Independent Bureaucracy Research Articles

No Accountability Without Transparency and Consistency: Evaluating Mexico's Redistricting-by-Formula

Since 1996, an independent bureaucracy in Mexico has carried out a redistricting process purportedly founded in machine optimization of plans based on open and objective criteria. However, the process of “fine-tuning” the plans that are initially produced by formula is conducted behind closed doors where parties and experts are allowed to offer counter-proposals. This raises questions about the necessary conditions required for a bureaucracy to operate in a transparent, consistent, and accountable manner. Our research examines this question through the analysis of private records that trace the bargaining process that takes place between parties and bureaucrats. Analysis uncovers substantial gaps in transparency and consistency. Accountability in the Mexican redistricting process remains wanting without these.

Planned meetings: Multiplicity, boxed-in dialogues, and deliberative bureaucracy as social form

In what ways are meetings a social form? How are meetings organized and how do organizations structure meetings to produce consensus around visions of the future? In this article, planning meetings, which gather representatives from the regional Public Transport Authority and the municipalities involved in public transport planning in Stockholm, Sweden, is probed as a social form. By structuring the meetings as collaborative planning processes, the Public Transport Authority’s ambition is to draw on the municipalities’ multiplicity of experiences and views but then arrive at a consensus, on which a strategic document is produced. However, these meetings are perplexing as a social form. While expectations of their outcomes vary, dialogues in the meetings are boxed-in as they follow standardized protocols for agendas, discussions, and decision points. Planned meetings, as this article shows, are an undertheorized aspect of attempts at future-making among formally independent bureaucracies. The article concludes by proposing that deliberative ideals in bureaucratic settings allude to deliberative bureaucracy through the social form of planned meetings.

The politics of institutional reform: Vulnerability and bureaucratic independence in Southeast Asian agriculture

AbstractAlthough effective bureaucracies are seen as key for service provision in developing states, we still have limited explanations for their emergence. I argue getting these institutions right is a political, rather than technical, challenge based on a set of theoretical predictions for reform outcomes acknowledging the interaction between a state's political vulnerability and degree of bureaucratic independence. I apply these predictions to a controlled comparison of irrigation sector reforms in three Southeast Asian countries. The results demonstrate that the success of institutional reforms necessary to implement policies is contingent on both the degree of vulnerability experienced as well as the extent to which the bureaucracy can influence the policy‐making process. In states with highly independent bureaucracies, reforms falter or are reversed due to bureaucratic resistance. This highlights the impact of politics in shaping second‐generation reforms and suggest that researchers should pay greater attention to the role bureaucracy plays in forging institutions.

Administration and the Bureaucratic Phenomenon

The modern administrative systems are huge bureaucratic mechanisms, defined by hierarchy, continuity, impersonality and expertize. There are multiple power games that operate within those systems, and that attenuate the mechanical and rational functionning of the government. When it takes the executive’s place, the administration becomes an independent bureaucracy, out of control and capable of undermining or even blocking the political initiatives of the government.

No Accountability without Transparency and Consistency: Redistricting-by-Formula in Mexico

An independent bureaucracy has carried out automated redistricting processes in Mexico since 1996. However, the process of “fine-tuning” the plans that are initially produced by formula is conducted behind closed doors where parties and experts are allowed to offer proposals. This raises questions about the necessary conditions required for a bureaucracy to operate in a transparent, consistent, and accountable manner. Our research examines this question through the analysis of private records that trace the bargaining process that takes place between parties and bureaucrats. Our results uncover substantial gaps in consistency. We highlight the strengths of the process and offer policy recommendations that can help improve the quality of redistricting in Mexico and in countries cyclically renewing their electoral geography.

Measuring Discretion and Delegation in Legislative Texts: Methods and Application to US States

Bureaucratic discretion and executive delegation are central topics in political economy and political science. The previous empirical literature has measured discretion and delegation by manually coding large bodies of legislation. Drawing from computational linguistics, we provide an automated procedure for measuring discretion and delegation in legal texts to facilitate large-scale empirical analysis. The method uses information in syntactic parse trees to identify legally relevant provisions, as well as agents and delegated actions. We undertake two applications. First, we produce a measure of bureaucratic discretion by looking at the level of legislative detail for US states and find that this measure increases after reforms giving agencies more independence. This effect is consistent with an agency cost model, where a more independent bureaucracy requires more specific instructions (less discretion) to avoid bureaucratic drift. Second, we construct measures of delegation to governors in state legislation. Consistent with previous estimates using non-text metrics, we find that executive delegation increases under unified government.

Autonomous bureaucrats in independent bureaucracies? Loyalty perceptions within supreme audit institutions

ABSTRACTThe independence of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) is essential to their effectiveness, yet the actual autonomy of SAIs auditors can be questioned. To whom do SAI officials owe their loyalty? To what extent are their loyalty perceptions reflected in their auditing reports? Our comparative study triangulates interviews, direct observations, and documents and, based on Q methodology, constructs four types of SAI officials who disavow traditional loyalties to political appointees or external stakeholders but abide to Constitutional and professional rules as well as to their respective audit institutions. Loyalty perceptions reflect SAIs’ associational contexts and are related to different work outcomes.

