Presidential Transitions: The Shaping and Reshaping of the Federal Regulatory Agenda

Abstract

The federal administrative state does more lawmaking, by some measures, than Congress. In 2001, Congress passed 21 major statutes (Barshay 2001) and 115 other public laws (Final Resume 2003). In contrast, in that year, cabinet departments, the Executive Office of the President, and independent agencies promulgated 70 significant rules and 3,369 other rules (GAO 2005). (The law defines significant, or major, rules as those that have at least a $100 million, or otherwise significant, effect on the economy.) This research project examines changes in federal agency rulemaking between 1983 and 2002, using a large dataset from the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Do shifts in the quantity of rulemaking-related activities depend on changes in the White House or on the independence of agencies? What role do Congress and the courts play? What are the implications of patterns of regulatory activity for agency legitimacy, judicial deference to agency decisions, and desired agency activities during Presidential transitions? This paper presents some preliminary results.