Politicization and Responsiveness in Executive Agencies

Abstract

Scholarship on bureaucratic responsiveness to Congress typically focuses on delegation and formal oversight hearings. Overlooked are daily requests to executive agencies made by legislators that propose policies, communicate concerns, and request information or services. Analyzing over 24,000 of these requests made to 13 executive agencies between 2007-2014, I find agencies systematically prioritize the policy-related requests of majority party legislators-but that this effect can be counteracted when presidents politicize agencies through appointments. An increase in politicization produces a favorable agency bias toward presidential co-partisans. This same politicization, however, has a net negative impact on agency responsiveness-agencies are less responsive to members of Congress, but even less responsive to legislators who are not presidential co-partisans. Critically, this negative impact extends beyond policy-related requests to cases of constituency service. The results suggest that presidential appointees play an important, daily mediating role between Congress and the bureaucracy.

Legislators as Lobbyists

“…For instance, scholars (e.g., Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing ; Stein and Bickers ) have focused on electoral outcomes and how legislators credit claim for distributive benefits awarded by agencies, arguing that legislators’ requests to agencies do not effect agency outcomes. In line with Fiorina (), there is evidence that legislative politics influences the timing of agency responses (Anagnoson ; Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing ; Lowande, n.d.), but not that agencies, willingness to expedite responses also extends to the outcomes of agency decisions. Some scholars (e.g., Anagnoson ; Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing ) find, for instance, evidence that agencies use the timing of grant announcements to benefit legislators, but they express doubt about legislators’ influence over decision outcomes.…”

Descriptive and Substantive Representation in Congress: Evidence from 80,000 Congressional Inquiries

“…Though these projects provide clear and targeted benefits within a given district, they were still approved by majority coalitions. Contact data come from correspondence logs maintained by 15 agencies (Lowande 2018(Lowande , 2019Mills, Kalaf-Hughes, and MacDonald 2016;Ritchie 2018;Ritchie and You, 2019). Thus, the outcome is mediated by the executive branch-which many have found allocates funds strategically (e.g., Kriner and Reeves 2015).…”

“…We argue this provides a more direct measurement of substantive representation than has been previously available for observational research-limiting the number of alternative explanations for uncovered relationships. Contact data come from correspondence logs maintained by 15 agencies (Lowande 2018(Lowande , 2019Mills, Kalaf-Hughes, and MacDonald 2016;Ritchie 2018;Ritchie and You, 2019). 9 These logs were collected via Freedom of Information Act requests.…”

The effect of politician-constituent conflict on bureaucratic responsiveness under varying information frames

“…There is room for bureaucrats to influence politicians to shift their position closer to that of the citizenry or divert from it (Christensen and Opstrup, 2018;Hustedt and Salomonsen, 2014;Callahan and Yang, 2003;Denters and Klok, 2012;Bryer, 2009;Lowande, 2018;Karlsson, 2019). Results of inter-electoral public participation mechanisms are not legally binding in most countries and contexts.…”