<i>Chevron</i>, <i>State Farm</i>, and the Impact of Judicial Doctrine on Bureaucratic Policymaking

Wiseman, Alan E.; Wright, John

doi:10.1017/s1537592720003606

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(53 reference statements)

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“…There is also no shortage of reasons this notion should apply to informal congressional inquiries. As recent work by Wiseman and Wright (2015) highlights, the time elapsed between delegation decisions and agency policymaking is sometimes decades. This may coincide with turnover in both principal (via elections) and agent (via career decisions).…”

Section: Congressional Oversight and Bureaucratic Accountabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Polices the Administrative State?

Lowande

2018

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Scholarship on oversight of the bureaucracy typically conceives of legislatures as unitary actors. But most oversight is conducted by individual legislators who contact agencies directly. I acquire the correspondence logs of 16 bureaucratic agencies and re-evaluate the conventional proposition that ideological disagreement drives oversight. I identify the effect of this disagreement by exploiting the transition from George Bush to Barack Obama, which shifted the ideological orientation of agencies through turnover in agency personnel. Contrary to existing research, I find ideological conflict has a negligible effect on oversight, whereas committee roles and narrow district interests are primary drivers. The findings may indicate that absent incentives induced by public auditing, legislator behavior is driven by policy valence concerns rather than ideology. The results further suggest collective action in Congress may pose greater obstacles to bureaucratic oversight than previously thought.

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Section: Congressional Oversight and Bureaucratic Accountabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Polices the Administrative State?

Lowande

2018

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…For instance, how do judges shape politicians' ability to oversee bureaucrats? Wiseman & Wright (2020) show that US Supreme Court decisions constrain the ability of Congress to control the bureaucracy. Potter (2019) shows that in about half of rulemaking cases reviewed by courts, US federal agencies lose.…”

Section: Oversightmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bureaucratic Politics: Blind Spots and Opportunities in Political Science

Brierley

Lowande

Potter

et al. 2023

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

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Bureaucracy is everywhere. Unelected bureaucrats are a key link between government and citizens, between policy and implementation. Bureaucratic politics constitutes a growing share of research in political science. But the way bureaucracy is studied varies widely, permitting theoretical and empirical blind spots as well as opportunities for innovation. Scholars of American politics tend to focus on bureaucratic policy making at the national level, while comparativists often home in on local implementation by street-level bureaucrats. Data availability and professional incentives have reinforced these subfield-specific blind spots over time. We highlight these divides in three prominent research areas: the selection and retention of bureaucratic personnel, oversight of bureaucratic activities, and opportunities for influence by actors external to the bureaucracy. Our survey reveals how scholars from the American and comparative politics traditions can learn from one another.

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“…There is no neutral standard of policy modification. Rigid categories and thresholds could be seen as "stable" and "firm of purpose" or "inflexible" and "outdated" (Bardach 1976); responsive policy updating or "drift reversal" (Shpaizman 2017) could also be described as "unstable," "volatile," or "arbitrary" (Wiseman and Wright 2022). While liberals criticize conservatives' failure to update interval-frozen benefit levels or bureaucratic capacity, conservatives in turn condemn the rigidity of affirmative action quotas or elections preclearance rules for specific geographical locations (Gorsuch 2023;Roberts 2013;Thomas 2023).…”

Section: Interval and Categorical Freezingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Litigating Policy Drift: Frozen Categories and Thresholds in Court

Hackett

2023

Perspect. polit.

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The combination of rigid policy rules with shifting political, economic, and social environments can produce drift: policy change without formal modification. We know much about the political origins and consequences of drift but little about the legal battles that accelerate or impede it. I identify two distinct forms of policy rigidity that generate drift: interval freezing and categorical freezing. Drawing from recent and historical cases encompassing voting rights, racial discrimination, religious conscience protections, and other hot-button issues, I argue that drifting policies possess several sources of legal resilience: injuries are difficult to identify; judges can be persuaded of the merits of restraint, textual formalism, and bright-line rules; and policy makers plausibly deny any intentional action in pursuit of controversial outcomes. Drift is not an automatic and unremarkable process of continual policy change but rather the outcome of high-stakes political and legal contestation over how rigid policy thresholds and categories should be adapted to meet shifting conditions.

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Chevron, State Farm, and the Impact of Judicial Doctrine on Bureaucratic Policymaking

Cited by 5 publications

References 56 publications

Who Polices the Administrative State?

Who Polices the Administrative State?

Bureaucratic Politics: Blind Spots and Opportunities in Political Science

Litigating Policy Drift: Frozen Categories and Thresholds in Court

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