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Principals, Bureaucrats, and Responsiveness in Clean Air Enforcements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

B. Dan Wood
B. Dan Wood
Affiliation:
University of Houston
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Abstract

A principal-agent perspective has been employed in recent studies to rediscover the importance of democratic hierarchies in shaping public bureaucratic outputs. I test the robustness of the hierarchy model for explaining outputs from an agency that has often been cast in the image of bureaucratic independence, the Environmental Protection Agency. Examining the effect of the Reagan presidency on EPA outputs for clean air, Box-Tiao models are constructed to explain shifts in the vigor of air pollution enforcements between 1977 and 1985. The analysis shows that the influence of elected institutions is limited when an agency has substantial bureaucratic resources and a zeal for their use. Moreover, under these conditions, bureaucracy can even move outputs in directions completely opposite from what a model of hierarchy would predict. The implication is that for some agencies it is necessary to give greater consideration to the agent in explaining implementation outcomes through time.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 82 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 213 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1988

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