Errors in Public Management and Congressional Oversight

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-50
Author(s):  
Lee Jongkon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Moral Hazard ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Fire Alarm ◽  
Police Patrol ◽  
Congressional Oversight

It is widely believed that “fire alarm” oversight (i.e., reactive oversight that responds to the complaints of interest groups) rather than “police patrol” oversight (i.e., precautionary congressional surveillance), better promotes the performance of government agencies by efficiently reducing bureaucratic moral hazard. However, fire alarm oversight can lead to bureaucrats being falsely accused by interest groups who provide biased information to members of Congress of failure to properly implement a policy, thereby causing an unnecessary administrative delay in public management. This article suggests a formal model that compares fire alarm and police patrol oversight and examines the development of congressional oversight mechanisms in the United States.

Can Politicians Control Bureaucrats? Applying Theories of Political Control to Argentina's Democracy

2003 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent Eaton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Political Control ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Fire Alarm ◽  
Police Patrol ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Administrative Procedures

AbstractIn the United States, an important literature shows that legislators use interest groups, courts, and budgets to assert political control over bureaucrats. Similar theories can be applied to study the scores of new democracies that have emerged in recent decades. In Argentina, politicians in the first administration of Carlos Menem (1989-95) rewrote administrative procedures and relied on both “police patrol” and “fire alarm” oversight to realign the behavior of tax bureaucrats in conformance with their own policy preferences. Whereas U.S. legislators generally prefer complex administrative procedures, different electoral incentives led their Argentine counterparts to support reforms that significantly streamlined those procedures. This finding challenges theories that attribute legislators' bureaucratic preferences to the separation or fusion of powers between the executive and legislative branches.

Working smart and hard? Agency effort, judicial review, and policy precision

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian R Turner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Congressional Oversight ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Administrative Agencies ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
Agency Policy

The lion’s share of policy in the United States is made by administrative agencies. Agencies not only make policy choices, they must also implement policy effectively. Oversight institutions play an integral role in the policymaking process by monitoring, through review of agency policy actions, both policymaking tasks. Through analysis of a formal model I develop a theory of policymaking between agencies and courts and show that review can impact agency effort choices even when bureaucratic subversion is not a concern. At times the court has no impact on this effort and the agency is unconstrained. However, when the agency’s effort dictates whether or not the court defers to the agency’s actions judicial review does affect effort decisions. In this setting, review can either strengthen or, counter-intuitively, weaken agency effort incentives. Implications for executive and congressional oversight are discussed in light of these results.

scholarly journals Estimating mouse and rat use in American laboratories by extrapolation from Animal Welfare Act-regulated species

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Carbone
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Animal Welfare ◽  
The United States ◽  
Animal Research ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Laboratory Rats ◽  
Tier System ◽  
Western Nations ◽  
Rats And Mice ◽  
Usage Data

AbstractAlone among Western nations, the United States has a two-tier system for welfare protections for vertebrate animals in research. Because its Animal Welfare Act (AWA) excludes laboratory rats and mice (RM), government veterinarians do not inspect RM laboratories and RM numbers are only partially reported to government agencies1. Without transparent statistics, it is impossible to track efforts to reduce or replace these sentient animals’ use or to project government resources needed if AWA coverage were expanded to include them. I obtained annual RM usage data from 16 large American institutions and compared RM numbers to institutions’ legally-required reports of their AWA-covered mammals. RM comprised approximately 99.3% of mammals at these representative institutions. Extrapolating from 780,070 AWA-covered mammals in 2017–18, I estimate that 111.5 million rats and mice were used per year in this period. If the same proportion of RM undergo painful procedures as are publicly reported for AWA-covered animals, then some 44.5 million mice and rats underwent potentially painful experiments. These data inform the questions of whether the AWA needs an update to cover RM, or whether the NIH should increase transparency of funded animal research. These figures can benchmark progress in reducing animal numbers in general and more specifically, in painful experiments. This estimate is higher than any others available, reflecting the challenges of obtaining statistics without consistent and transparent institutional reports.

scholarly journals Diasporic Foreign Policy Interest Groups in the United States: Democracy, Conflict, and Political Entrepreneurship

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Shubha Kamala Prasad ◽  
Filip Savatic
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Indian American ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Political Entrepreneurs ◽  
Do So ◽  
Policy Interest

Why do some immigrant diasporas in the United States (U.S.) establish foreign policy interest groups while others do not? While scholars have demonstrated that diasporic interest groups often successfully influence U.S. foreign policy, we take a step back to ask why only certain diasporas attempt to do so in the first place. We argue that two factors increase the likelihood of diaspora mobilization: a community’s experience with democratic governance and conflict in its country of origin. We posit that these conditions make it more likely that political entrepreneurs emerge to serve as catalysts for top-down mobilization. To test our hypotheses, we collect and analyze novel data on diasporic interest groups as well as the characteristics of their respective countries of origin. In turn, we conduct the first in-depth case studies of the historical and contemporary Indian-American lobbies, using original archival and interview evidence.

