Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:41:47.530Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Presidential directives in a resistant bureaucracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2020

Alex Acs Open the ORCID record for Alex Acs [Opens in a new window]
Alex Acs*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: acs.1@osu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Presidential directives are often assumed to be checked only by external actors, like Congress and the courts. But the internal constraints facing presidents can also be substantial. I study a model where a president can induce compliance with a directive by removing some subordinate agents (the appointees) but not others (the careerists), and where the relative contribution of each agent to the directive’s success is unobservable. The model suggests that the formal authority presidents have to issue directives and remove subordinates can advance presidential goals, affording presidents real authority. But real authority is not guaranteed, and the resulting uncertainty can shape presidential decision-making: when to issue a directive, how ambitious to make it, and which agencies to target. To illustrate, I analyse two prominent directives in Clinton’s regulatory planning order, E.O. 12866, showing why they targeted different agencies, despite belonging to the same order, and why compliance has been uneven.

Keywords

bureaucracypolitical agencypresidencyregulationunilateral action
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 776 - 797
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acs, A (2018) Policing the administrative state. The Journal of Politics, 80(4): 1225–1238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aghion, P and Tirole, J (1997) Formal and real authority in organizations. Journal of Political Economy, 105(1): 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashworth, S (2012) Electoral accountability: Recent theoretical and empirical work. Annual Review of Political Science, 15(1): 183–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertelli, A and Feldmann, SE (2007) Strategic appointments. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 17(1): 19–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besley, T (2006) Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Bressman, LS and Vandenbergh, MP (2006) Inside the administrative state: a critical look at the practice of presidential control. Michigan Law Review, 105, 47.Google Scholar
Calabresi, SG and Rhodes, KH (1992) The structural constitution: unitary executive, plural judiciary. Harvard Law Review, 105(6): 1153–1216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiou, F-Y and Rothenberg, LS (2017) The Enigma of Presidential Power: Parties, Policies and Strategic Uses of Unilateral Action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christenson, DP and Kriner, DL (2014) Political constraints on unilateral executive action symposium: executive discretion and the administrative state. Case Western Reserve Law Review, 65, 897–932.Google Scholar
Chu, VS and Shedd, DT (2012) Presidential Review of Independent Regulatory Commission Rulemaking: Legal Issues. English. Report. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress.Google Scholar
Clinton, JD, Bertelli, A, et al (2012) Separated powers in the United States: The ideology of agencies, presidents, and congress. American Journal of Political Science, 56(2): 341–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clinton, JD and Lewis, DE (2008) Expert opinion, agency characteristics, and agency preferences. Political Analysis, 16(1): 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copeland, CW (2015) The Unified Agenda: Proposals for Reform. Tech. rep.Google Scholar
Dahl, RA (1957) The concept of power. Behavioral Science, 2(3): 201–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeMuth, CC (2011) OIRA at thirty. Administrative Law Review 63(3): 101–111.Google Scholar
Dickinson, MJ (2007) The politics of persuasion: A bargaining model of presidential power. In Bert, A. Rockman and Richard, W. Waterman (eds.), Presidential Leadership: The Vortex of Power. 1st ed. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 277–310.Google Scholar
Dickinson, MJ (2009) We all want a revolution: Neustadt, new institutionalism, and the future of presidency research. Presidential Studies Quarterly 39(4): 736–770.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, D and O’Halloran, S (1999) Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policy Making Under Separate Powers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gailmard, S and Patty, JW (2012) Learning While Governing: Expertise and Accountability in the Executive Branch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Harris, RA and Milkis, SM (1996) The Politics of Regulatory Change: A Tale of Two Agencies. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heinzerling, L (2014) Inside EPA: A former insider’s reflections on the relationship between the Obama EPA and the Obama White House. Pace Environmental Law Review 31 [i].Google Scholar
Hirsch, AV (2016) Experimentation and persuasion in political organizations. American Political Science Review, 110(1): 68–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ho, DE et al (2007) Matching as nonparametric preprocessing for reducing model dependence in parametric causal inference. Political Analysis, 15(3): 199–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollibaugh, GE and Rothenberg, LS (2017) The when and why of nominations: determinants of Presidential Appointments. American Politics Research, 45(2): 280–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howell, WG (2003) Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kagan, E (2001) Presidential administration. Harvard Law Review, 114(8): 2245–2385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katzen, S (2011) Can greater use of economic analysis improve regulatory policy at independent regulatory commissions? Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future.Google Scholar
Kennedy, JB (2015) “Do This! Do That!’ and Nothing Will Happen”: executive orders and bureaucratic responsiveness. American Politics Research, 43(1): 59–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, JB (2016) Who do you trust? Presidential delegation in executive orders. Research & Politics, 3(1): 2053168016632001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krause, GA (2009) Organizational complexity and coordination dilemmas in U.S. Executive Politics. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 39(1): 74–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krause, GA and Dupay, BM (2009) Coordinated action and the limits of presidential control over the bureaucracy: lessons from the Bush presidency. In Provost, Colin and Paul, E. Teske (eds.), President George W. Bush’s Influence over Bureaucracy and Policy: Extraordinary Times, Extraordinary Powers. New York, NY: Macmillan, 81–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, DE (2008) The Politics of Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowande, K (2018) Delegation or unilateral action? The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 34(1): 54–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayer, KR (2002) With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
McCarty, N (2004) The appointments dilemma. American Journal of Political Science, 48(3): 413–428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGarity, TO (1991) The internal structure of EPA rulemaking. Law and Contemporary Problems, 54(4): 57–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moe, TM and Howell, WG (1999) The presidential power of unilateral action. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 15(1): 132–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nathan, RP (1975) The Plot That Failed: Nixon and the Administrative Presidency. Underlining and Notation edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Google Scholar
Neustadt, RE (1991) Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. Revised. New York, NY: Free Press.Google Scholar
Potter, RA (2019) Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy. First edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rao, N (2013) Removal: necessary and sufficient for presidential control. Alabama Law Review, 65(5): 1205–1276.Google Scholar
Reeves, A and Rogowski, JC (2018) The public cost of unilateral action. American Journal of Political Science, 62(2): 424–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Resh, WG (2015) Rethinking the Administrative Presidency: Trust, Intellectual Capital, and Appointee-Careerist Relations in the George W. Bush Administration. Baltimore, MD: JHU Press.Google Scholar
Rudalevige, A (2012) The contemporary presidency: executive orders and presidential unilateralism. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 42(1), 138–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selin, JL (2015) What makes an agency independent? American Journal of Political Science, 59(4): 971–987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinzor, R (2012) The Case for Abolishing Centralized White House Regulatory Review. Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law, 1, 209.Google Scholar
Strauss, PL and Sunstein, CR (1986) The role of the president and OMB in informal rulemaking. Administrative Law Review, 2, 181–208.Google Scholar
Turner, IR (2020) Policy durability, agency capacity, and executive unilateralism. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 50(1): 40–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, PL (2012) Allies and adversaries: appointees and policymaking under separation of powers. The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 28(3), 407–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, J (1991) Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Acs supplementary material

Acs supplementary material

Download Acs supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 489.1 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Acs Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/W1OKNR
Link