of coordination failures, and the reduction in political leaders' hierarchical status in the organization. These effects are discussed in the context of a substantial change in the public organization of health services: the alteration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' structure. This study shows that reinvention fundamentally alters the power and status of political appointees, the standing of top leadership, and the likelihood of conflict resolution within the organization.

Hierarchy, Agency, Political Control, Conflict Resolution, Reorganization

Abstract:
Current public health debate centers on the content and extent of health problems, appropriate solutions, and acceptable practices. This essay describes and analyzes how a number of countries are answering these questions using an emerging conceptual framework of organizational change. Special attention is paid to the recent strategic transformation of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This process of organizational change used extensive deliberation among stakeholders over the organization's goals, and based on these goals, implemented a novel matrix structure for increased effectiveness. However, this essay reveals a number of short-term costs associated with this form of organizational goal setting and change.

Public health, organizational change, reorganization, strategy

Abstract:
We estimate the demand for federal grants-in-aid to the states. Specifically, we analyze the flow of funds from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the states as a function of the structure of state political institutions, the political preferences of citizens and elected officials, the state's economic characteristics, and presence of several types of pollutants. We simultaneously model two dependent variables (the flow of EPA funds, and state environmental and natural resource budgets) to identify the independent causation of the two processes. Our results show that the flow of federal funds to states is greater under Democratic control of the state legislature and when the state has pro-environmental members in Congress. State environmental and natural resources spending is greater under Democratic control of the state legislature and when there are more conservation group members in the state. Republican control of the legislature, a larger manufacturing sector, and higher per capita income all lower state spending. For both dependent variables we find a variety of demographic and environmental quality effects. In contrast, we find no direct evidence for either flypaper or crowding out effects between federal funds and state spending.

Fiscal Federalism, Environmental Policy, Political Economy

Abstract:
One of the president's main leadership tools for influencing the direction of American legal policy is public rhetoric. Numerous studies have examined the president's use of the "bully pulpit" to lead policy by influencing Congress or public opinion, or by changing the behavior of public agencies. We argue that the president can use rhetoric to change the behavior of public agencies and that this can have important social consequences. We focus on the disproportionate impact of presidential rhetoric on different "target populations" in the context of the War on Drugs. Specifically, we observe that presidential rhetoric had a greater impact on state arrest rates for African Americans than for whites, even when controlling for alternative explanations. These findings suggest that presidential rhetoric is filtered through social constructions of public policy problems when public officials act upon them.

law, implementation, policy, narcotics, enforcement, president, arrests, race, racial, disparity

Abstract:
This study addresses institutional representation in legislative delegations through the decomposition of the southern U.S. House delegation over time. Linear first-order difference equations are calculated to show the shift from the Solid South and the disintegration of Democratic dominance. These calculations also show that the qualitative behavior of partisan control varies over time given a series of critical events, including the Dixiecrat experience, the Congressional reforms of the 1970s, and the Republican Revolution of 1994. However, I also argue that the Republican Revolution was actually predictable, given the twentieth-century experience of the southern delegation.

Political representation, legislature, dynamic models, estimation

Abstract:
In this study, we examine agenda setting by the U.S. Supreme Court, and ask the question of why the Court allocates more or less of its valuable agenda space to one policy issue over others. Our study environment is the policy issue composition of the Court's docket: the Court's attention to criminal justice policy issues relative to other issues. We model the Court's allocation of this agenda space as a function of internal organizational demands and external political signals. We find that this agenda responds to the issue priorities of the other branches of the federal government and the public. We also find that the Court's internal ideological balance influences issue prioritization. In contrast, organizational maintenance considerations have no impact on the Court's allocation of its agenda.

law, legal, economic, agenda, supreme court, issue, criminal, political, congress, president

Abstract:
A number of recent studies have documented some of the reasons presidents issue signing statements (written pronouncements made by the president when signing a bill into law). I argue that signing statements help construct defenses – for example, for bureaucrats deciding how to implement a law, or for judges deciding whether a particular interpretation is consistent with the Constitution. I argue that presidents construct more detailed and complex defenses under certain conditions, including when his ideal point is distant from Congress. I test this hypothesis and others using data from the George W. Bush administration between 2001 and 2006. Both the number of objections applied to a given bill and their complexity increase when the president is distant from Congress. This result and others help explain when presidents use signing statements to construct defenses.

