A new measure of US public agency policy discretion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6294467 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Natalie L Smith (0000-0002-9863-2537, University of Wisconsin–Madison), Susan Webb Yackee (0000-0003-1132-8434, University of Wisconsin–Madison) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 404-417 |
| Publication date | 2024-07-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1053-1858 • E-ISSN: 1477-9803 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jopart/muae007 |
| OpenAlex | W4393411756 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 57 |
The US bureaucracy routinely issues major public policy decisions that affect Americans’ lives. Government agency leaders make those decisions based on a subjective understanding of their agency’s available policy discretion. Over time, discretion has become a prominent theoretical construct in the bureaucratic politics and public administration literature, but it is rarely measured directly. In this article, we create a new measure of agency policy discretion. We draw on research suggesting that discretion is derived from the bureaucracy’s key political principals: the elected executive, legislators, and interest groups. We use data from the American State Administrators Project and trigonometry to calculate the discretion area scores for 8,955 state agencies between 1978 and 2018. We then evaluate the measure through a series of construct validation assessments. The article offers an innovative and generalizable way to operationalize discretion that will advance future scholarship in organizational behavior, public administration, and bureaucratic decision-making
Agency (philosophy · Bureaucracy · Construct (python library · Discretion · Government (linguistics · Operationalization · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Policy Transfer and Learning · Public Policy and Administration Research · Law · Public Administration
Regulating Business by Independent Commission
The Politics of Presidential Appointments
Bending the Rules
Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress
Deliberate Discretion?
Politics in the American States
Delegating Powers
Structure and Process, Politics and Policy
Who Controls the Bureaucracy?
Administrative behavior
Veto Players
Above Politics
Organizing Leviathan
The Headless Fourth Branch
Measuring Citizen and Government Ideology in the U.S. States
Measuring Organizational Power
The Environmental Protection Agency in the Early Trump Administration
The American State Administrators Project
Measuring State Legislative Professionalism
A Squire Index Update
When does the multiple principals hypothesis hold? The politics of U.S. agency policymaking autonomy
Patronage and Elections in U.S. States
What Happens After the Alarm? Interest Group Subsidies to Legislative Overseers
Invisible (and Visible) Lobbying
Anatomy of agency capture
Executive Orders and Administrative Control
Agency Discretion and the Dynamics of Procedural Reform
Regulatory Capture's Self‐Serving Application
Governors Turn Pro
Handmaidens of the legislature? Understanding regulatory timing
Interest Groups in the Rule-Making Process
Experts, Amateurs, and Bureaucratic Influence in the American States
Measuring Agency Attributes with Attitudes Across Time
Clerks or Kings? Partisan Alignment and Delegation to the US Bureaucracy
Socioeconomic Representation
Which Statute to Implement? Strategic Timing by Regulatory Agencies
Political Influence on the Bureaucracy
The Devolution Revolution in Intergovernmental Relations in the 1990s
Measuring Citizen and Government Ideology in the American States, 1960-93
Groups, the Media, Agency Waiting Costs, and FDA Drug Approval
A Theory of Political Control and Agency Discretion
What Makes an Agency Independent
With Good Cause
A Formal Model of the Politics of Delegation in a Separation of Powers System
Influencing the Bureaucracy
The New Economics of Organization
What's Happened to the Watchful Eye
Do This! Do That!’ and Nothing Will Happen
Regulatory Regimes, Agency Actions, and the Conditional Nature of Congressional Influence
Limitation Riders and Congressional Influence over Bureaucratic Policy Decisions
Alternative Models of the Regulatory Process
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |