Controlling the Enforcement Bureaucracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 162-188
Author(s):  
Adam B. Cox ◽  
Cristina M. Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Control Line ◽  
Daily Exercise ◽  
Immigration And Customs Enforcement ◽  
Line Level ◽  
Exercise Of Discretion ◽  
Trump Administration

This chapter demonstrates how the President’s control over immigration policy depends intimately on the structure and culture of the enforcement bureaucracy. These features of the bureaucracy in turn shape presidential policymaking. In particular, low-level executive branch officials play a crucial role in effectuating the enforcement power, as they are the ones responsible for the daily exercise of discretion within the system. To see how these dynamics have played out within the Executive Branch, the chapter studies the Obama administration’s efforts to centralize enforcement discretion in order to control line-level agents and contrasts those efforts with the early decisions of the Trump administration. It focuses on the attempts by political officials to tame the discretion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. President Obama’s efforts to discipline the decision-making of these line officials culminated in his two signature initiatives designed to insulate upward of five million unauthorized immigrants from removal. The bureaucratic reality of presidential immigration law has been on display equally during President Trump’s administration, including through efforts to centralize control over discretion where doing so has proven necessary to advancing the President’s policy agenda.

Executive Governance Through Enforcement

2020 ◽  
pp. 215-237
Author(s):  
Adam B. Cox ◽  
Cristina M. Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
Political Control ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Shadow System ◽  
Government Power ◽  
Decision Making Processes

chapter grapples with the risks associated with executive governance through enforcement, tracing them to core and undisputed executive powers whose reach has been magnified in immigration law by the emergence of the shadow system. Two interrelated features of executive governance should prompt vigilance. First, when executive branch officials pursue a policy agenda through their management of the enforcement bureaucracy, discretionary decision-making drives their choices about how to threaten or wield force, as well as offer forbearance. It is natural to worry that this discretion will lead to the lawless, arbitrary exercise of power. Second, discretionary decision-making processes are often opaque. This feature exacerbates the possibility of abuse and makes it difficult to hold government power accountable. After defining these risks, the chapter then focuses on how the domain of de facto delegation can be structured to preserve the virtues of executive governance while promoting rule of law values. It offers a qualified defense of the centralized, political control of enforcement discretion as a means of disciplining the Executive’s awesome power.

scholarly journals Business Lobbying: Mapping Policy Networks in Brazil in Mercosur

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 198
Author(s):  
Galia Benítez
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
National Level ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Policy Networks ◽  
Policy Network ◽  
Common External Tariff ◽  
Policy Structure ◽  
Business Lobbying ◽  
The Government

In the creation of trade policy, business actors have the most influence in setting policy. This article identifies and explains variations in how economic interest groups use policy networks to affect trade policymaking. This article uses formal social network analysis (SNA) to explore the patterns of articulation or a policy network between the government and business at the national level within regional trade agreements. The empirical discussion herein focuses on Brazil and the setting of exceptions list to Mercosur’s common external tariff. It specifically concentrates on the relations between the Brazilian executive branch and ten economic subsectors. The article finds that the patterns of articulation of these policy networks matter and that sectors with stronger ties to key government decision-makers have a structural advantage in influencing trade policy and obtaining and/or maintaining their desired, privileged trade policies, compared with sectors that are connected to government actors with weak decision-making power, but might have numerous and diversified connections. Therefore, sectors that have a strong pluralist–clientelist policy structure with connections to government actors with decision-making power have greater potential for achieving their target policies compared with more corporatist policy networks.

Developing a Systematic Decision-Making Framework: Bureaucratic Politics in Perspective

1981 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerel A. Rosati
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Bureaucratic Politics ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Decision Context ◽  
Policy Application ◽  
Decision Making Framework ◽  
Decision Making Behavior

The bureaucratic politics model has achieved great popularity in the study of decision making. Yet too often the term “bureaucratic politics” is used by scholars and practitioners without clearly stating its policy application. The decision-making behavior that occurred during the Johnson and Nixon administrations for SALT I serves to illustrate many of the limits of the model. First, the decision-making structure posited by the bureaucratic politics model is not nearly as prevalent within the executive branch as is commonly assumed. Second, even where the bureaucratic politics structure is present, the decision-making process is not always one of bargaining, compromise, and consensus. Finally, the decision context and the decision participants are ignored in the model. To provide a clearer understanding of policy-making behavior, a more systematic decision-making framework is offered, which should contribute to the development of better model- and theory-building.

scholarly journals Confronting Energy Poverty in Europe: A Research and Policy Agenda

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 858
Author(s):  
Stefan Bouzarovski ◽  
Harriet Thomson ◽  
Marine Cornelis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Clean Energy ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Energy Poverty ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Multiple Strategies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Research And Policy ◽  
The Eu

This paper scrutinizes existing policy efforts to address energy poverty at the governance scale of the European Union (EU) and its constituent Member States. Our main starting point is the recent expansion of energy poverty policies at the EU level, fuelled by the regulatory provisions of the Clean Energy for all Europeans Package, as well as the establishment of an EU Energy Poverty Observatory. Aided by a systematic and customized methodology, we survey the extensive scientific body of work that has recently been published on the topic, as well as the multiple strategies and measures to address energy poverty that have been formulated across the EU. This includes the principal mitigation approaches adopted by key European and national institutions. We develop a framework to judge the distributional and procedural justice provisions within the recently adopted National Energy and Climate Plans, as an indicator of the power, ability and resolve of relevant institutions to combat the causes and consequences of energy injustice. We also provide a research and policy agenda for future action, highlighting a series of scientific and decision-making challenges in the European and global context.

Depth in Staff

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-75
Author(s):  
Stephen Skowronek ◽  
John A. Dearborn ◽  
Desmond King
Keyword(s):  
Executive Branch ◽  
House Staff ◽  
First Year ◽  
White House ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
Trump Administration ◽  
At Will

This chapter considers depth in staff, exploring the role of White House officials tasked to bridge the president’s personal direction with the institutional presidency and the executive branch at large. These staffers are normally part of the presidential party, collectively representing the different wings of the president’s electoral coalition. In the Trump administration, the White House staff jostled for influence and favor throughout the president’s first year. Trump bristled at their efforts to establish regular processes and to control the flow of information. The president saw management of that sort as an impingement on his authority to act on his own instincts and to direct his subordinates at will. Differences over the issue of trade afford a brief, but sharp, illustration of the tension between an institutional presidency and the personal direction of a unitary executive.

The Administrative Presidency, Waivers, and the Affordable Care Act

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 633-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Gusmano ◽  
Frank J. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Executive Orders ◽  
Work Requirement ◽  
Signing Statements ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Guidance Documents ◽  
The Affordable Care Act ◽  
High Level ◽  
Trump Administration

Abstract Within the American system of shared power among institutions, the executive branch has played an increasingly prominent policy role relative to Congress. The vast administrative discretion wielded by the executive branch has elevated the power of the president. Republican and Democratic presidents alike have employed an arsenal of administrative tools to pursue their policy goals: high-level appointments, administrative rule making, executive orders, proclamations, memoranda, guidance documents, directives, dear colleague letters, signing statements, reorganizations, funding decisions, and more. Presidents Obama and Trump employed most of these tools in an effort to shape the implementation and outcomes of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) during its first decade. This article focuses on the Obama and Trump administrations' use of comprehensive waivers to shape ACA implementation. The Obama administration had mixed success using waivers to convince Republican states to expand Medicaid. Compared to Obama, the Trump administration has found it harder to accomplish its policy goals through waivers, but if the courts support the Trump administration's work requirement and 1332 waiver initiatives, it would enable the president to use waivers to achieve an ever broader set of goals, including program retrenchment.

scholarly journals Comparison of the Influence of the Chinese Lobby and the Israeli Lobby in the United States

2015 ◽  
pp. 84-98
Author(s):  
D. B. Grafov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
The Political ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
National Interests ◽  
China Lobby

The article is about how pro-Israel and pro-China interest groups try to lobby on the ground of Capitol, White House and executive branch. The study of the lobbying results is based on «General theory of action» T. Parsons. It is concluded that for lobbying interests the main point will be the representation of the interests in the political and public spaces and the creating of advocacy and lobbying infrastructure. The ability of the Israeli lobby to achieve the goal can be explained, firstly, by political inclusion in the decision-making process, and, secondly, by almost axiomatic representation Israel interests through the national interests of the United States. The Israeli lobby can be considered as the religious lobby. It can use the possibilities of Jewish religious organizations in grass root action. Also this gives the opportunity to avoid the requirements of the LDA. From the point of view of the theory of Talcott Parsons, the success of the Israeli lobby is the cause of the action of a large number of actors that may form in large groups. Another advantage of the Israeli lobby is the ability of its members to get relevant information about the current situation in different spheres of political life in the U.S. The objective of the present study was to reveal the ways in which China lobby succeeds. The influence of China lobby on decision-making process in the United States can be explained through strong economic ties between American corporations and the Chinese market. When lobbying China uses numerous Chinese Diaspora in many States, as well as trying to interest of the former high-ranking American officials, granting them special privileges for doing business in China. In comparison to the Israeli lobby, the Chinese lobby has weaknesses. Chinese interest groups are not included in the political system of the USA and this is the disadvantage of the Chinese way of lobbying. Unlike Israel lobby Chinese one is external. The interests of the chinese pressure groups do not coincide with American national interests. Their actors are not rooted in the American political system.

scholarly journals Judicial impact on bureaucratic decision-making : the case of public procurement and contracting

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Yuan Gao
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Goal Attainment ◽  
Time Series Data ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Series Data ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Public Contracting ◽  
Judicial Impact

This study examines whether and how much the bureaucracy responds to the judiciary. Specifically, I utilize cross-sectional, time-series data to analyze the extent to which variation in bureaucratic decision-making regarding affirmative action programs in public contracting across time and U.S. states is explained by the shifting legal environment. Federal agencies are found more likely to adjust minority contract amounts in response to the executive branch. State agencies appear to be somewhat responsive to courts during affirmative action goal-setting, but not in goal attainment. Overall, I did not find enough evidence that indicates significant bureaucratic responsiveness to judicial review. The lack of judicial impact may be further understood from utilitarian, communications and organizational theoretical perspectives.

scholarly journals Learning McNamara's Lessons: How the War Powers Resolution Advances the Rule of Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter M. Shane
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Military Policy ◽  
War Powers ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Military Engagement ◽  
Military Decision Making

This essay considers Robert S. McNamara’s 1995 memoir In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. First, it explores McNamara’s Lessons to understand the dangers of military policy making conducted without genuine input from Congress. Further, it argues that the pathologies of Vietnam War decision making are not likely to be unique—that is, the realities of executive branch organization and its decision-making processes are likely to re-create those pathologies when Congress is only tenuously involved in resolving the most basic policy questions regarding any substantial military engagement. The essay asserts that the values of sound military decision-making are well served by preserving a state of ambiguity as to the allocation of military decision-making authority in all by the easiest cases. To the extent, the War Powers Resolution has helped Congress to exploit this ambiguity in leveraging its own military policy making role, it has performed a useful function.

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