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Who Polices the Administrative State?

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  • LOWANDE, KENNETH

Abstract

Scholarship on oversight of the bureaucracy typically conceives of legislatures as unitary actors. But most oversight is conducted by individual legislators who contact agencies directly. I acquire the correspondence logs of 16 bureaucratic agencies and re-evaluate the conventional proposition that ideological disagreement drives oversight. I identify the effect of this disagreement by exploiting the transition from George Bush to Barack Obama, which shifted the ideological orientation of agencies through turnover in agency personnel. Contrary to existing research, I find ideological conflict has a negligible effect on oversight, whereas committee roles and narrow district interests are primary drivers. The findings may indicate that absent incentives induced by public auditing, legislator behavior is driven by policy valence concerns rather than ideology. The results further suggest collective action in Congress may pose greater obstacles to bureaucratic oversight than previously thought.

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  • Lowande, Kenneth, 2018. "Who Polices the Administrative State?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 112(4), pages 874-890, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:112:y:2018:i:04:p:874-890_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Zhang, Han, 2021. "How Using Machine Learning Classification as a Variable in Regression Leads to Attenuation Bias and What to Do About It," SocArXiv 453jk, Center for Open Science.
    2. Andrea Pettrachin & Leila Hadj Abdou, 2024. "Beyond evidence-based policymaking? Exploring knowledge formation and source effects in US migration policymaking," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 57(1), pages 3-28, March.
    3. Tobias Heinrich & Timothy M. Peterson, 2020. "Foreign Policy as Pork-barrel Spending: Incentives for Legislator Credit Claiming on Foreign Aid," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 64(7-8), pages 1418-1442, August.

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