The Relations Between the Navy and the Foreign Service

1939 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-291
Author(s):  
Clark H. Woodward
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
National Defense ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Proper Position ◽  
Foreign Service ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
National Emergency ◽  
The Relationship

In the conduct of foreign policy and the participation of the United States in international affairs, the relation between the Navy and the Foreign Service is of vital importance, but often misunderstood. The relationship encompasses the very wide range of coördination and coöperation which should and must exist between the two interdependent government agencies in peace, during times of national emergency, and, finally, when the country is engaged in actual warfare. The relationship involves, as well, the larger problem of national defense, and this cannot be ignored if the United States is to maintain its proper position in world affairs.

Collaborative capital budgeting in U.S. local government

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hina Khalid ◽  
David S.T. Matkin ◽  
Ricardo S. Morse
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Capital Budgeting ◽  
The United States ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Significant Heterogeneity ◽  
Management Literature ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Local Officials

This article explores collaborative capital budgeting in U.S. local governments. To date, the capital budgeting literature has focused on practices within individual governments. This leaves a gap in our understanding because a large portion of capital planning, acquisition, and maintenance occurs through collaboration between two or more local governments. Drawing on the capital budgeting and collaborative public management literature, and on illustrative cases of collaborative capital budgeting in the United States, an inductive approach is used to: (1) identify and categorize the different objectives that motivate local officials to pursue collaborative agreements, (2) examine common patterns in the types of assets involved in collaboration, and (3) discover common institutional arrangements in collaboration agreements. The research findings demonstrate significant heterogeneity in the objectives, patterns, and institutions of collaborative capital budgeting.

The Development of Latin-American Studies in the United States, 1939–1945

1947 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Hanke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Latin American Studies ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Hispanic Studies ◽  
The Coordinator

The period 1939–1945 saw an unprecedented expansion of Latin American studies in the United States. This was partly due to the wartime activities of such government agencies as the Department of State and the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, and to the rising interest in the area approach to academic studies. This development would not have been possible, however, without the continuous concern of the foundations, which had helped to organize scholars in the field on a national basis, had stimulated research in relatively neglected fields, and had provided funds for the compilation and publication of certain basic bibliographical tools. Nor would this expansion have been more than a wartime boom had not the scholars and universities of the country been attracted to Hispanic studies since George Ticknor and William H. Prescott first disclosed their importance over a century ago, and to the Latin American field more particularly since 1900. The expansion was based upon solid elements.

scholarly journals Member influence in cooperatives: Contributions of Scandinavian studies to the research conducted in the United States

1984 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-129
Author(s):  
Petri Ollila
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
External Factors ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
Major Interest ◽  
Interest Organizations

This literature review summarizes research on member influence in cooperatives conducted in Scandinavia and some of the research conducted in West Germany. The review divides the contents of member influence into three components; individual factors, the cooperative organization’s internal factors and the organization’s external factors. As individual factors, participation, representation and representativeness are considered. Conflicts in cooperative organizations, the effect of the growth of the organization and the rules of decision making are discussed as organizations internal factors. The major interest groups in addition to members (the market, personnel and the society) are presented as external factors. The external factors are increasingly challenging the nature of cooperatives as member interest organizations.

scholarly journals Overcoming the barriers to green procurement in the county: Interest groups and administrative professionalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christy Smith ◽  
Jessica Terman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
Green Procurement ◽  
Environmentally Responsible ◽  
Government Involvement ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change

Scholars and practitioners have come to understand the important role of local governments in the causes and effects of climate change. The literature has examined both the substantive and symbolic determinants of urban sustainability policies in addition to the implementation issues associated with those policies. At the heart of these policies is the idea that local governments have the desire and ability to engage in socially and environmentally responsible practices to mitigate climate change. While important, these studies are missing a key component in the investigation of local government involvement in sustainability policies: government purchasing power. This study examines the effect of administrative professionalism and interest group presence on the determinants of green procurement in the understudied context of counties in the United States.

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