Interest Groups, Advisory Committees, and Congressional Control of the Bureaucracy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6231089 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Steven J Balla (0000-0002-8069-8087), John Wright (0000-0001-9572-7293), John R Wright |
| Year | 2001 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 799 |
| Publication date | 2001-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2669325 |
| OpenAlex | W2326774800 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 109 |
| References cited | 13 |
NDWAC), an advisory committee within the Environmental Protection Agency, to test whether the active interests in the legislative debate over drinking water are represented on the advisory committee, and thus in the EPA's policymaking process. Although agency officials are responsible for appointing the members of NDWAC, we find that public endorsements by interest groups are influential in the agency's selection process. These groups provide reliable information to Congress about applicants' true policy preferences. ne of the persistent power struggles in American national politics is that between Congress and the bureaucracy. Scholars have theorized that the outcome of this struggle depends significantly on which institution has superior information about the costs and consequences of policy implementation (Banks and Weingast 1992; Bendor, Taylor, and Van Gaalen 1985; Miller and Moe 1984). When agencies have an informational advantage, they can often implement programs at higher costs and with different beneficiaries than intended by Congress. limit bureaucratic discretion in policy making, Congress must control the information available to agencies. The information available to agencies depends, among other factors, on the number and kind of interested parties that participate in agency proceedings. Through formal comments, ex parte communications, hearings, stakeholder meetings, and other forums, agencies collect information about the costs and consequences of policy options in some of the same ways as Congress collects information. Policy information across the two institutions is likely to correspond when both Congress and agencies collect information from the same parties. If policy decisions depend on available information, then the more closely information corresponds between institutions, the more likely policy decisions will correspond as well. Our question in this article is To what extent, and by what means, do interests that realize representation in Congress also realize representation in the bureaucracy? Our explanation parallels the structure and process argument of McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast (1987, 1989) and the informational theories of Gilligan and Krehbiel (1987) and others. We propose that Congress controls the flow and content of information to the bureaucracy
Agency (philosophy · Bureaucracy · Business · Control (management · Discretion · Economics · Legislature · Management · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Rulemaking · Sociology · Stakeholder · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies · Public Administration · Public Policy and Administration Research
Policy advisory bodies during crises
Administrative Traditions
The American Congress
Partisan Models and the Search for Party Effects in the US Senate
Interest Group Theory
The Party Faithful
How Parties Nominate Presidents
The Comparative Advantage of State Interest Organization Research
Theories of Parties
The Road Less Taken
Party Coalitions in the US Congress
Social and Economic Justice Movements and Organizations
Who Sings in the Heavenly Chorus?
Party Nominating Procedures and Recruitment—State and Local Level
Activists, Influence, and Representation in American Elections
Methodological Issues in the Study of Political Parties
Political Parties and Consultants
State Parties Research
The Mobilization and Influence of Business Interests
What a Difference Twenty-Five Years Makes
Interest Groups and Agendas
Interest Groups in American Elections
The State of Research on Political Parties and Interest Groups
The Evolution of National Party Organizations
Lobbying and Influence
Urban Interest Groups
The Evolution and Alteration of American Party Coalitions
The Pure Partisan Institution
Linking Political Parties and Interest Groups
Politics, Delegation, and Bureaucracy
The President, Party Politics, and Constitutional Development
Winning Isn't Everything
Methodological Perspectives on Interest Groups
American Political Parties
The Oxford handbook of American political parties and interest groups
Bureaucrats, interest groups and policymaking
Influence-seeking in the Federal Bureaucracy
The Headless Fourth Branch
A revised look
The Expert-Executive Nexus in the EU
Making governance networks more democratic
Bureaucratic Responsiveness in Humanitarian Aid
Principal–agent analysis and the study of the EU
No Exaggeration
Sweet-Talking the Fourth Branch
Administrative Designs and Access to Political Arenas in Public Education
American Bureaucracy in an Age of Oligarchy
Darwin’s bureaucrat
Restricting Membership
Politics or Policy? How Rhetoric Matters to Presidential Leadership of Congress
Gilt by Associations
Blue Ribbons, Black Boxes
Understanding commenter influence during agency rule development
Responsive bureaus, equity, and regulatory negotiation
Nonprofit Organizations, Bureaucratic Agencies, and Policy
The Complications of Controlling Agency Time Discretion
Political control and policy-making uncertainty in executive orders
Agency Input as a Policy-Making Tool
The institutional foundations of the power to persuade
Politics, unemployment, and the enforcement of immigration law
The decision to lobby bureaucrats
The Influence of Corporate Lobbying on Federal Contracting
The Role of the Courts in the Development and Implementation of the Idea
Political Control versus Bureaucratic Values
Are public sector accounts trusted? Exploring the verdict of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in the United Kingdom
Creating comity amidst gridlock
Fine-tuned large language models can replicate expert coding better than trained coders
When and why high civil servants demand information from interest groups in policymaking. A Southern European perspective
A Bias Towards Business? Assessing Interest Group Influence on the U.S. Bureaucracy
Policy-Development Monopolies
The Puzzle of Private Rulemaking
The politics of policy inquiry commissions
Loyal Leaders, Affluent Agencies
Bureaucratic Revolving Doors and Interest Group Participation in Policy Making
The Politics of Biased Information
Promoting Agency Reputation through Public Advice
Delegation and Positive-Sum Bureaucracies
What Happens After the Alarm? Interest Group Subsidies to Legislative Overseers
Subverting Administrative Oversight
Scandinavian Corporatism in a Trans‐Atlantic Comparative Perspective
Stakeholder governance of organ transplantation
Choosing Battlegrounds
Presidential Defense
Institution Advocacy and the Political Behavior of Charter Schools
Blue Ribbon” Commissions, Interest Groups, and the Formulation of Policy in the American States
More than agents
Congressional Oversight Hearings and Policy Control
Legislators as Lobbyists
The Impact of Organized Interests on Eligibility Determination
Federal Advisory Committees, Policy Expertise, and the Approval of Drugs and Medical Devices at the FDA
Anticipated Adjudication
Interest Group Influence on Managerial Priorities in Public Organizations
A Political Consequence of Contracting
Political Insulation, Information Exchange, and Interest Group Access to the Bureaucracy
Interest Group Participation in Rule Making
The Politics of Ex Parte Lobbying
Assessing the prominence of interest groups in parliament
By invitation only
Accountability in Accounting? The Politics of Private Rule-Making in the Public Interest
Biased access? Exploring selection to advisory committees
Information and Legislative Organization
Linear Probability, Logit, and Probit Models
Structure and Process, Politics and Policy
Political Institutions
Analysis of Covariance with Qualitative Data
Interest Group Resources and Testimony at Congressional Hearings
Information and Influence
The Political Control of Bureaucracies under Asymmetric Information
Congressional Oversight Overlooked
Federal Advisory Committees, Interest Groups, and the Administrative State
Administrative Procedures and Political Control of the Bureaucracy
Bureaucratic Expertise versus Legislative Authority
Bureaucrats, Legislators, and the Size of Government
| Unique citing works | 109 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,54 |
| Citation span | 2002 - 2026 (25) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 108 |