The Political Control of Bureaucracies under Asymmetric Information

Abstract

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How much discretion for risk regulators?

“…Any kind of asymmetric information downstream is bound to generate a rent/efficiency trade-off. As soon as this trade-off is appreciated differently by the Agency and Congress, the same kind of analysis as the one performed in this paper 45 See Banks (1989) and Banks and Weingast (1992) would apply. Again rules and limited discretion might be quite attractive.…”

Political selection of public servants and parliamentary oversight

“…their representatives. This is particularly relevant if there are well organized interest groups in the politician's district that have sufficient resources and strong incentives to keep a watchful eye on public service behavior (Banks and Weingast 1992).…”

“…With regard to the former aspect, related recent empirical and theoretical work has been conducted by researchers such as Besley (2005), Stutzer (2011), Caselli andMorelli (2004), Chattopadhyay and Duflo (2004), Gagliarducci et al (2010), Gagliarducci and Nannicini (2012), Galasso and Nannicini (2011), and van Aaken and Voigt (2011). As to parliamentary oversight, this is related to the (often US-specific) analysis of oversight relationships and bargaining processes between the bureaucracy and the legislator (Banks and Weingast 1992, Calvert et al 1989, Moe 1989, Niskanen 1971, 1975, Ogul and Rockman 1990, Rosenthal 1981, Weingast and Moran 1983, the (legislative) design of administrative procedures and ex ante control (Bawn 1995, 1997and McCubbins et al 1987, and the separation of powers (Persson et al 1997, Grossman andHelpman 2008). Our analysis also contributes to the limited body of research on the effectiveness of legislators (Grant and Kelly 2008, Padro i Miquel and Snyder 2006and Shiller 1995, and the German political science literature dealing with state legislatures and governmental-parliamentary relationships (Holtmann andPatzelt 2004, Patzelt 2005).…”

The Comitology Game: European Policymaking with Parliamentary Involvement

“…Two different lines of research can be distinguished in regard to this choice. The first line, which is found in a large number of studies, explores the effects of information asymmetry on decision making (see, for instance, Matthews, 1989;Banks and Weingast, 1992). A second line examines the effects of different institutions on the outcomes of decision making within a framework in which players are assumed to have complete and perfect information.…”