Implementing presidential particularism: bureaucracy and the distribution of federal grants

Nicholas G Napolio

doi:10.1017/psrm.2021.29

Abstract

AbstractDo agencies implement the president's particularistic goals uniformly? This paper clarifies the presidential particularism literature by explicitly considering the mechanism through which the president pursues their policy goals: executive agencies. The constellation of bureaucratic agencies responsible for allocating grants plays a key role in facilitating or frustrating presidential policy priorities. Using a dataset of 21 agencies over 14 years, I find that only agencies ideologically proximate to the president engage in particularism benefiting the president. I find no evidence that politicization influences agency implementation of particularism. Critically, the moderating effect of the bureaucracy on particularism only occurs for distributive programs over which agencies have discretion. When disbursing formula grants written by Congress but administered by the bureaucracy with little or no discretion, ideological distance between agencies and presidents has no effect on particularism.

Highlights

Do agencies implement the president’s particularistic goals uniformly? This paper clarifies the presidential particularism literature by explicitly considering the mechanism through which the president pursues their policy goals: executive agencies
The results provide no evidence that politicization influences agency implementation of presidential particularism since the marginal effect of presidential co-partisanship does not vary across different levels of agency politicization
In this paper, I have shown that executive agencies do not uniformly implement the president’s particularistic policy preferences

Summary

The federal grant process

Federal grants come in many forms, but can be lumped into two broad categories: formula and program grants (sometimes called mandatory and discretionary grants, respectively). Formula grants are administered by federal agencies, but the recipients and amounts are determined by Congress. On the contrary, are those for which the federal agencies administering them have discretion over both the recipient and amount based on an often competitive application process developed in-house by the agencies themselves (Kincaid, 2008; Chernick, 2014). Agencies have discretion over how they will allocate program grants in (1) the development of criteria—which may target certain potential applicants—(2) the selection of recipients—which may favor certain constituencies—and, (3) the determination of the value of the grant—which again may privilege certain partisans. The pre-award stage, offers multiple opportunities for agencies to make political and partisan decisions over the allocation of grant outlays: first in the development of criteria, second in the selection of recipients, and last in the valuation of the grant. Confining the analyses to program or discretionary grants guards against drawing improper conclusions if, for example, an agency seems to follow its principal’s orders if grants are pooled because formula grants have been designed such that they benefit certain constituencies independent of the agencies responsible for disbursing them

Expectations

Data and empirical strategy

Results

Conclusion