This study analyzes state legislators' attitudes toward several mechanisms designed to control executive branch bureaucracies, specifically emphasizing their perceptions of the effectiveness of these instruments. Their assessments of these tools are important, since they may be a crude and general indicator of the devices' contributions to administrative accountability in state government. Administrative accountability is a central issue in public administration. Interest in the subject has paralleled the rise of the administrative state-the growth, increasing complexity, specialization, discretion, and power of bureaucracy-and the threat which this development could pose for democracy. ' The thrust of public administration literature is that bureaucracy and democracy are compatible only when the former is controlled effectively by elected officials. This premise has generated a myriad of control techniques, most of which involve the legislative branch: law making, budgeting, appropriations, veto, investigation, committee oversight, program evaluation, performance audit, and sunset.2 Despite consensus on the need for accountability, few studies have attempted to assess the effectiveness of state administrative control mechanisms. Such research is justified, particularly since states are experiencing an increasingly crucial role in the federal system, a rapid growth in expenditures, a steady expansion of work forces, and a constant accretion in administrative policy making.3