Setting the Regulatory Agenda: Statutory Deadlines, Delay, and Responsiveness

Bertelli, Anthony M.; Doherty, Kathleen

doi:10.1111/puar.13082

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 19 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Take, for instance, the results attached to Unified Government. While this construct is not a focus of our theorising, it is a critical predictor variable in numerous studies focused on the delegation-discretion relationship (Epstein and O'Halloran 1999;Tsebelis 2002;Farhang and Yaver 2016;Revesz and Davis Noll 2019;Bertelli and Doherty 2019). Interestingly, we find no evidence of Unified Government affecting draft rule timing.…”

Section: Other Findingsmentioning

confidence: 52%

“…As a result, while the exact normative threshold for what constitutes "responsiveness" may be difficult to pin down, it is clear that, at a minimum, the idea of responsiveness has elements of timing built in. Bertelli and Doherty (2019) offer an important innovation by focusing on calendar and political time. In their analysis of congressionally imposed deadlines, they find that while federal government agencies frequently miss rule-specific date deadlines in congressional statutes, agencies often promulgate these same rules before the next major political election.…”

Section: The Timing Of Agency Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Handmaidens of the legislature? Understanding regulatory timing

Haeder

Yackee

2022

J. Pub. Pol.

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When does legislation trigger regulation? The US Congress regularly passes laws that authorise government agencies to write legally binding regulations. Yet, when this occurs, agencies may take years to act – or, at times – may never act at all. We theorise that the breadth of the congressional statutory delegation drives the timing of agency policy production. In particular, when Congress expressly tells an agency to promulgate a rule, we expect agencies to do so quickly. Yet, when Congress provides greater policymaking discretion to agencies, we expect other factors – and especially, internal agency considerations – to drive regulatory timing. We use data from almost 350 statutes spanning four decades, which are then matched up with thousands of regulations, to assess the argument. Using innovative methods, we find support for our hypotheses. Overall, we produce a deeper understanding of the link between delegation and discretion: suggesting when it occurs, as well as, importantly, why.

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Section: Other Findingsmentioning

confidence: 52%

Section: The Timing Of Agency Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Handmaidens of the legislature? Understanding regulatory timing

Haeder

Yackee

2022

J. Pub. Pol.

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“…From a strategic perspective for a given Senator or caucus, more vacancies may also slow White House regulatory review (Mendelson 2014) or increase an agency's propensity to miss statutory deadlines (Bertelli and Doherty 2019).…”

Section: Vacancies As a Function Of Institutional Bargaining And Dele...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pivotal and Distributive Politics of Senate‐Confirmed Appointee Vacancies

Resh¹,

Napolio²,

Lee³

2022

Pres Stud Q

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We examine the influence of discretionary agency outlays on the relative length of Senateconfirmed presidential appointee vacancies over time. We argue that key Senate pivots in the appointment process are more (or less) likely to extend a vacancy based on an agency's discretionary spending outlays to the Senator's state. We combine a uniquely thorough dataset on PAS vacancies with federal budget data by state and agency and show that co-partisan Senate pivots in the confirmation process seem to reward presidents with shorter vacancies when a given agency is more generous in discretionary outlays. However, under divided government, vacancies lengthen in presidentially aligned agencies as status quo agency outlays increase to key pivots. Our work speaks to both the pivotal politics of the Senate and the extent to which presidents and Senators might value filled (vacant) PAS positions.

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“…Agency success in these coalition‐building endeavors displaces the kind of ex ante controls that lie at the heart of political control theories, for instance, statutory procedural requirements (cf. Bertelli and Doherty 2019; Bertelli, Travaglini, and McCann 2019). Essentially, both ex ante and ex post political control compete with RSA, and they may meet resistance from the very audiences that are the sources of RSA.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reputation‐SourcedAuthority and the Prospect of Unchecked Bureaucratic Power

Bertelli

Busuioc

2020

Public Administration Review

Self Cite

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We explore the democratic implications of a reputational account of bureaucratic authority. While an influential literature has examined the relevance of reputation—and mutual exchange between principals and agents in public organizations generally—the normative implications of these insights have largely escaped scrutiny. We discuss how reputation‐building impacts both the ability and the motivation of principals to oversee administrative policymaking. We argue that reputation‐sourced authority eschews ex ante incentives through the claims‐making and maneuvering of bureaucrats as they develop reputations with audiences. At the same time, it de‐legitimizes ex post oversight because monitoring and compliance must compete both with reputational authority and with resistance from the audiences that are the very sources of such authority.

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Setting the Regulatory Agenda: Statutory Deadlines, Delay, and Responsiveness

Cited by 6 publications

References 19 publications

Handmaidens of the legislature? Understanding regulatory timing

Handmaidens of the legislature? Understanding regulatory timing

The Pivotal and Distributive Politics of Senate‐Confirmed Appointee Vacancies

Reputation‐SourcedAuthority and the Prospect of Unchecked Bureaucratic Power

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