Delegation and Positive-Sum Bureaucracies

Abstract

I develop a formal model to investigate why Congress would choose to delegate authority to an agency whose actions can be controlled, ex post, by a President with divergent policy preferences. Because the President and the Congress might find different policies to be salient to their constituencies, I demonstrate that executive review of agency rulemaking can benefit both branches of government, relative to legislative delegation without the possibility of such review. In trying to undermine the impacts of executive oversight, agencies propose policies that could benefit Congress if the President chose not to intervene in agency policymaking. If the President does intervene, it will establish policy outcomes that can be more desirable than what would ensue absent such review. This joint-desirability of executive review is more likely when congressional and presidential policy preferences are relatively aligned and when congressional and agency policy preferences are relatively divergent. Executive review can increase social welfare depending on the relative effectiveness of the President's oversight of agency policymaking. These results provide insight for why institutions such as the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) continue to survive in a separation of powers system despite their potential to advantage one branch of government at the expense of the other.