Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T10:08:09.463Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Designing Bureaucratic Responsiveness: Administrative Procedures and Agency Choice in State Environmental Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Matthew Potoski
Matthew Potoski*
Affiliation:
Iowa State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Elected politicians can manage government agencies using administrative procedures that either enhance agencies' political responsiveness or their autonomy. Rational politicians will delegate autonomy when the benefits of agency decision-making are high, such as when the policy problem is technically complex. This article tests this hypothesis by investigating how state politicians design the institutional features of state clean air agencies and how these agencies perform under different administrative procedure regimes. I find that when a state's air pollution problem is complex, politicians eschew administrative procedures that enhance political control, and these agencies respond by choosing policies from a broader range of options.

Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , Spring 2002 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, 2002

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

Alvarez, R. Michael, and Brehm, John. 1995. “American Ambivalence Towards Abortion Policy: A Heteroskedastic Probit Method for Assessing Conflicting Values.” American Journal of Political Science 39:1055–1082.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarez, R. Michael, and Brehm, John. 1997. “Are Americans Ambivalent Towards Racial Policies?” American Journal of Political Science 41:345–374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balla, Steven J. 1998. “Administrative Procedures and Political Control of the Bureaucracy.” American Political Science Review 92:663–673.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bawn, Kathleen. 1995. “Political Control versus Expertise: Congressional Choices about Administrative Procedures.” American Political Science Review 89:62–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bawn, Kathleen. 1997. “Choosing Strategies to Control the Bureaucracy: Statutory Constraints, Oversight, and the Committee System.” Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 13:101–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowman, Ann O'M., and Kearney, Richard C.. 1988. “Dimensions of State Government Capability.” Western Political Quarterly 41:341–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1967. Inside Bureaucracy. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, David, and O'Halloran, Sharyn. 1994. “Administrative Procedures, Information, and Agency Discretion.” American Journal of Political Science 38:697–722.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, David, and O'Halloran, Sharyn. 1996. “Divided Government and the Design of Administrative Procedures: A Formal Model and Empirical Test.” Journal of Politics 58:373–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, David, and O'Halloran, Sharyn. 1999. Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policy Making under Separate Powers. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., Wright, Gerald C., and McIver, John P.. 1993. Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion and Policy in the American States. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Greene, William H. 1993. Econometric Analysis. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Hall, Bob, and Kerr, Mary Lee. 1991. The Green Index: A State by State Guide to the Nation's Environmental Health. Washington, DC: Island Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, James T. 1996. “Going by the (Informal) Book: The EPA's Use of Informal Rules in Enforcing Hazardous Waste Laws.” Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Growth 7:109–155.Google Scholar
Hamilton, James T., and Schroeder, Christopher. 1994. “Strategic Regulators and the Choice of Rulemaking Procedures: The Selection of Formal versus Informal Rules in Regulating Hazardous Waste.” Law and Contemporary Problems 57:111–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammond, Thomas H., and Knott, Jack H.. 1996. “Who Controls the Bureaucracy?: Presidential Power, Congressional Dominance, Legal Constraints, and Bureaucratic Autonomy in a Model of Multi-Institutional Policy-Making.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 12:119–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, John, and Shipan, Charles R.. 2000. “The Costs of Control: Legislators, Agencies and Transactions Costs.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 25:25–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krause, George A. 1996. “The Institutional Dynamics of Policy Administration: Bureaucratic Influence over Securities Regulation.” American Journal of Political Science 40:1083–1121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowry, William. 1992. The Dimensions of Federalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Magat, Wesley, Krupnick, Alan, and Harrington, Winston. 1986. Rules in the Making: A Statistical Analysis of Regulatory Agency Behavior. Washington, DC: Resources of the Future.Google Scholar
Mayhew, David. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
McCombs, Maxwell, and Zhu, Jian-Hua. 1995. “Capacity, Diversity and Volatility of the Public Agenda: Trends from 1954 to 1994.” Public Opinion Quarterly 59:495–525.Google Scholar
McCubbins, Mathew. 1986. “The Legislative Design of Regulatory Structure.” American Journal of Political Science 30:721–748.Google Scholar
McCubbins, Mathew, Noll, Roger, and Weingast, Barry. 1987. “Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 3:243–277.Google Scholar
McCubbins, Mathew, Noll, Roger, and Weingast, Barry. 1989. “Structure and Process, Policy and Politics: Administrative Arrangements and the Political Control of Agencies.” Virginia Law Review 75:431–482.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCubbins, Mathew, and Schwartz, Thomas. 1984. “Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols versus Fire Alarms.” American Journal of Political Science 28:165–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moe, Terry M. 1989. “The Politics of Bureaucratic Structure.” In Can the Government Govern?, eds. Chubb, John and Peterson, Paul. Washington, DC: Brookings.Google Scholar
Niskanen, William A. 1971. Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Chicago: Aldine Publishers.Google Scholar
Noll, Roger. 1985. “Government Regulatory Behavior: A Multidisciplinary Survey and Synthesis.” In Regulatory Policy and the Social Sciences, ed. Noll, Roger. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Toole, Lawrence J., and Meier, Kenneth J.. 1999. “Modeling the Impact of Public Management: Implications of Structural Context.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 9:505–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potoski, Matthew. 1999a. State Air Pollution Control Programs. Lexington, KY: Council of State Governments.Google Scholar
Potoski, Matthew. 1999b. “Managing Uncertainty through Bureaucratic Design: Administrative Procedures and State Air Pollution Control Agencies.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 9:623–640.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potoski, Matthew. 2001. “Clean Air Federalism: Do States Race to the Bottom?” Public Administration Review 61:335–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potoski, Matthew, and Woods, Neal. (N.d.) “Dimensions of State Environmental Policies: Air Pollution Regulation in the United States.” Policy Studies Journal. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Rinquist, Evan. 1993. Environmental Protection at the State Level: Politics and Progress in Controlling Pollution. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe.Google Scholar
Spence, David B. 1997. “Administrative Law and Agency Policymaking: Rethinking the Positive Theory of Political Control.” Yale Journal of Regulation 14:406–450.Google Scholar
Spence, David B. 1999. “Agency Discretion and the Dynamics of Procedural Reform.” Public Administration Review 59:425–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Theil, Henri. 1969. “The Desired Political Entropy.” American Political Science Review 63:521–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census. 1992. Economic Census 1992 - Disc 1J. Washington, DC: United States Bureau of the Census.Google Scholar
United States Environmental Protection Agency. 1996. Emission Trends Viewer CD: 1985-1995. Washington, DC: Environmental Protection Agency.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry, and Moran, Mark. 1983. “Bureaucratic Discretion or Congressional Control? Regulatory Policymaking by the Federal Trade Commission.” Journal of Political Economy 91:765–800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, B. Dan, and Waterman, Richard. 1994. Bureaucratic Dynamics: The Role of a Bureaucracy in a Democracy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Wood, B. Dan. 1992. “Modeling Federal Implementation as a System: The Clean Air Case.” American Journal of Political Science 36:40–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolley, John. 1993. “Conflict among Regulators and the Hypothesis of Congressional Dominance.” Journal of Politics 55:92–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar