Stacking the Deck: Bureaucratic Missions and Policy Design

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 873-896 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bendor ◽  
Serge Taylor ◽  
Roland Van Gaalen

Empirical studies suggest that mission-oriented bureaucrats bias their design of program alternatives to increase the odds that a superior will choose the kind of program the officials want. However, political executives may anticipate this manipulation and try to reassert control. These struggles are examined in three models. In Model 1 a senior bureaucrat is interested only in missions; the bureaucrat's political superior controls him or her by rejecting inferior proposals and entertaining new options from other policy specialists. Model 2 is a principal-agent analysis. Here the official is interested only in budgets; the official's superior reduces search bias by creating an ex ante incentive scheme. In Model 3 the bureaucrat cares about both budgets and programs; the superior uses both his or her final review authority and ex ante incentives to reduce agenda manipulation. The models' contrasting implications for the political control of bureaucracy are examined.


2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 44-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf von Lilienfeld-Toal ◽  
Dilip Mookherjee

What are the effects of restricting bonded labor clauses in tenancy or debt contracts? While such restrictions reduce agents' ability to credibly commit ex ante to repay principals in states where they default on their financial obligations, they also generate a pecuniary externality on other principal-agent pairs by reducing the equilibrium profit earned by principals. This turns out to imply that on both political and normative grounds, restrictions on bonded labor become more attractive when borrowers become wealthier or the range of collateral instruments widens. (JEL D82, D86, J82, K12)



1955 ◽  
Vol 60 (6) ◽  
pp. 600-601
Author(s):  
Jiri Nehnevajsa


2009 ◽  
Vol 99 (5) ◽  
pp. 2193-2208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ola Kvaløy ◽  
Trond E. Olsen

Principal-agent models usually invoke the strong assumption that the parties know for sure ex ante whether a variable is verifiable or not. This paper assumes that only the probability of verification is known, and that this probability is endogenously determined. We analyze a principal-agent relationship where the verifiability of the agent's output is determined by the principal's investment in drafting an explicit contract. The model is well suited for analyzing the relationship between explicit contracting, legal courts, trust, and relational contracting. In particular, we show how trust—established through repeated interaction—and legal courts may induce contractual incompleteness. (JEL D82, D86)





2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 823-836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Dahlström ◽  
Mikael Holmgren

This Research Note explores the political dynamics of bureaucratic turnover. It argues that changes in a government’s policy objectives can shift both political screening strategies and bureaucratic selection strategies, which produces turnover of agency personnel. To buttress this conjecture, it analyzes a unique dataset tracing the careers of all agency heads in the Swedish executive bureaucracy between 1960 and 2014. It shows that, despite serving on fixed terms and with constitutionally protected decision-making powers, Swedish agency heads are considerably more likely to leave their posts following partisan shifts in government. The note concludes that, even in institutional systems seemingly designed to insulate bureaucratic expertise from political control, partisan politics can shape the composition of agency personnel.



The Forum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Shep Melnick

AbstractOver the past half century no judicial politics scholar has been more respected or influential than Martin Shapiro. Yet it is hard to identify a school of thought one could call “Shapiroism.” Rather than offer convenient methodologies or grand theories, Shapiro provides rich empirical studies that show us how to think about the relationship between law and courts on the one hand and politics and governing on the other. Three key themes run through Shapiro’s impressive oevre. First, rather than study courts in isolation, political scientists should view them as “one government agency among many,” and seek to “integrate the judicial system in the matrix of government and politics in which it actually operates.” Law professors may understand legal doctrines better than political scientists, but we know (or should know) the rest of the political system better than they do. Second, although judges inevitably make political decisions, their institutional environment leads them to act differently from other public officials. Most importantly, their legitimacy rests on their perceived impartiality within the plaintiff-defendant-judge triad. The conflict between judges’ role as impartial arbiter and enforcer of the laws of the regime can never be completely resolved and places powerful constraints on their actions. Third, the best way to understand the complex relationship between courts and other elements of the regime is comparative analysis. Shapiro played a major role in resuscitating comparative law, especially in his work comparing the US and the EU. All this he did with a rare combination of thick description and crisp, jargon-free analysis, certainly a rarity the political science of our time.



2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Kolarzik ◽  
◽  
Aram Terzyan

The rule of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus has created one of the most resilient authoritarian regimes in post-communist Europe. Meanwhile, the turmoil triggered by the 2020 presidential election has put in the spotlight the mounting challenges facing Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule. This paper investigates the state of human rights and political freedoms in Belarus, focusing on the main rationale behind the turmoil surrounding the 2020 presidential election. It concludes that the political crisis following the elections is the unsurprising consequence of Lukashenko’s diminishing ability to maintain power or concentrate political control by preserving elite unity, controlling elections, and/or using force against opponents.



2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Cléber Ranieri Ribas de Almeida

O artigo se propõe elaborar uma exegese do livro O Aberto: o Homem e o Animal, de Giorgio Agamben, de maneira a expor o argumento central da obra bem como situar o autor na Filosofia Política contemporânea. Para Agamben, o aberto não se situa unicamente numa analítica fenomenológico-existencial do ser: politicamente, o lugar privilegiado de movimentação desse conceito situa-se especificamente na biofilosofia dos graus do orgânico. A definição desses graus torna-se cada vez mais imprecisa à medida em que se propõe distinguir o limite entre o que é o animal e o que é o humano. A inovação de Agamben na abordagem dessa questão, portanto, está no modo como ele politiza o tema do aberto e o situa numa zona estratégica entre a zoologia e as políticas do homem. A entificação do tema, o aberto, não é para o autor um índice de conspurcação cientificista; é, antes, um índice de incessante politização, isto é, realocação conceitual, modulação disciplinar e institucionalização jurídica. Agamben não quer apenas uma ciência da política, mas também uma política da ciência, entendendo a ciência como lugar soberano de mobilização, manipulação e controle dos corpos. Numa palavra, a ciência, especificamente, a biofilosofia e as ciências do homem, são legisladoras da decisão pública acerca do que é homem. E quem decide o que é o homem, decide ex ante, qual política e qual moral deve dispor sobre a ordem pública.Abstract: This paper aims to do an exegesis of Giorgio Agamben´s book The Open: the Man and the Animal, in order to expose its central point as well as to contextualize the author in Contemporary Political Philosophy. According to Agamben the open is not situated only in a phenomenological-existential analytics of being: politically the privileged place of that concept is specifically on the biophilosophy of organic grades. The definition of those grades becomes more and more imprecise as long as it aims to distinguish the limit between the man and the animal. The innovation of Agamben is the way how he politizes the subject of open and places it on a strategic zone between the zoology and the politics of man. Agamen does not want only a science of the political, but alson a politics of science by understanding the science as a sovereign place of mobilization, manipulation, and control of bodies. In a word, the science, especially the biophilosophy and the human sciences, are legislators of public decision about what man is. And who decides what the man is, do it ex ante which politics and which moral should rule over the public order. Keywords: Agamben, mankind, animal, biophilosophy.



2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (824) ◽  
pp. 112-117
Author(s):  
Alexander Clarkson

European integration based on a supranational form of pooled sovereignty has taken on increasingly state-like qualities. With every move toward absorbing additional members, the European Union system has expanded its geographic reach. The state-like power of the EU is apparent in the impact its integration processes have had in societies just outside its borders. Its growing influence is most notable in misfit border territories, from Kaliningrad to Transnistria, and from Cyprus to Northern Ireland, that are tenuously under the political control of neighboring geopolitical powers.



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