Presidentially Directed Policy Change: The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs as Partisan or Moderator?

Abstract

US presidents—working through the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)—influence administrative agencies by directing agencies to modify their regulatory policy proposals before finalization. We identify two competing hypotheses from the literature to explain this presidential intervention. First, some scholars hypothesize that presidents are more likely to change proposals when the submitting agency’s political ideology differs from the president’s. Second, others argue that presidents are more likely to correct ideologically extreme agencies of either political orientation. These claims have not been adequately investigated quantitatively. We study almost 1,500 final regulations reviewed by OIRA between 2005 and 2011. In the end, neither hypothesis garners support. Instead, we demonstrate that regulations proposed by more liberally oriented agencies are more likely to be changed—and the content of the rules changed to a greater degree—than those proposed by other agency types. Those results suggest a provocative third possibility: presidentially directed deregulation through OIRA review.