IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/amposc/v52y2008i4p821-839.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public Regulation and Private Lawsuits in the American Separation of Powers System

Author

Listed:
  • Sean Farhang

Abstract

This article investigates causes of the legislative choice to mobilize private litigants to enforce statutes. It specifies the statutory mechanism, grounded in economic incentives, that Congress uses to do so, and presents a theoretical framework for understanding how certain characteristics of separation of powers structures, particularly conflict between Congress and the president over control of the bureaucracy, drive legislative production of this mechanism. Using new and original historical data, the article presents the first empirical model of the legislative choice to mobilize private litigants, covering the years 1887 to 2004. The findings provide robust support for the proposition that interbranch conflict between Congress and the president is a powerful cause of congressional enactment of incentives to mobilize private litigants. Higher risk of electoral losses by the majority party, Democratic control of Congress, and demand by issue‐oriented interest groups are also significant predictors of congressional enactment of such incentives.

Suggested Citation

  • Sean Farhang, 2008. "Public Regulation and Private Lawsuits in the American Separation of Powers System," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 821-839, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:52:y:2008:i:4:p:821-839
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00345.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00345.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00345.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Morris Fiorina, 1982. "Legislative choice of regulatory forms: Legal process or administrative process?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 33-66, January.
    2. McCubbins, Mathew D & Noll, Roger G & Weingast, Barry R, 1987. "Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 243-277, Fall.
    3. Sean Farhang, 2004. "Institutional Dynamics on the U.S. Court of Appeals: Minority Representation Under Panel Decision Making," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 299-330, October.
    4. Weingast, Barry R & Moran, Mark J, 1983. "Bureaucratic Discretion or Congressional Control? Regulatory Policymaking by the Federal Trade Commission," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(5), pages 765-800, October.
    5. Moe, Terry M, 1990. "Political Institutions: The Neglected Side of the Story," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(0), pages 213-253.
    6. White, Michelle J., 1992. "Legal complexity and lawyers' benefit from litigation," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 381-395, September.
    7. Roberta Romano, 2004. "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Making of Quack Corporate Governance," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2653, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Jul 2005.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Parker Hevron, 2018. "Judicialization and Its Effects: Experiments as a Way Forward," Laws, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-21, May.
    2. Sean Farhang, 2009. "Congressional Mobilization of Private Litigants: Evidence from the Civil Rights Act of 1991," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(1), pages 1-34, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John Brehm & Scott Gates, 1994. "When Supervision Fails to Induce Compliance," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 6(3), pages 323-343, July.
    2. P. Hägg, 1997. "Theories on the Economics of Regulation: A Survey of the Literature from a European Perspective," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 4(4), pages 337-370, December.
    3. John M. de Figueiredo & Edward H. Stiglitz, 2015. "Democratic Rulemaking," NBER Working Papers 21765, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Miltos Makris, 2003. "Administrative Bureaus with Standard Operating Procedures," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 03/062, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    5. Abbott, Kenneth W. & Genschel, Philipp & Snidal, Duncan & Zangl, Bernhard, 2018. "The governor's dilemma: Competence versus control in indirect governance," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance SP IV 2018-101, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    6. Mattia Guidi, 2011. "Does Independence Affect Regulatory Performance? The case of national competition authorities in the European Union," EUI-RSCAS Working Papers 64, European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS).
    7. Christopher Li, 2021. "Indirect accountability of political appointees," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 33(3), pages 383-396, July.
    8. Deepak Hegde & Bhaven Sampat, 2015. "Can Private Money Buy Public Science? Disease Group Lobbying and Federal Funding for Biomedical Research," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(10), pages 2281-2298, October.
    9. Lehr, William & Sicker, Douglas, 2017. "Communications Act 2021," 28th European Regional ITS Conference, Passau 2017 169478, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    10. Michael Makowsky & Thomas Stratmann, 2014. "Politics, unemployment, and the enforcement of immigration law," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(1), pages 131-153, July.
    11. Ando, Amy, 1998. "Delay on the Path to the Endangered Species List: Do Costs and Benefits Matter," RFF Working Paper Series dp-97-43-rev, Resources for the Future.
    12. Thomas Braendle & Alois Stutzer, 2013. "Political selection of public servants and parliamentary oversight," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 45-76, February.
    13. Cyril Benoît, 2021. "Politicians, regulators, and regulatory governance: The neglected sides of the story," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(S1), pages 8-22, November.
    14. Maoz Rosenthal, 2012. "Agenda control in an unstable multiparty parliamentary democracy: evidence from the Israeli public sector," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 22-44, March.
    15. Lars P. Feld & Stefan Voigt, 2004. "Making Judges Independent – Some Proposals Regarding the Judiciary," CESifo Working Paper Series 1260, CESifo.
    16. Moszoro, Marian W. & Spiller, Pablo T., 2014. "Third-Party Opportunism and the Theory of Public Contracts: Operationalization and Applications," MPRA Paper 101592, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Mattia Guidi, 2015. "The Impact of Independence on Regulatory Outcomes: the Case of EU Competition Policy," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(6), pages 1195-1213, November.
    18. repec:zbw:bofitp:2018_007 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Ian R Turner, 2017. "Working smart and hard? Agency effort, judicial review, and policy precision," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(1), pages 69-96, January.
    20. Ellen Seljan, 2014. "The limits of tax and expenditure limits: TEL implementation as a principal-agent problem," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 485-501, June.
    21. Andrew B. Whitford, 2007. "Competing Explanations for Bureaucratic Preferences," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(3), pages 219-247, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:52:y:2008:i:4:p:821-839. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1540-5907 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.