signing statements, bargaining, presidency, law

Abstract:
Institutional design balances the costs and benefits of dictatorship and disorder. Democracy can be efficient if it improves the performance of government. Yet, sometimes authoritarian governments can be efficient if they reduce disorder. We show that democratization has a nonlinear effect on income-adjusted perceptions of government effectiveness. These findings present a new opportunity to revisit the study of government performance for researchers working public administration, political science, and economics.

democracy, government performance, quality

Abstract:
How governments design institutions for the revelation of information depends on how the costs and benefits are distributed across affected groups. In this study I examine the incidence of different kinds of constituencies and how governments give citizens access to information that affects them. A number of important studies have sought to understand the effect of such rules on the revelation of private information and policy outcomes, but we know little about the sources of those rules. Do the rules coincide with constituencies that benefit from their existence? Are they absent when strong constituencies can avoid bearing the costs of the rules? Using data on community “right-to-know” protections regarding environmental hazards, I compare the incidence of the benefits and costs of these design choices in the context of rules that reveal information and charge the cost of information revelation to the regulated community. The models show that the incidence of right-to-know protections depends on the presence or absence of constituencies that would enjoy their benefits or bear their costs. However, organizational costs limit the ability of affected constituencies to obtain institutional designs that reflect their interests.

Abstract:
We assess Hirschman's theory of exit, voice, and loyalty in the context of voluntary exit from organizations in the public workforce. Specifically, we test the effects of loyalty and voice on the likelihood a person states their intention to leave. We assess these relationships using data from the Federal Human Capital Survey. Our statistical analysis provides evidence that perceptions about voice and loyalty limit exit at all levels of the organizational hierarchy. Yet, dissatisfaction with pay is also a substantial cause of intention to leave-and this effect is greatest for executive-level employees. We also show evidence for “motivation crowding” when pay-based motivation is emphasized.

Abstract:
This article develops a regime-splitting process model of decentralized policy implementation to integrate two theoretical approaches rooted in the tension between local flexibility and national control. The author estimates a model that simultaneously assesses the ability of each approach to explain the outcome it is meant to map onto (case-level discretion for local flexibility and aggregate responsiveness for national control) as well as each approach's extensibility to the other approach's domain. The data for the study come from the implementation of eight primary statutes by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's regional offices. The results are counterintuitive: the national control approach largely explains case-level discretion, the domain of local flexibility, but retains some power for explaining aggregate responsiveness. The local flexibility perspective contributes to both case-level discretion and aggregate responsiveness. Both models work outside their traditional domains, but neither is a sufficient explanation for decentralized policy implementation.

policy implementation, decentralization, regulation

Abstract:
One consequence of the president's use of rhetoric to shape the public agenda, the media, and congressional attention is less recognized: presidential rhetoric shapes the priorities of the administrative agents over whom he seeks managerial control. We present statistical tests of the managerial power of presidential policy signals in the case of the United States Attorneys' implementation of the federal War on Drugs. We find that presidential policy signals shifted the composition of the Attorneys' caseload, although not to the exclusion of other pertinent local, national, and internal factors. Yet, the consequences of presidential rhetoric for executive governance remain real and substantial.

law, legal, economic, political science, bureaucracy, prosecutors, attorneys, war on drugs, policy, rhetoric, president, executive, agenda setting

Abstract:
Structural choices have fundamental and continuing effects on the democratic responsiveness of public agencies. In contrast to popular accounts of the United States Attorneys' "splendid isolation," I provide structural evidence of routes to the national political oversight of the prosecution of federal crimes in the field. Examining U.S. Attorneys' data on the prosecution of regulatory crimes, I present statistical tests of local justice, lone justice, and overhead democratic control accounts of prosecutorial behavior. While due to their field location, the U.S. Attorneys' prosecution reflects local and internal office factors, I also find a surprising degree of responsivness to national political trends, where this structure-induced responsiveness depends on the stage of the prosecutorial process. Together these results provide support for a design approach to understanding how public agencies respond to calls for democratic responsiveness.

