Administrative Procedures, Information, and Agency Discretion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6231234 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Epstein (0000-0002-1164-6291), David Mark Epstein (0000-0002-2275-0916), Sharyn O''Halloran, Sharyn O’halloran, Sharyn O'Halloran (0000-0002-1508-7378) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 697 |
| Publication date | 1994-08-01 |
| 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 | 10.2307/2111603 |
| OpenAlex | W2328190647 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 191 |
| References cited | 19 |
This paper investigates the design of administrative procedures when policy consequences are uncertain. In general, when deciding how much discretion to delegate, legislators must trade off informational gains from agency expertise and distributive losses from bureaucratic drift. We show that when Congress has both ex post agenda control and access to information, it will delegate a large degree of authority to all agencies, regardless of differences in policy preferences. This discretionary floor rises as future events become more uncertain. We further show that the possibility of coalitional drift, or changing preferences of the median legislator, may lead either to hard-wired agencies with little authority or soft-wired agencies with large powers to set policy
Agency (philosophy · Bureaucracy · Business · Delegate · Delegation · Discretion · Distributive property · Economics · Ex-ante · Information asymmetry · Law and economics · Legislation · Legislator · Legislature · Political science · Politics · Set (abstract data type · Computer Science · Finance · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth · Law · Local Government Finance and Decentralization · Public Administration
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Information and Legislative Organization
Moral Hazard and Observability
Structure and Process, Politics and Policy
Congressional Influence on Bureaucracy
Learning From Oversight
Regulatory Capture, Public Interest, and the Public Agenda
Political resource allocation, controlled agendas, and the status quo
Divided government and U.S. trade policy
Agenda Control, Organizational Structure, and Bureaucratic Politics
Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Asymmetric Information
Information Transmission in Debate
A Social Choice Perspective on Expertise and Authority in Bureaucracy
The Political Control of Bureaucracies under Asymmetric Information
Agency Budgets, Cost Information, and Auditing
Congressional Oversight Overlooked
Bureaucratic Expertise versus Legislative Authority
Political Control Versus Expertise
| Unique citing works | 191 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 6,37 |
| Citation span | 1996 - 2026 (31) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 189 |