Abstract
In the past 15 years a scholarly debate has developed in the United States over the question "Who controls the bureaucracy?" Some have argued that Congress has a dominant influence on the bureaucracy, some that the president plays the major role in managing the bureaucracy, and others have emphasized the role of legal constraints on the bureaucracy, as enforced by the courts. Still others have asserted that the bureaucracy has a substantial amount of autonomy from the president, Congress, and courts. This article presents a formal model of multi-institutional policy-making that illuminates several key aspects of this debate. The model shows that there are conditions under which an agency will have considerable autonomy and conditions under which it will have virtually none. The model also shows that when an agency lacks autonomy, control of the agency usually cannot be attributed to just one institution. Finally, the model has some important implications for empirical tests of hypotheses about who controls the bureaucracy; among them is the fact that the empirical literature on control of the bureaucracy is based on a logic that gives a seriously incomplete picture of how the bureaucracy is controlled and who controls it.
Journal Information
The Journal of Law, Economics & Organization is an interdisciplinary exercise. It seeks to promote an understanding of many complex phenomena by examining such matters from a combined law, economics, and organization perspective (or a two-way combination thereof). In this connection, we use the term organization broadly - to include scholarship drawing on political science, psychology and sociology, among other fields. It also holds the study of institutions - especially economic, legal, and political institutions - to be specifically important and greatly in need of careful analytic study.
Publisher Information
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. It currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs more than 5,500 people worldwide. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals.
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Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization © 1996 Oxford University Press
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8 Cards in this Set
- Front
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According to Max Weber, what are the significant characteristics of bureaucracy? | chain of command, division of labor, clear lines of authority, goal orientation, employees are treated fairly, and works and actions are evaluated | |
Regulations | Created by government agencies that determine how laws are implemented | |
What did the Administrative Procedures Act establish? | The Administrative Procedures Act established a specific process for rule making in the federal bureaucracy. | |
What is "discretion" as defined in the context of the reading? | Discretion in this context means contemplation / deciding | |
What is implementation? | Implementation is the process where a law or policy is put into action. | |
What is the process for settling disputes between labor and management on federal labor laws? | Administrative adjudication settles disputes in federal agencies. | |
How does Congress exercise control over agencies and departments in the federal bureaucracy? | Congress exercises control over the federal bureaucracy when it preforms legislative oversight through hearings, determines the budget for each agency, and when it uses congressional review to examine bureaucratic regulations. | |
How does the president exercise control over agencies and departments in the federal bureaucracy? | The president exercises control over the federal bureaucracy when he appoints agency heads, reorganizes agencies, and issues executive orders to change/implement statues. |