White House Review of Agency Rulemaking: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

This paper seeks to investigate White House oversight of agency rulemaking. Specifically, the paper analyses White House review of agency rulemaking accomplished through the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) as required by executive order. It examines White House review of rulemaking from the first Reagan Administration through the second Clinton Administration, focusing especially on the Clinton era. The paper examines such factors as the number of rules the OIRA reviews, the number of rules reviewed from different agencies, the amount of resources OIRA commits to rulemaking review, the frequency with which the White House approves submitted rules without requiring changes, and the frequency with which the White House requires a change in submitted rules. The analysis also examines the types of interests that meet with OIRA concerning rules under review and tests for correlations between, for example, the types of interests that meeting with OIRA, on the one hand, and the fate of rules the subject of such meetings, on the other. In addition to several specific findings, this paper concludes generally that, from the early 1980s through the mid 1990s, the White House used the review process to have a greater influence over agency rulemaking, focusing on fewer rules over the years while requiring a change in a greater percentage, though in an apparently evenhanded way that did not work to the advantage of certain types of interests and the disadvantage of others.