Prosecution, Regulation, Political Control

Abstract:
The canonical principal-agent problem involves a risk-neutral principal who must use incentives to motivate a risk-averse agent to take a costly, unobservable action that improves the principal's payoff. The standard solution requires an inefficient shifting of risk to the agent. This paper, however, summarizes experimental research that throws doubt on the validity of this conclusion. Experimental subjects were routinely able to achieve efficiency in agent effort levels without inefficient risk-sharing. These experimental outcomes, while anomalous from the standpoint of principal-agency theory, are quite consistent with other experimental data testing notions of trust-based implicit contracting. Such contracting within a hierarchy may allow an outcome preferred, by both principal and agent, to that deemed possible by principal-agency theory. If this is true, then the lessons to be learned from principal-agency theory are all the wrong ones. Concentrating on incentives can crowd out the very qualities in a relationship that make social efficiency possible.

contracts, agency, trust, incentives, risk

Abstract:
In contrast to principal-agency theory, the possibility of the political control of the bureaucracy depends on bureaucratic structure. In this paper, I argue that the functional decentralization of responsibility and authority for policy formulation and implementation involves a net loss of political control. I show that the choice by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to transfer responsibility to its Regional Offices changed the ability of national political superiors to intervene in policy implementation in the field. Examining Regional Office data on the enforcement of reactor regulations from 1975 to 1996, I present statistical tests of the changing influence of national political institutions, local policy preferences, and the Regions' task environment. I find that decentralization insulated the NRC from national political oversight, and that the Regions were more responsive to local oversight post-devolution and deviated from a natural rate of enforcement.

Decentralization, Political Control, Bureaucratic Politics, Principal-agency Theory, Regulatory Policy

Abstract:
Can bureaucracies respond to threats marked by both potentially high costs and fundamental uncertainty? Standard guidelines such as maximizing expected value to the society over a period of time may be ineffective; yet, state action is often most demanded for such situations. I argue that the precautionary principle of reserved rationality helps explain the ability of bureaucracies to choose appropriate actions under uncertainty. Such bureaucracies are empowered when there is sufficient informal institutional support for their expertise and the bureaucracy has the discretion to take necessary precautions. I draw historical information from the case of Singapore's regulation of the formerly common pool resource of water catchment areas. This case reveals decision making when it is not clear that expected-value criterion would support action, as well as the importance of political and institutional support for such action.

Bureaucratic politics, water rights, common pool resources, risk, uncertainty

Abstract:
We assess the link between a program's volunteer support and state social capital in the case of the joint implementation of the federal Long-Term Care (LTC) Ombudsman Program by state and federal authorities. This program, which is designed to prevent elder abuse and ensure quality care in long-term facilities, is implemented at the state and local levels and relies heavily on volunteer staff. First, we find that volunteerism is vital to the efficacy of the program's monitoring and investigative functions. Second, we find that volunteerism in this program is tied to broader level conditions of a state's social capital. Last, we discuss the implications of our findings for volunteer-based programs devolved to the states.

Volunteerism, long term care, political ideology

Abstract:
This essay examines the roles of competition, comparison, imitation, and punishment in the design of bureaucratic performance. Through a series of simulations, this essay examines how these elements - alone and in combination - drive both the performance and technology search paths of adaptive agencies.

I first provide a baseline model of an agency as a complex adaptive system, which experiences performance, sets goals, and searches for new technologies in a fully adaptive manner. I then provide three basic design choices for agencies, including: a competitive environment, an environment that allows agencies to imitate one another, and an environment in which lone agencies are punished at random for poor performance. These design choices help to assess ways of altering an agency's performance, and the likelihood of innovation and refinement as agencies search for new technologies.

