[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v34y2018i1p54-78..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Delegation or Unilateral Action?

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth Lowande
Abstract
Unilateral presidential actions often face implementation problems in the executive branch. I argue these actions are better studied as delegation. I model the conditions under which a president is likely to delegate and provide discretion to subordinates either insulated or uninsulated from their control. I find legislators benefit from agency discretion when presidents pursue policymaking in the executive branch. The threat of legislative sanction induces agents to deviate from presidential priorities, and inter-branch disagreement increases bureaucratic non-compliance in insulated agencies. Nonetheless, in equilibrium, the president is more likely to delegate to insulated agents. Ultimately, the model demonstrates how the politics of direct action are influenced by the need for bureaucratic cooperation. Case studies on US presidential directives mandating public funding of gun violence research and security reforms at government facilities illustrate key features of the model.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth Lowande, 2018. "Delegation or Unilateral Action?," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(1), pages 54-78.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:34:y:2018:i:1:p:54-78.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewy001
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Austin Bussing & Michael Pomirchy, 2022. "Congressional oversight and electoral accountability," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 34(1), pages 35-58, January.
    2. Sarel, Roee & Demirtas, Melanie, 2021. "Delegation in a multi-tier court system: Are remands in the U.S. federal courts driven by moral hazard?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    3. Turner, Ian R, 2021. "Policy Durability, Agency Capacity, and Executive Unilateralism," SocArXiv stnzf, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:34:y:2018:i:1:p:54-78.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.