Suchergebnisse

Local partisan activities of legislators and their electoral coalitions systematically influence field office activities of federal bureaucracies in their electoral districts. This alternative to centralized democratic controls over bureaucracy occurs because discretionary policy decisions made at the field office level are influenced by local resources generated through partisan activities. Our study of county-level Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforcement in New York (1976–85) finds that county, state, and federal elected officials influence local enforcement activities, with liberal, Democratic legislators associated with more active enforcement. The county political parties are most influential for activities with the most local discretion, while members of Congress are more influential for local activities more readily controlled by the national office.

Political decision-makers operate under a constant tension between bureaucratic autonomy on one hand and political control on the other. Extant scholarship rarely analyzes this tension beyond the context of modern states. However, three recent books show that it has a transhistorical relevance. Francis Fukuyama's two volumes on The Origins of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay analyze the various ways the tension has been addressed in the period before and after the French Revolution. In Democracy's Slaves, Paulin Ismard documents that the tension was relevant even in the context of the direct democracy of Athens in the Classical period. Taking these three books as the point of departure, we show how politicians have attempted to balance autonomy and control in patrimonial, meritocratic, politicized, and neo-patrimonial types of administration. Fukuyama F (2012) The Origins of Political Order, vol. 1. London: Profile Books. Fukuyama F (2014) Political Order and Political Decay, vol. 2. London: Profile Books. Ismard P (2017) Democracy's Slaves: A Political History of Ancient Greece. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Positive theorists have argued that administrative procedures enhance political control of the bureaucracy, in part by predisposing agencies toward policy choices preferred by legislators' favored constituents. Although this "deck-stacking" argument has been both influential and controversial, few scholars have subjected it to empirical examination. This article assesses the operation of a prominent administrative procedure—the notice and comment process—in the context of Medicare physician payment reform, a fundamental restructuring of the way in which the Medicare program pays for physician services. I find, contrary to the deck-stacking thesis, that the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) was more responsive to physicians expecting reductions in fees than to the intended beneficiaries of the new payment system. Although these results do not necessarily imply that Congress exerted little influence over HCFA decision making, they suggest that certain administrative procedures do not operate as instruments of political control.