Legislative Choice of Regulatory Forms: Legal Process or Administrative Process?

Perhaps because of the importance and visibility of some regulatory agencies and commissions, numerous observers have come to regard the administrative form of regulation as the “logical“ or “natural“ method of intervening in the economy or society. In fact, however, regulation comes in a variety of forms. The administrative form might seem all pervasive upon first consideration, but a variety of legislative enactments clearly regulatory in effect such as large portions of the tax code, direct government subsidies and so forth suggest that delegation of legislative authority to administrative entities is, not so universal as is often assumed. Moreover, when viewed in historical perspective, choice of bureaucratic implementation of regulatory programs does not obviously emerge as the “logical“ or “natural“ method, at least not in the view of many political actors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper surveys a heterogeneous body of literature on the subject of regulatory origin in order to identify proposed explanations for legislative choice of administrative forms of regulation in preference to judicial enforcement of legislative enactments. The focus of the survey is on the choices made by legislators and the considerations underlying their choices. Among the latter are (1) beliefs in the inherent superiority of administrative forms, (2) efforts to escape the costs, political and otherwise, of regulating directly, (3) ideologies supportive of delegation to administrators, and (4) uncertainty about the future operation of the regulatory process. These ideas are examined in an exploratory spirit; no firm conclusions are drawn at this time

Legislative Facilitation of Government Growth: Universalism and Reciprocity Practices in Majority Rule Institutions

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Foundations of a Theory of Constituency Influence

This chapter contains a presentation and discussion of the components of our theory. We will introduce and attempt to justify a number of concepts and assumptions which in combination make possible the analysis in later chapters. Like all theoretical worlds, the one we posit is more or less unrealistic, an idealization of the empirical reality we hope to explain. But if we abstract appropriately and capture the most important features of the empirical situation, then we may expect to find that the theoretical processes present in the model world bear some correspondence to the behavior we observe in the empirical world

Bureaucratic (?) Failures: Causes and Cures

Bureaucracy is a traditional object of disparaging commentary, but in recent years it has received more than a proportionate share of popular and political criticism. Perceived problems of wasteful, unresponsive, power-hungry, and out-of-control bureaucracy have generated calls for across the board cut-backs in bureaucratic size and authority, as well as for various structural reforms designed to limit the activities of what is left after the pruning. This paper argues that much criticism of American bureaucracy is misplaced, and that attempts at structural tinkering are therefore doomed to fail. Too many critics of contemporary bureaucracy fail to understand that deeper political (usually Congressional) failures are the basic causes and bureaucratic failures often only symptoms. The single-member district electoral system, re-election seeking Congressmen, and the Congressional division of labor combine to produce a system in which apparent bureaucratic failures emerge as a by-product of efforts to generate political support. Structural reforms may be useful to contemplate, but they should address electoral and Congressional structures as well as if not more so than bureaucratic structures

Axiomatic Models of Risk and Decision: An Expository Treatment

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A Simple Theory of Constituency Influence

When combined, the set of ideas advanced in Chapter 2 constitute a highly simplified model of a representative's world as he ponders whether to cast a yea or nay. In this chapter we will ascertain how model representatives would behave in several of the contingencies which might arise in this model world

The Decline of Collective Responsibility in American Politics

In the American constitutional system the formal powers of government are sufficiently fragmented that no single official, including the president, is individually responsible for the outcomes of government activity. Thus, American officials face the continual temptation to "pass the buck"—to avoid any difficult or politically dangerous decision in the hope that some other official(s) will get stuck with the consequences of acting or failing to act. The American citizen in turn, faces the difficult task of assessing responsibility on numerous officials all of whom deny that they share in that responsibility. The only remedy for such a situation is some form of collective responsibility by which all officials who share authority are held equally responsible for acting or failing to act. Thus far in our history the political party has been the only vehicle by which collective responsibility has been enforced. Strong parties provide the leadership to organized and maintain national policymaking coalitions, and in doing so become clearly responsible for the policies which emerge. Unfortunately, the political party has undergone a steady decline in American politics, a decline evident in the organizational, electoral and governmental spheres. As a result there is a crisis of collective responsibility in contemporary American politics. This situation contributes to more often discussed contemporary problems such as immobilism in our policymaking processes, the increasing importance of single-issue groups, and the increasing political alienation of the American populace

Congressmen and their Constituents: 1958 and 1978

In the wake of the 1978 CPS National Election Study the prevailing portrait of House elections has changed dramatically. The new portrait is more in harmony with theories developed to explain the increasingly idiosyncratic character of House elections in the 1960s and 1970s. As yet, however, there has been little direct attention devoted to the study of change at the level of the individual House voter. This paper reports on a preliminary effort in that direction based on comparisons of items from the 1958 and 1978 election studies. Four kinds of possible change are the focus of the research: (1) change in the prevalence of citizen perceptions of the House candidates, (2) change in the valence of candidate evaluations, (3) change in the substance of candidate evaluations, (4) change in the behavioral importance of particular variables. While the data show some indication of increased attentiveness to their districts on the part of contemporary incumbents, the overall impression from the data is one of less longitudinal change than might have been expected. These tentative null findings underscore the fact that the greatly changed contemporary portrait of House elections arises mainly from items newly included in the 1978 survey rather than from significant change in the data elicited by “comparable” items over time