The models show the difficult tradeoffs encountered in designing agencies. Predictability is an enemy of change. Search can be as important as the outcomes of search. Stability competes with growth. Together, these tradeoffs offer a set of competing "goods" designers face when attempting to alter an agency's direction. By encouraging change we upset prediction; by encouraging innovation, we do not guarantee outcomes.

Bureaucratic politics, competition, adaptative processes, organizational design

Abstract:
This paper addresses the intersection of coalition formation, judicial strategies, and regulatory politics. Coalitions are a low-cost means for assembling minority interests into more powerful blocs. However, in most cases in regulatory politics, judicial strategies are high cost efforts. I argue that coalitions among interests form one basis for judicial participation, but that participation manifests in an array of coalition "microstructures." For any one event, the microstructure of the interest group coalition varies, but across events the coalitions take on general forms. I offer evidence for a variety of coalition microstructures in interest group participation as amici curiae ("friends of the court") in cases before the United States Supreme Court. The evidence is drawn from the case of the Group of Ten, a stable, long-term coalition of environmental interest groups that operated from 1981 to 1991.

Litigation, environmental policy, Supreme Court, amicus curiae

Abstract:
Few issues are more contentious for local communities than industrial pollution. When local industries pollute, lawmakers and regulators must balance two primary concerns: economic prosperity and the environment. The role of political pressure is well-documented in environmental policy. What is less clear is the role jurisdictional or boundary considerations play in determining the implementation of environmental laws. Anecdotal evidence suggests that local regulators are more lenient in their treatment of polluters when the incidence of pollution falls partially on those outside the state. One explanation for such behavior is that regulators take actions to maximize political support. This paper tests this jurisdictional model using Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data from 1987 to 1996. We find that facilities' emissions into the air and water are systematically higher in counties that border other states. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that jurisdictional considerations are an important determinant of pollution incidence.

environmental federalism, environmental policy, environmental enforcement, environmental regulation

Abstract:
I examine how the legislature and the president sequentially enable and constrain agencies in a tug-of-war over the exercise of bureaucratic discretion, partly in response to past political interventions. I provide evidence from a duration analysis of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement of hazard waste law for the acceleration and deceleration of policy implementation in response to sequential interventions by multiple, competing principals. I document the use of agenda-setting and solution-forcing statutes by Congress, and case clearance mechanisms by the president. Sequenced political control means that agencies face shifting political expectations, caused in part by how the agency responds to past control attempts. While previous empirical research has portrayed a largely static world in which Congress and the president have influence, this study reveals a dynamic portrayal in which there is move and counter-move from these principals.

Superfund, environmental regulation, political control, bureaucratic politics

Abstract:
Does aggregate ideological extremism reduce public participation? Does participation in governance processes fall when the social environment shifts to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum? Our main hypothesis is that the aggregate ideological orientation of the social environment constrains volunteerism in social regulatory programs. Methods. We test our hypothesis using a panel tobit analysis of data from the federal Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program. Results. Our model of public participation (expressed as volunteerism) shows that participation expands when the ideological position of a state's citizens is at the extreme left or right of the political continuum. We show the differential effects of two types of aggregate ideological orientation: of citizens and their political leaders. We further find that participation is greatest in states with extremely liberal citizen ideological positions. Conclusions. These findings paint a more complex picture of the effect of extremism in the social environment on public participation measured as production volunteerism. In sum, public participation is greatest when there the social environment is ideologically polarized, and social regulation is strongest when volunteerism is greatest.

volunteerism, long term care, political ideology

Abstract:
In this note we offer a critique of the persistent failure of the central North American environmental agency, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, to fully consider the international, comparative, and scientific bases of its policies. We argue that the agency fails not because of a lack of leadership or resources, but because its organizational structure causes it to systematically miss the mark when it comes to building comprehensive environmental protection policies. Because this structure has existed since the agency's beginnings - and will likely last well into the future - policy planners must face two dilemmas: the prospect of changing the standards with which we judge this agency and its policies, and the need to look elsewhere for the creation and design of new environmental protection agencies at the local, state, national, and international levels.

Environmental policy, environmental enforcement, environmental regulation, organizational design