Independent Professional Bureaucracies and Street-Level Bribery: Comparing Changes in Civil Service Law and Implementation in Latin America

Using cross-sectional data, studies of the relation between merit-based bureaucracies and corruption usually find that nations with more professional and politically independent bureaucracies have lower corruption. However, cross-section designs cannot test this policy claim. This study adopts a pre-test‒post-test design using lagged data comparing changes in civil service laws and implementation in eight Latin American countries from 2004 to 2012 and data reporting subsequent change in bribe requests by the bureaucrats that the laws are intended to affect. Raising questions about the validity of previous results, it is found that improved laws and implementation were associated with no or increased bribe requests.

Commerce and institutions: Trade, scope, and the design of regional economic organizations

The design of current regional economic organizations (REOs) is remarkably diverse. Some REOs address numerous economic issues, while others have only limited mandates. Some REOs have an independent bureaucracy and a legalized dispute settlement mechanism (DSM), while others do not. What determines this institutional variation? Thinking about these institutions as devices that generate credible commitment to a rule-based regional cooperation, institutionalists maintain that the intensity of commercial ties determine regional institutionalization and institutional independence. A number of studies question this logic and argue that it is “naive.” Empirical evidence on the links between commerce, economic scope, and regional institutions is scant, however. Using an original data set that contains detailed information on the economic activities and institutional structure of twenty-eight REOs over three decades, this paper presents one of the first systematic analyses of these relationships. The empirical analysis indicates that the institutionalist wisdom is right after all. It shows that higher levels of regional trade are associated with greater institutionalization and economic scope, but only if implementation of signed agreements is accounted for, and that regional commerce and greater economic scope are associated with more independent bureaucracies and more legalized DSMs.

Rationalism and public policy: Mode of analysis or symbolic politics?

This article takes up the distinction between incremental analysis and incremental politics as elaborated by Lindblom in his 1979 article. We argue that while rationalism as a mode of analysis has lost much of its prominence, rationalism as symbolic politics is still very much alive and might even be more present today than it was back when Lindblom wrote his famous 1959 article. The recent shift to new modes of governance whereby elected officials are increasingly delegating decision-making powers to independent bureaucracies – what Majone calls the “regulatory state” or what the British describe as “agencification” or quangoisation” – has created an important legitimacy deficit for those non-majoritarian institutions that exercise political authority without enjoying any direct link to the electoral process. In such a context – and in addition to growing public distrust towards partisan politics – rationalist politics is likely to become more rampant as independent bureaucracies lack the legitimacy to publicly recognize the fundamentally incrementalist – and thus values-laden – nature of their decision-making processes. To develop these ideas, the article looks at the case of “supreme audit institutions”. We argue that the synoptic model is a mean for SAIs to legitimize their shift from classical financial auditing to performance auditing. In comparison to other independent bureaucracies, they are particularly prone to rationalist politics not only because of their institutional independence, but also because of the tradition of financial auditing and the rise of new public management.

The Inter-American Commission of Women and Women's Suffrage, 1920–1945

AbstractIn studies of the international dimensions of women's suffrage, the role of international organisations has been overlooked. This article examines the suffrage activities of the Pan-American Union (PAU), and in particular those of the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW), between 1920 and 1945. Attentive to historical context, the examination suggests that international organisations can be both bearers of state interests and platforms for social movement interests. The article also argues that while not independent bureaucracies, the PAU and IACW nevertheless had some importance for suffrage that cannot be attributed either to their state members or to the suffragist movements.

Why do Politicians Delegate?

Opportunistic politicians maximize the probability of reelection and rents from office holding. Can it be optimal from their point of view to delegate policy choices to independent bureaucracies? The answer is yes: politicians will delegate some policy tasks, though in general not those that would be socially optimal to delegate. In particular, politicians tend not to delegate coalition forming redistributive policies and policies that create large rents or effective campaign contributions. Instead they prefer to delegate risky policies to shift risk (and blame) on bureaucracies.

The Stande and the Origins of Conservatism in Prussia

DURING THE PERIOD after 1760, forces in Europe began to gather new momentum. This aristocratic resurgence, as R. R. Palmer has shown, was not limited to France, where opposition to royal authority initiated the chain of events that culminated in the Revolution of 1789. Aristocratic diets wrestled with monarchs for political power elsewhere in Europe too, from the Habsburg lands in the East to Sweden in the north. The Prussian nobility also gained additional strength, not primarily from opposition to the monarchy, but from its cooperation with Frederick the Great and from the support it drew from an increasingly independent bureaucracy. This revival, with its struggle against superior authorities on the one hand and popular pressures on the other, spawned political theories that clashed during the tumultuous closing decade of the century. Palmer has concluded, Nor did political thought arise merely from the emancipation of the mind, as a process of intellectual enlightenment, from the books of thinkers who defied the authorities of their time. It developed also in close connection with actual politics, and in disputes between organized powers already well established. I This essay, written from that premise, will examine the aristocratic resurgence in Prussia and the conservative political theory that emerged from it. It is not offered as the sole, or even the primary, explanation for the development of German conservatism; indeed, no political ideology as powerful and pervasive as German conservatism could have grown from a single root. As the late Klaus Epstein