Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T23:09:54.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Guarding the Guardians: Oversight Appointees and the Search for Accountability in U.S. Federal Agencies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2013

Patrick S. Roberts
Affiliation:
Virginia Tech
Matthew Dull
Affiliation:
Virginia Tech

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1. Plato’s Republic, Book III, 414.

2. Juvenal, , D. Junii Juvenalis Saturarum Libri V, mit Erklärenden Anmerkungen von Ludwig Friedlaender, Erster Band (Leipzig, 1895), 325.Google Scholar

3. Manin, Bernard, “Checks, Balances, and Boundaries: The Separation of Powers in the Constitutional Debate of 1787,” in The Invention of the Modern Republic, ed. Fontana, B. (Cambridge, 1994).Google Scholar

4. Rockman, Bert A., “Legislative-Executive Relations and Legislative Oversight,Legislative Studies Quarterly 9: 387440.Google Scholar

5. Minta, Michael D., “Legislative Oversight and the Substantive Representation of Black and Latino Interests in Congress,Legislative Studies Quarterly 34 (2009): 193218CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Loch K., Strategic Intelligence: Understanding the Hidden Side of Government (Westport, Conn., 2007), 126–27Google Scholar; Ogul, Morris S., Congress Oversees the Bureaucracy (Pittsburgh, 1976).Google Scholar

6. Rockman, Bert, “Bureaucracy, Power, Policy, and the State,” in The State of Public Bureaucracy, ed. Hill, Larry B. (Armonk, N.Y., 1992), 159.Google Scholar See also Pfiffner, James P., “Political Appointees and Career Executives: The Democracy-Bureaucracy Nexus in the Third Century,Public Administration Review 47, no. 1 (January–February 1987): 5765.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Bawn, Kathleen, “Political Control versus Expertise: Congressional Choices about Administrative Procedures,American Political Science Review 89 (1995): 6273CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dull, Matthew, Roberts, Patrick S., Keeney, Michael S., and Choi, Sang Ok. 2012. “Appointee Confirmation and Tenure: The Succession of U.S. Federal Agency Appointees, 1989–2009.” Public Administration Review 72, no. 6 (November/December): 902–13; David E. Lewis, The Politics of Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance (Princeton, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Fiorina, Morris P., Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment (New Haven, 1989), 2nd ed., 36.Google Scholar The trend was noted by Charles Clapp in extensive interviews with members of Congress and their staff. See Clapp, , The Congressman: His Job as He Sees It (Washington, D.C., 1963).Google Scholar

9. Fiorina, Congress, 17–48.

10. Ibid., 41.

11. Hood, Christopher, Scott, Colin, James, Oliver, Jones, George, and Travers, Tony, Regulation Inside Government: Waste Watchers, Quality Police, and Sleaze-Busters (New York, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Brass, Clinton T., “General Management Laws: Major Themes and Management Policy Options” (Washington, D.C., 2004)Google Scholar; Light, Paul C., Thickening Government: Federal Hierarchy and the Diffusion of Accountability (Washington, D.C., 1995).Google Scholar

13. Administrative law serves an oversight function, but its development and complexities are outside the scope of this article and sufficiently distinct from oversight positions to warrant separate treatment in a future article.

14. Mosher, Frederick C., The GAO: The Quest for Accountability in American Government (Boulder, 1979); Clinton T. Brass, “General Management Laws” Paul Charles Light, The Tides of Reform: Making Government Work, 1945–1995 (New Haven, 1997).Google Scholar

15. The authors thank an anonymous reviewer for assistance in honing this formulation.

16. Aberbach, Joel D., Keeping a Watchful Eye: The Politics of Congressional Oversight (Washington, D.C., 1990), 98.Google Scholar

17. McCubbins, Mathew D. and Schwartz, Thomas, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols versus Fire Alarms,American Journal of Political Science 28, no. 1 (February 1984): 165–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. 5 U.S.C. Appx § 3[b].

19. Ervin, Clark Kent, Open Target: Where America Is Vulnerable to Attack (New York, 2007).Google Scholar

20. Dull, Matthew and Roberts, Patrick, “Continuity, Competence, and the Succession of Senate-Confirmed Agency Appointees, 1989–2009,Presidential Studies Quarterly 39 (2009): 432–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Inspector General Act of 1978.

22. Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990.

23. CFO Act 1990.

24. Securities and Exchange Commission, “Delegation of Authority to the General Counsel: Securities and Exchange Commission, letter from Elizabeth M. Murphy, Secretary,” 28 April 2009, Washington, D.C., 2009.Google Scholar

25. Moore, Mark H. and Gates, Margaret Jane, Inspectors-General, Junkyard Dogs, or Man’s Best Friend (New York, 1986), 18.Google Scholar

26. Operations of Billie Sol Estes, “Operations of Billie Sol Estes,” 89th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C., 1965)Google Scholar; Operations of Billie Sol Estes, “Hearings Before the House Committee on Government Operations,” in House Committee on Government Operations (Washington, D.C., 1964).Google Scholar

27. Light, Paul C., Thickening Government: Federal Hierarchy and the Diffusion of Accountability (Washington, D.C., 1995), 3233.Google Scholar

28. Government Printing Office, “Establishment of an Office of Inspector General in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,” in Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations and Human Resources of the House Government Operations Committee (Washington, D.C., 1976), 1; Light, Thickening Government, 40.Google Scholar

29. Derthick, Martha, Agency Under Stress: The Social Security Administration in American Government (Washington, D.C., 1990), 126–27.Google Scholar

30. Light, Thickening Government; Muellenberg, Kurt W. and Volzer, Harvey, “Inspector General Act of 1978,Temple Law Quarterly 53 (1980): 1049–66.Google Scholar

31. Pub. L. 95−452, 92 Stat. 1101, H.R. 8588, enacted 12 October 1978.

32. Inspector General Act of 1978.

33. Carter, Jimmy, “National Conference on Fraud, Abuse and Error Remarks at the Conference Sponsored by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,” Washington, D.C., 13 December 1978.Google Scholar

34. Light, Thickening Government, 11–22; Moore, and Gates, , Inspectors-General, Junkyard Dogs, or Man’s Best Friend; Frederick Mosher, “Comment by Frederick C. Mosher,” in Improving the Accountability and Performance of Government, ed. Smith, Bruce L. R. and Carroll, James D. (Washington, D.C., 1982), 72Google Scholar; Rourke, Francis E., “Bureaucratic Autonomy and the Public Interest,” in Making Bureaucracies Work, ed. Weiss, Carol H. and Barton, Allen H. (Beverley Hills, 1980), 103.Google Scholar

35. 5 U.S.C. app. At 400 supp. V 1981.

36. Kent, Jill E., “Organization of the Agency Chief Financial Officer,Government Accountants Journal 40 (1991): 2633.Google Scholar

37. Scott, Hood, Jones, James, and Travers, , Regulation Inside Government, 4492.Google Scholar

38. Inspector General Act 1978; one example of the concern with performance is David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government (New York, 1993).

39. Light, Thickening of Government, 35.

40. Trattner, John H., The 2000 Prune Book: How to Succeed in Washington’s Top Jobs (Washington, D.C., 2000), 81.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., 80.

42. Burrows, Vanessa K., “Statutory Offices of Inspectors General (IGs): Methods of Appointment and Legislative Proposals,Congressional Research Service. November 6, 2009. R40675.Google Scholar

43. Public Law 101–576.

44. Hodsoll, Frank, “Office of Management and Budget’s Plans for Implementation of the Chief Financial Officers Act,Government Accountants Journal 40 (1991): 1218Google Scholar; Jones, Lawrence R. and McCaffery, Jerry L., “Federal Financial Management Reform and the Chief Financial Officers Act,Public Budgeting & Finance 12 (1992): 7586CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Lawrence R., “Counterpoint Essay: Nice Reasons Why the CFO Act May Not Achieve Its Objective,Public Budgeting & Finance 13 (1993): 8794CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Lawrence R. and McCaffery, Jerry L., “Implementation of the Federal Chief Financial Officers Act,Public Budgeting & Finance 13 (1993): 6876.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990.

46. Hodsoll, “Office of Management and Budget’s Plans for Implementation of the Chief Financial Officers Act.”

47. Carpenter, Daniel P. and Sin, Gisella, “Policy Tragedy and the Emergence of Regulation: The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938,Studies in American Political Development 21 (2007): 149–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49. Steinhoff, Jeffrey C., “Challenges of the CFO Act,Government Accountants Journal 40 (1991): 1822Google Scholar; Steinberg, Harold I., “The CFO Act: A Look at Federal Accountability,Journal of Accountancy 18 (1996): 5557.Google Scholar

50. Homer, Julia, “The Financial Frontier,CFO Magazine, 1 May 2004.Google Scholar

51. GAO Letter, “Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998: Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice” (Washington, D.C., 2008).

