Suchergebnisse

This article develops an institutional spatial theory of presidential appointments to administrative agencies that falls within the spirit of a recent line of theoretical research toward an institutional theory of the presidency. We show that when bureaucrats implement policy that results from negotiation with constituents, the ally principle-appointing political allies-holds only as a knife-edge condition. Presidents are better served by appointing administrators whose preferences partially offset the influence of organized interests. The incentives described have implications for the selection of a whole range of bureaucratic personnel at various levels, generating significant implications for the study of public management on issues such as personnel administration, representative bureaucracy, and the devolution of administrative authority. Adapted from the source document.

This paper studies how interest group lobbying of the bureaucracy affects policy outcomes and how it changes the legislature's willingness to delegate decision-making authority to the bureaucracy. We extend the standard model of delegation to account for interest group influence during the implementation stage of policy and apply it to different institutional structures of government. The paper addresses the following questions: First, how does the decision to delegate change when the bureaucratic agent is subject to external influence? What cost does this influence impose on the legislative principal? Finally, how susceptible are policy choices to bureaucratic lobbying under different government structures? In answering these questions, the paper seeks to provide a comparative theory of lobbying and to explain the different patterns of interest group activity across political systems.

This paper analyzes how the structure of the legislature affects interest groups' incentives to lobby. Lobbying is modelled as the strategic provision of information by an interest group to a multi-member legislature, and the effectiveness of lobbying lies in the ability of information to change the winning policy coalitions. We show that with a long enough time horizon for policymakers, the distinguishing feature between the U.S. Congress and European parliamentary systems—the vote of confidence procedure—reduces an agenda setter's willingness to change policy coalitions, and thus significantly lowers the incentives for interest group lobbying.

We analyze how the structure of organizational form of legislative institutions affects interest groups 'incentives to lobby.Lobbying is modelled the strategic provision of information by an interest group to a multi-person legislature.We show that the effectiveness of lobbying lies in changing the viable policy coalitions.We show in a multi-period policy framework that a distinguishing feature between the US Congress and European parliamentary systems – the vote of confidence procedure - can significantly change the incentives for interest group lobbying.

We analyze informational lobbying in the context of multi-member legislatures. We show that a single decision maker and a decentralized majoritarian legis- lature provide widely di .erent incentives for interest groups to acquire and transmit policy relevant information. The paper also shows a di .erence in the opportunity to a .ect policy through lobbying between a parliamentary legislature and a legislature with low voting cohesion,such as the U.S.Congress.We show that the incentives to lobby a parliamentary legislature are much lower than to lobby Congress.The results provide a rationale for why lobby groups are more active n the U.S.Congress. The key institutional feature to explain the di .erent behavior of lobby groups is the vote of con .dence procedure,which creates voting cohesion in a parlia- mentary system across policy issues.We show that the .exibility of creating majorities in the Congress creates an incentive for interest groups to play an active role in the design of policy in the congressional system,while the voting cohesion in the parliamentary system dissuades interest group 's incentive to engage in information provision.

Interest groups can influence political decisions in two distinct ways: by offering contributions to political actors and by providing them with relevant information that is favorable for the group. We analyze the conditions under which interest groups are more inclined to use one or the other channel of influence. First, we identify an indirect cost of searching for information in the form of an information externality that increases the cost of offering contributions. We then show that an extreme interest group might find it beneficial to abandon information provision altogether and instead seek influence solely via contributions. Finally, we apply our model to cast doubt on the "conventional wisdom" that competition among information providers increases the amount of information provided: when the identified information externality is taken into account, wee show that competition decreases information search. Thus, our analysis lends support to a rather cynical view of lobbying wherein lobby groups provide little or no useful information to the political process.

Initiated by interest groups representing the interest of a class of agency clients, structural reform litigation shapes the administration of important policy domains, particularly in the social services. Employing a spatial bargaining model we show that, instead of holding the agency to its mandate, structural reform litigation constitutes an institutional tool that creates bureaucratic drift even if courts are policy neutral. Since courts permit negotiation between agency and interest group plaintiff in designing remedies, it is very difficult for a legislature to enforce statutory constraints via judicial oversight and to stem this form of policy drift.

Initiated by interest groups representing the interest of a class of agency clients, structural reform litigation shapes the administration of important policy domains, particularly in the social services. Employing a spatial bargaining model we show that, instead of holding the agency to its mandate, structural reform litigation constitutes an institutional tool that creates bureaucratic drift even if courts are policy neutral. Since courts permit negotiation between agency and interest group plaintiff in designing remedies, it is very difficult for a legislature to enforce statutory constraints via judicial oversight and to stem this form of policy drift. Figures, Appendixes, References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2006.]