Implementing presidential particularism: bureaucracy and the distribution of federal grants

Abstract

Do agencies implement the president's particularistic goals uniformly? This paper clarifies the presidential particularism literature by explicitly considering the mechanism through which the president pursues their policy goals: executive agencies. The constellation of bureaucratic agencies responsible for allocating grants plays a key role in facilitating or frustrating presidential policy priorities. Using a dataset of 21 agencies over 14 years, I find that only agencies ideologically proximate to the president engage in particularism benefiting the president. I find no evidence that politicization influences agency implementation of particularism. Critically, the moderating effect of the bureaucracy on particularism only occurs for distributive programs over which agencies have discretion. When disbursing formula grants written by Congress but administered by the bureaucracy with little or no discretion, ideological distance between agencies and presidents has no effect on particularism.

Presidential Patronage and Executive Branch Appointments, 1925–1959

“…Congressional districts with legislators who supported a president's agenda at higher rates received systematically greater representation in the federal bureaucracy. These findings contribute to a growing literature that demonstrates how presidents use their institutional positions to respond to their political incentives (e.g., Berry, Burden, and Howell 2010;Kriner and Reeves 2015;Lowande, Jenkins, and Clarke 2018;Napolio 2021;Rogowski 2016) and illustrate how control of personnel allows presidents to distribute positions in ways that benefit them politically.…”

“…Harvard University and the University of Chicago provided funding support. Hollibaugh, Horton, and Lewis 2014), and presidents are often responsive to partisan and electoral factors when distributing other resources over which they have discretion (e.g., Berry, Burden, and Howell 2010;Berry and Gersen 2017;Hudak 2014;Kriner and Reeves 2015;Lowande, Jenkins, and Clarke 2018;Napolio 2021;Reeves 2011). Given the vast reservoir of bureaucratic positions that can be filled at the discretion of presidents and their department heads, understanding the criteria by which this discretion is exercised is important for understanding how presidents exert control over the bureaucracy and its outputs.…”

The Politicized Enforcement of Laws Criminalizing Executive Branch Conflicts of Interest

“…In this article, I offer an overview and empirical examination of executive branch public ethics law in its implementation phase. I contend that along with numerous other administrative processes in federal policy-making institutions (Acs 2015;Napolio, Forthcoming;Potter 2019;Thrower 2017), and consistent with the argument and findings in Gordon (2009), there is ample reason to believe the administration of statutes criminalizing financial self-dealing for administrative officials is driven by party competition and ideological opposition, and thus executive branch conflict of interest law may be the function of political enforcement. To test this claim, I examine prosecutorial choices in litigation by the Department of Justice over the past three decades of its efforts to enforce federal criminal prohibitions on conflicts of interest in administrative decision making.…”

The Politicization Conversation: A Call to Better Define and Measure the Concept

“…Scholars operationalize this variable many ways, with measures such as an indicator of whether agency leadership is appointed or a count of the number of appointees in an agency (e.g., Fernandez, Cho, and Perry 2010;Krause, Lewis and Douglas 2006;Moore 2018;Reenock, Konisky, and Uttermark 2021;Villalobos and Vaughn 2009), a ratio of the number of managers in the agency that are appointed (e.g., Berry and Gersen 2017;Bruns Ali 2020;Lewis 2008;Lowande 2019;Napolio 2021;Resh 2015), or by using survey data that captures perceptions of the amount of influence various politicians have on appointments (e.g., Bach, Hammerschmid, and Löffler 2020;Meyer-Sahling and Mikkelsen 2016). Aside from data availability, one of the benefits of focusing on the presence of political appointees is that it is concrete.…”