52. Johnson, Sarah, “CFO Act Agencies’ Reporting Lags,CFO.com (2006); U.S. Congressional and Administrative News, “Government Management Reform Act of 1994,” Washington, D.C., 1994.Google Scholar

53. Homer, “The Financial Frontier.”

54. Association of Government Accountants, “Annual CFO Survey: Financial Management, Providing a Foundation for Transition,” Alexandria, 2008, 13.

55. Michael Herz notes that the relationship of the general counsel to the agency head “parallels that between the president and attorney general.” See Herz, Michael, “The Attorney Particular: The Governmental Role of the Agency General Counsel,” in Government Lawyers: The Federal Legal Bureaucracy and Presidential Politics, ed. Clayton, Cornell W. (Lawrence, Kans., 1995), 143–80(143).Google Scholar

56. Act to Establish the Department of Justice, 22 June 1870, secs. 1, 2, 16; available at: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=016/llsl016.db&recNum=197; Attorney General’s Annual Report 1928, on file with authors.

57. Herz, “The Attorney Particular,” 143–80.

58. Ibid., 147.

59. Ibid.

60. Lessig, Lawrence, “Readings by Our Unitary Executive,Cardozo Law Review 15 (1993): 175–99.Google Scholar

61. Bell, Griffin, “The Attorney General: The Federal Government’s Chief Lawyer and Chief Litigator, or One Among Many?Fordham Law Review 46 (1978): 1049–59, 1050.Google Scholar

62. Lewis, David E., The Politics of Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance (Princeton, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. Heclo, Hugh, “OMB and the Presidency: The Problem of ‘Neutral Competence,’Public Interest 38 (Winter 1975): 8098(81).Google Scholar

64. Herbert Kaufman first defined “neutral competence” as the “ability to do the work of government expertly, and to do it according to explicit, objective standards rather than to personal or party or other obligations and loyalties.” Kaufman, , “Emerging Conflicts in the Doctrines of Public Administration,American Political Science Review 50, no. 4 (December 1956): 1057–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aberbach, Joel D. and Rockman, Bert A., “Civil Servants and Policymakers: Neutral or Responsive Competence?Governance 7, no. 4 (1994): 461–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65. The metaphor borrows from Kingdon’s famous streams metaphor. See Kingdon, John, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policy Politics (New York, 1984).Google Scholar

66. Fiorina, Morris, “Legislative Choice of Regulatory Forms: Legal Process or Administrative Process?Public Choice 39 (1982): 3361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67. Sinclair, Barbara, Legislators, Leaders, and Lawmaking: The U.S. House of Representatives in the Postreform Era (Baltimore, 1998), 844, 213CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rhode, David W., “Committee and Policy Formulation,” in The Legislative Branch, ed. Quirk, Paul and Binder, Sarah (New York, 2005), 201–23.Google Scholar

68. Ripley, Randall B., Party Leadership in the House of Representatives (Washington, D.C., 1967). 6.Google Scholar

69. Fiorina, “Legislative Choice of Regulatory Forms,” 35.

70. Dull, Matthew, “Why PART? The Institutional Politics of Presidential Budget Reform,Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 16 (2006): 187215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. Gronke, Paul, Hicks, James, and Cook, Timothy E., “Trust in Government and in Social Institutions,” in Understanding Public Opinion, ed. Norrander, Barbara and Wilcox, Clyde (Washington, D.C., 2009).Google Scholar

72. Patterson, Thomas E., Out of Order (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Starobin, Paul, “A Generation of Vipers,Columbia Journalism Review 40 (2001): 118–20.Google Scholar

73. Aberbach, Joel D., Keeping a Watchful Eye: The Politics of Congressional Oversight (Washington, D.C., 1990)Google Scholar; Aberbach, , “What’s Happened to the Watchful Eye?Congress and the Presidency (2002): 323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74. Mann, Thomas E. and Ornstein, Norman J., The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (New York, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sinclair, Barbara, Party Wars: Polarization and the Politics of National Policy Making (Norman, Okla., 2006).Google Scholar

75. Lewis, David, “Political Appointees and the Competence of Federal Program Management,American Politics Research 34 (2006): 2250Google Scholar; Parker, David C. W. and Dull, Matthew, “Divided We Quarrel: The Politics of Congressional Investigations,Legislative Studies Quarterly 34 (2009): 319–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76. Moe, Terry, “An Assessment of the Positive Theory of Congressional Dominance,Legislative Studies Quarterly 12 (1987): 475520 (489); Richard P. Nathan, The Administrative Presidency.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77. See Lewis, “Political Appointees and the Competence of Federal Program Management,” 2006.

