The Venues of Influence: A New Theory of Political Control of the Bureaucracy

Abstract

In this article we examine how federal and state-level bureaucrats perceive the influence of a variety of political principals from both inside and outside of government. Using survey data, we demonstrate that bureaucratic agents identify commonalities or shared characteristics in the influence exerted by different political principals or what we call the venues of influence. At both the national and state level, bureaucratic agents draw a clear distinction between the sponsors and clients with which they interact. To a somewhat lesser extent, they also see distinctions between whether principals exert direct or diffuse influence over how their office enforces the law. Finally, both federal and state bureaucrats perceive similarities in the influence exerted by Congress and the president, the EPA and regional administrators, material interest groups, the courts, and linkage mechanisms. The principal-agent model is currently the dominant theory of the political control of the bureaucracy literature. Empirical studies, based on the model's assumptions, have demonstrated convincingly that principals do indeed influence the behavior of their bureaucratic agents. Unfortunately, studies that employ this theory have focused most commonly on an examination of the influence of just one, two, or three principals (usually the president, Congress, and the courts), while they have largely ignored the potential influence of other principals such as the regulated industry, interest groups, the public, the media, and state-level actors (e.g., governors, state legislatures, and state courts). Even when principal-agent studies have examined multiple principals, Earlier versions of this article were prepared for the University of New Mexico's Institute for Public Policy (IPP), where it received the IPP's best paper award, and for the 1997 American Political Science Association's annual meeting. We thank the Institute for Public Policy for its financial support and Joe Stewart for his helpful comments and suggestions regarding the manuscript. J-PART 8(1998): 1:13-38 13/Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory This content downloaded from 207.46.13.80 on Thu, 11 Aug 2016 06:18:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms