Legislative Delegation Research Articles

Policy Influence, Agency-Specific Expertise, and Exit in the Federal Service

Executive turnover influences agency performance, policy implementation, and ultimately the success of legislative delegations. We argue that turnover intention is a function of labor market opportunities—specifically, outside employment opportunities and the acquisition of nontransferable, agency-specific human capital—as well as perceptions about the way in which political decisions have affected federal executive influence over policymaking. Statistical evidence for these claims is provided using data from the 2007–2008 Survey on the Future of Government Service, the largest ever survey of US federal executives. Agency-specific human capital drives down turnover intention in our estimates. The availability of outside options has the opposite effect except in cases where the executive has invested a lot in agency-specific human capital. Turnover intention increases when an agency’s senior executives have little influence over policy. We draw out the implications of these findings for our understanding of federal labor markets, the construction of civil service systems, and the politicization of executive branch agencies. 《政策影响力、公务员专业知识、以及联邦政府高级主管的流失问题》 作者：安东尼M. 贝尔泰利， 大卫E. 刘易斯 政府部门高级主管 (executives) 的流失 (turnover) 不利于维持部门绩效和公共政策执行的效果，从而最终影响立法授权 (legislative delegations) 的有效性。 我们于2007 到2008 年间进行了题为《公共服务之未来》的问卷调研。 这是迄今为止针对美国联邦政府高级主管人员的最大规模的问卷调研。这一问卷调研表明，政府部门以外的就业机会、政府高级官员的专业知识 、以及他们对自己在政策制定和执行过程中影响力的自我评估都会影响其离职意向。 我们的问卷研究表明， 政府机构的专业人力资本(human capital) 有助于减少部门主管的离职意向；而政府部门以外的就业机会则会强化政府部门主管的离职倾向。我们的研究还表明，如果政府部门高级主管在政策制定过程中的影响力微乎其微， 他们也比较容易离职。在本文末， 我们探讨了此项研究对于理解联邦政府就业市场、公务员制度、以及联邦行政部门政治化的重要意义。

Dynamics of partisan representation the American south, 1898–2010

This study addresses institutional representation in legislative delegations through the decomposition of the southern U.S. House delegation over time. Linear first-order difference equations are calculated to show the shift from the Solid South and the disintegration of Democratic dominance. These calculations also show that the qualitative behavior of partisan control varies over time given a series of critical events, including the Dixiecrat experience, the Congressional reforms of the 1970s, and the Republican Revolution of 1994. However, I also argue that the Republican Revolution was actually predictable, given the twentieth-century experience of the southern delegation.

Delegation and Accountability

Critics of legislative delegation to the bureaucracy worry that delegation undermines the accountability of politicians to voters. This article provides microfoundations for such concerns by examining a model of electoral agency in which legislators can either determine policy directly or delegate policymaking authority to an expert bureaucrat. In our model, when deciding whether to delegate, a politician must consider not only the policy consequences of his delegation decision but also the electoral consequences. We identify conditions under which delegation can provide politicians with an element of plausible deniability which they lack when they determine policy directly. In some circumstances, therefore, voters can be better off when legislators’ ability to delegate is restricted.

A Property Rights Approach to Legislative Delegation

This paper applies the property rights theory to study both positive and normative aspects of legislative delegation in a setup where interest groups directly influence lawmaking by initiating regulatory bargaining. A self-interested legislature choosing between the direct exercise of its legislative authority and delegation to an administrative agency must therefore trade off the value of bureaucratic competence against bureaucratic drift and, importantly, loss of control over bargaining. Our analysis, first, clarifies when the legislature's choice between delegation and no delegation is socially efficient or socially inefficient; second, illustrates the role of political bargaining and shows that precluding interest group influence through bargaining may actually increase the scope for socially inefficient outcomes; third, develops novel predictions on the type of policy issues that we should observe get delegated; and, fourth, reflects on the practice of the scant empirical work on legislative delegation.

The Place of Court-Connected Mediation in a Democratic Justice System

A justice system, and the processes located within it, ought to deliver justice. That seems simple enough. But, of course, delivering justice is never so simple. Justice and the systems that serve it are the creatures of context.This Article considers mediation as just one innovation within the much larger evolution of the judicial system of the United States. First, this Article outlines how the values of democratic governance undergird our traditional picture of the American justice system, presumably because the invocation of such values helps the system to deliver something that will be respected by the nation’s citizens as “justice.” The Article then highlights aspects of the changing picture of the American civil justice system – i.e., legislative delegation and judicial deference to adjudication by administrative agencies; the judicial embrace of and deference to decision-making by arbitrators; the marginalization of the jury in civil litigation – to suggest that today’s sprawling and multi-tiered structure is increasingly disengaged from its democratic roots. Finally, the Article examines the place of court-connected mediation in this evolution to determine whether it is part of the reinvigoration or further erosion of a democratic justice system. Ultimately, the Article makes three recommendations: 1) mediation advocates need to help courts overcome their current funding and staffing difficulties and regain an appropriate measure of self-respect for their unique role in enabling a democratic people to govern themselves; 2) courts should end their reliance on mandatory mediation or at least provide that the authority to mandate mediation should sunset after an appropriate period; and 3) courts should understand mediators as their agents – and provide for meaningful oversight that assures just resolution.

A property rights approach to legislative delegation

This paper applies the property rights theory to study both positive and normative aspects of legislative delegation in a setup where interest groups directly influence lawmaking by initiating regulatory bargaining. A self-interested legislature choosing between the direct exercise of its legislative authority and delegation to an administrative agency must therefore trade off the value of bureaucratic competence against bureaucratic drift and, importantly, loss of control over bargaining. Our analysis, first, clarifies when the legislature’s choice between delegation and no delegation is socially efficient or socially inefficient; second, highlights the role of political bargaining and shows that precluding interest group influence through bargaining may actually increase the scope for socially inefficient outcomes; and, third, illustrates the model’s predictions in light of selected stylized facts and the practice of scant empirical work on legislative delegation.

The Spanish Parliament and legislative delegation (1844–1849)1

A study of executive power and the legislative elaboration process during the reign of Isabel II leads to an understanding of one of the government's distinctive features. During the rule of the Moderate Party (1844–1854), and despite the fact that according to the Constitution of 1845 the legislative initiative lay with the king and the parliament, the ministerial initiatives prevailed over parliamentary proposals by means of legislative delegation. The lack of constitutional regulation brought about the existence of several types of delegation. Contemporaries noted their excessive use arising from the fact that it was very easy to govern with this system and, above all, because they were granted to all governments without political distinction. A paradigmatic illustration of the use of delegation is the Spanish Penal Code of 1848. This was because of the scope of its contents (the code put an end to the Ancien Regime in Spain) and because it had a structure and a scientific orientation which were going to exert a recognised influence, not only on Spain's subsequent Spanish Penal Codes until reaching the one in force from 1995, but also in Latin America. The Penal Code was equally important, because it clearly shows how the chambers themselves were not only unable to limit the government's capacity to introduce law, but even enlarged it by conferring upon the latter extraordinary powers for its future reform, limited by the only condition that the government had to inform the chambers once the reforms had been completed. An analysis of parliamentary debates allows us to understand the position of the moderate and progressive parties towards this practice.

Delegation and Accountability

Critics of legislative delegation to the bureaucracy worry that delegation diminishes electoral accountability and exacerbates legislative shirking. This paper provides equilibrium foundations for such concerns in a model in which legislators are heterogeneous in their policy preferences and bureaucrats have expertise concerning the policies that best serve the public. We further use our model to address debates concerning the welfare consequence of judicial enforcement of the nondelegation doctrine. We find that when the risk of special-interest capture of incumbent legislators is high and bureaucratic expertise is limited, a ban on delegation would benefit our model's representative voter; otherwise, the representative voter gains from delegation despite the fact that it can be exploited by unscrupulous politicians.

Delegation and Positive-Sum Bureaucracies

I develop a formal model to investigate why Congress would choose to delegate authority to an agency whose actions can be controlled, ex post, by a President with divergent policy preferences. Because the President and the Congress might find different policies to be salient to their constituencies, I demonstrate that executive review of agency rulemaking can benefit both branches of government, relative to legislative delegation without the possibility of such review. In trying to undermine the impacts of executive oversight, agencies propose policies that could benefit Congress if the President chose not to intervene in agency policymaking. If the President does intervene, it will establish policy outcomes that can be more desirable than what would ensue absent such review. This joint-desirability of executive review is more likely when congressional and presidential policy preferences are relatively aligned and when congressional and agency policy preferences are relatively divergent. Executive review can increase social welfare depending on the relative effectiveness of the President's oversight of agency policymaking. These results provide insight for why institutions such as the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) continue to survive in a separation of powers system despite their potential to advantage one branch of government at the expense of the other.

Die aard van wetgewende diskresies by die Suid-Afrikaanse uitvoerende gesag

This article focuses on the nature of legislative discretions in the hands of the executive authority of the state. Relevant concepts are analysed, followed by an exposition of the position regarding delegation of legislative authority to the executive under the previous constitutional dispensation when the country had a sovereign Parliament. This is followed by a discussion of the legal position in Germany, which shows similarities to the situation in South Africa. It appears that differences in approach to the problem exist worldwide, but one similarity is to be found in all, namely that a complete parliamentary abdication of legislative authority is always disallowed. What follows from this is that South African law seems to follow the German example regarding the delegation of legislative powers. It seems that the South African Constitutional Court considers the delegation of essential legislative authority as undesirable. Limits have to be placed on the extent of Parliament's competencies pertaining to legislative delegation. Furthermore the manner and form requirements in the Constitution must be met when legislation is adopted. This however does not occur in all instances of legislative delegation to the executive authority. When legislative delegation takes place, it is consistently done by granting the executive the authority to adopt subordinate legislation, which in any event has the same legal effect as legislation of Parliament itself. Next the Transitional Constitution of 1993 is considered against the background of relevant case law. It appears that the legal position was not changed by the promulgation of the ("final") Constitution of 1996. Empowering legislation that delegates any legislative authority must lay down guidelines providing direction regarding the exercise of the delegated authority. Delegated legislation may of course not contain substantive norms. Like the German Bundesverfassungsgericht, the South African Constitutional Court seems to require empowering legislation to lay down the content, extent and purpose of the empowering provisions before it will enjoy legal effect. This content, extent and purpose will not primarily be evident from the delegated legislation, but must be contained in the empowering legislation itself. If this is not the case, the delegation of authority will have exceeded constitutional limits. Therefore, a wide delegation of legislative authority without limitations regarding its exercise, at least as far as content, extent and purpose are concerned, will without doubt be unconstitutional.

Controlling Federal Agencies: The Contingent Impact of External Controls on Worker Discretion and Productivity

ABSTRACT Previous scholarship has investigated why legislatures sometimes choose to delegate policy choice to executive agencies, but there is little research on the consequences of the choice to delegate or not. Using a multiple principal-agent framework, this paper provides empirical evidence regarding the impact of legislative delegation and agency discretion on the work of U.S. government employees. Findings suggest that delegation directly reduces employee discretion only in client service agencies; its direct effects on employee productivity are more evident but varied. Legislative delegation is also associated with more executive political appointees, whose presence reduces both employee discretion and productivity. Whether employees with more discretion are more productive than those with less depends on their commitment to the job: employees who like their work more than their pay use their discretion to enhance productivity, while employees who like their pay more than their work use their discretion to reduce productivity.

Partidos políticos e governadores como determinantes do comportamento legislativo na câmara dos deputados, 1988-2006

According to a widely held view of Brazilian politics, part of the difficulty Presidents experience in governing the country stems from the fact that national legislators respond to pressures from the States rather than from the national government. Based on the argument, governors use their institutional position not only to influence national debates, but also to determine outcomes via the control they exert over their States' legislative delegations. In this paper we examine an extensive data set composed of all roll-call votes taken in the Chamber of Deputies from 1989 to 2006 in order to separate and evaluate the impact of local pressures on the behavior of national legislators. The data span five Presidencies and four different legislatures and show that, although present, the local influence is weaker than that of the national government in the voting decisions of individual legislators We argue that there are institutional resources that allow the central government to counter the centrifugal pressures exerted by federalism and other aspects of Brazil's current institutional system.

Political Parties and Governors as Determinants of Legislative Behavior in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, 1988–2006

AbstractThis article examines the relative importance of regional and national forces in shaping the behavior of Brazilian legislators at the national level. A widely held view is that national legislators respond to state pressures in making decisions, rather than pressures from the national government. Governors not only can influence national debates but also can determine outcomes by exerting control over their states' legislative delegations. This article examines a dataset of all roll-call votes in the Chamber of Deputies between 1989 and 2006 to isolate and evaluate the impact of local pressures on legislative voting. Spanning the terms of five presidents and five different congresses, the data show that the local influence is weaker than the national on the voting decisions of individual legislators and the voting cohesion of state delegations. Alternative institutional resources allow the central government to counteract the centrifugal pressures of federalism and other institutional influences.

Delegation, Deference, and the Dynamics of Democratization: Administrative Law, Institutional Changes and Separation of Powers in Post-Authoritarian Taiwan

Rule of law does not always secure democratic governance in a post-authoritarian state. Scholars in the field have called into question studies on democratization owing to their lack of micro-political and intra-branch analyses. This paper examines the transforming mechanism of legislative delegation in Taiwan during and after democratization, from the perspectives of bureaucratic behaviors, legislative processes of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and the changing approaches of judicial review. By surveying Taiwan's case, I show that democratization might prompt agencies to carry out institutional changes, but that the changes occur only in a minimalist way. The bounded institutional change eventually strengthens calls for exogenous intervention, resulting, for example, in the APA's legislative content that would alter technocrats' availability heuristics relative to policymaking. However, the race for competing political legitimacy among opposition parties after political liberalization usually engenders legislative overreaction, which would favor extremely stringent legislative control over administrative rulemaking. The rigid legislation paradoxically impedes further political reforms and, in Taiwan's case, consolidates the regulatory regime of the former authoritarian party-state. Finally, owing to the growing number and the growing diversification of litigation in a democratized society, the judiciary would reconsider its formalistic judicial activism and adopt a lenient standard of controlling administrative rulemaking, which mitigates the common-pool dilemma created by the rigid APA legislation. Therefore, it is not the institutionalization of rule of law solely but the deepening of democratic life that induces a pluralist society, that powers institutional changes, and that, hence, contributes to democratic efficacy in a post-authoritarian state.

Delegation and Positive-Sum Bureaucracies

I develop a formal model of bureaucratic policymaking to investigate why a legislature would choose to delegate authority to a bureaucratic agency whose actions can be controlled, ex post, by an executive with divergent policy preferences. Because the executive and legislature might find different policies to be salient to their constituencies, I demonstrate that executive review of agency rulemaking can benefit both branches of government, relative to legislative delegation without the possibility of such review. In trying to undermine the impacts of executive oversight, agencies propose policies that could benefit the legislature were the executive to choose not to intervene in agency policymaking. Likewise, if the executive does intervene, executive review allows him to implement a policy more desirable than absent such review. This joint-desirability of executive review is more likely when legislative and executive policy preferences are relatively aligned, and when legislative and agency policy preferences are relatively divergent. The broader social welfare consequences of executive review depend on the relative effectiveness of the executive's oversight of agency policymaking. These results provide insight for why mediating lawmaking institutions such as the Office of Information and Regulatory Analysis (OIRA) continue to survive in a separation of powers system despite their potential to advantage one branch of government at the expense of the other.

African‐American Committee Chairs in U.S. State Legislatures*

Objective. In this article, we explore whether African‐American state legislators have been able to translate election to office into positions of power, particularly as committee chairs.Methods. We cull data from all state legislative chambers that contained a black legislator during two time periods, 1989 and 1999. In doing so, we compare the observed numbers of African‐American chairs with their expected numbers. We also examine each state's percentage of black chairs using multiple regression to determine what factors—political, partisan, institutional, cultural—influence the selection of black committee chairs.Results. Overall, our descriptive analysis reveals that blacks are underrepresented as chairs. They are not, however, significantly underrepresented as chairs of the most important committees and they are generally overrepresented as chairs of committees with jurisdiction over social services. Our multivariate analyses show that the prevalence of black chairs is driven primarily by factors related to partisan control of legislative chambers and size of the black legislative delegation, and that these dynamics have changed over time.Conclusion. Although the increase in African‐American state legislators has led to an increase in substantive leadership roles, these positions have been limited almost entirely to chambers where the black caucus is a critical element of a Democratic majority.

Legislative Delegation to the Executive in the ‘Second’ Italian Republic

Considering the increasing quantitative usage and expanding qualitative scope of instruments of delegated legislations as the predominant means of enacting welfare reforms, this article investigates the consolidation throughout the Second Italian Republic of a new interpretation of executive prerogatives in the exercise of legislative functions. This is not only a problem in relation to the constitutional balance defining the relationship between the executive and legislature, but also an issue for executive policy leadership and capacity to steer the legislative process. It is argued that since the 1990s the usage of legislative decrees has become a sui generis and the predominant means of decision-making, adopted in particular for welfare reforms. In particular, delegated legislation to the executive has changed the impact that interest groups, such as trade unions, have on the policy process. Two case studies are presented by way of illustration, namely the health care reforms of the early 1990s and the education reform in 2003.

About Legislative Delegations and the Argentine Constitution: The Case for a Dualist Understanding to Tell Apart "Emergency" from "Administrative" Delegations (Reglamentos delegados de administración y reglamentos delegados de emergencia)

Legislative delegation is a tricky, inherently complex legal issue. Courts have dealt with it through a mix of self restraint and euphemistic dicta that can be hardly understood from a pure normative standpoint. This essay aims to look for a comprehensive understanding of the rise, sidestepping and fall of the nondelegation principle, combining the comparative perspective - with focus on the American constitutional practices and the lines settled by U.S. Supreme Court from cases like Hampton to Chevron - with the correlative local story as told on the argentine rulings that have shaped its reception and paved the way for the eventual inclusion in the constitutional reform of 1994. According to the dualist theory we will outline here, it should be sketched a fundamental distinction between the more restrictive emergency delegations and the mere administrative delegations. We will try to set up such an analysis of legislative delegations as were arranged in the Argentine Constitution, article 76, in order to ascertain its theoretical as well as its political consequences - seeking to identify a set of standards and criteria that can be handled ssuccessfully and objectively by the courts for the judicial control of delegated regulations.

The Role of Political Ideology in the Structural Design of New Governance Agencies

This paper employs theories of structural politics and delegation to develop a set of propositions about the legislative delegation of authority to quasi-governmental entities, known as “quangos.” Legislators have incentives to condition their choice of structure for an organization charged with implementing policy on their own political attitudes toward “good government.” The quasi-independence of quangos provides credibility for legislators to commit to a process that takes policy making out of their hands while creating a structure that increases the likelihood of achieving their policy goals. Theoretical implications are empirically examined using data on the financial autonomy of Dutch public bodies. The results support the argument that it is important to consider politicians’ ideologies directly in governance studies because they form the key component of structural politics.

Dynamics of Southern Partisan Representation: 1898-2005

This study addresses institutional representation in legislative delegations through the decomposition of the southern U.S. House delegation over time. Linear first-order difference equations are calculated to show the shift from the Solid South and the disintegration of Democratic dominance. These calculations also show that the qualitative behavior of partisan control varies over time given a series of critical events, including the Dixiecrat experience, the Congressional reforms of the 1970s, and the Republican Revolution of 1994. However, I also argue that the Republican Revolution was actually predictable, given the twentieth-century experience of the southern delegation.