78. Bawn, “Political Control versus Expertise,” 62–73; Bertelli, Anthony and Feldman, Sven, “Strategic Appointments,Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 17 (2007): 1938CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Epstein, David and O’Halloran, Sharyn, Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policy Making under Separate Powers (New York, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Gary, “The Political Evolution of Principal-Agent Models,Annual Review of Political Science 8 (2005): 203225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79. Freidson, Eliot, Professionalism: The Third Logic (London, 2001), 34.Google Scholar

80. Stinchcombe, Arthur L., When Formality Works: Authority and Abstraction in Law and Organizations (Chicago, 2001), 41.Google Scholar

81. One famous claim that organizations adopt professional rules because they seek legitimacy and status can be found in: Meyer, John and Rowan, Brian, “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,American Journal of Sociology 83 (1977): 340–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Douglas, Mary, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, 1986)Google Scholar, for, among other things, a provocative analysis of the differences between American and French wine appellations.

82. Carpenter, Daniel, Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA (Princeton, 2010).Google Scholar

83. Lawyers were among the earliest professions involved in government oversight. In addition, lawyers have so penetrated society that agencies require legal advice to do business. For example, lawyers interpret the Freedom of Information Act and other administrative procedures. See Mosher, Frederick, “Comment by Frederick C. Mosher,” in Improving the Accountability and Performance of Government, ed. Smith, Bruce L. R. and Carroll, James D. (Washington, D.C., 1982).Google Scholar

84. Personal interview, 21 May 2012, Washington, D.C.

85. We include only confirmed appointees, not service in an acting capacity. We are interested in whether a position is filled with someone who holds the full authority of the office. When a position is vacant, other appointees or careerists may be given some of the duties of the vacant position temporarily, but these substitutes do not exercise these duties with the full authority of the position. For a measure of vacancy duration, we adopted an established method: the number of days from the departure of an appointee until the Senate confirmation of the replacement. We follow previous work on appointees, with some modifications. See Nixon, David C. and Bentley, Roisin M., “Appointment Delay and the Policy Environment of the National Transportation Safety Board,Administration and Society 37 (2006): 679–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nixon, David C., “Appointment Delay for Vacancies on the Federal Communications Commission,Public Administration Review 61 (2001): 483–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86. Data were collected through formal requests from the Office of Personnel Management and Government Accountability Office and verified against published sources, including the Senate nominations database available through Thomas.gov, Congressional Research Service reports, contemporary news coverage accessed by Lexis-Nexis, and online resources.

87. For example, there is an office of chief counsel in the Department of Treasury and a chief counsel specific to the Internal Revenue Service. For our purposes, however, we counted only the Department of Treasury’s general counsel, who is both the top legal adviser to the secretary and an adviser on policy matters. Other PAS attorneys excluded from our dataset include the solicitor in the Department of Labor and the legal adviser in the state department.

88. Shapiro, Ari, “Glenn Fine Praised As Model Inspector General, November 11,” National Public Radio, 11 November 2008. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story/php?storyID=96835115.Google Scholar

89. Chang, Kelly, Lewis, David, and McCarty, Nolan, “The Tenure of Political Appointees,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association (Chicago, 2001)Google Scholar; Dan Wood, B. and Marchbanks, Miner P. III, “What Determines How Long Political Appointees Serve?Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 18 (2007): 375–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

90. Donahue, John D., “The Transformation of Government Work: Causes, Consequences, and Distortions,” in Government by Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy,” in Government by Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy, ed. Freeman, Jody and Minow, Martha (Cambridge, Mass., 2009), 4163.Google Scholar

91. Nixon, David C., “Appointment Delay for Vacancies on the Federal Communications Commission,” 483–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

92. We constructed a regression model that confirms that divided government does not predict vacancies.

93. Wolf, Richard, “Some Key Obama Administration Jobs Still Unfilled,USA Today, 10 November 2009.Google Scholar

94. O’Connell, Anne Joseph, “Vacant Offices,Southern California Law Review 89 (2009): 9131000.Google Scholar

95. Kane, Paul, “The Fastest Gavel in the Senate,Washington Post, 31 December 2007.Google Scholar

96. Yoon, Lisa, “A CFO for Katrina?CFO.com (2005).Google Scholar

97. U.S. House, “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, Amendment 42 offered by Anna Eshoo, May 27, 2010,” 2010; U.S. Senate, “Governmentwide Intelligence Community Management Reforms,” in Senate Hearing 110-431, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (Washington, D.C., 2008).Google Scholar

98. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.