A Two-Way Street: The Institutional Dynamics of the Modern Administrative State. By George A. Krause. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999. 256p. $45.00.

Extract

George A. Krause has undertaken a statistical analysis of the relationship between the president and the Congress and the enforcement activities of two regulatory agencies: the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice for the years 1949–92. He finds that the president and the Congress often influenced each other, but neither of the political branches succeeded in dominating the bureaucracies. These findings are consistent with the interpretations of presidential-congressional-bureaucratic power of most journalists, sociologists, historians, political scientists, and public administration scholars.