Research

"Procedural Politicking for What? Bureaucratic Reputation and Democratic Governance"

As the bureaucratic policymaking process has deviated from conventional procedures that administrative law statutes contemplated, recent research suggests that bureaucrats strategically use administrative procedures to pursue their own goals and avoid political interventions. Focusing on institutional tensions, however, the literature has neglected the bureaucracy itself. Taking a reputation-based perspective that centers on organizational reputation as the underlying motive of bureaucratic behavior, this study examines when and why agency rulemaking follows or circumvents the notice-and-comment process that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) intended. By analyzing the federal rulemaking practices from 2000 to 2020, it finds that agencies follow the notice-and-comment process more faithfully when acquiring implementation knowledge and cooperation from affected groups becomes more important to prevent implementation failure and reputational damage. In particular, agencies with a greater degree of professionalism tend to be more sensitive to such reputational concerns. On the other hand, agencies’ use of the notice-and-comment process is not shaped by partisan and ideological politics. Rather, they are responsive to interest groups and political institutions in non-ideological ways. These findings indicate that bureaucrats’ strategic use of administrative procedures might reflect their effort to balance between bureaucratic values – such as effectiveness and flexibility – and democratic values – such as representation and due process.

"Bureaucratic Reputation, Participatory Rulemaking, and Regulatory Timing"

Given that bureaucratic agencies have discretion in timing of rulemaking decisions as well as their content and procedures, understanding how agencies use such discretion is essential to exploring the compatibility between bureaucracy and democracy. The procedural politicking literature suggests that agencies manipulate rulemaking pace in response to the favorability of political environment for the purpose of avoiding political interventions. On the other hand, the bureaucratic reputation literature argue that regulatory timing is driven by task-specific concern for implementation failure. To reconcile these conflicting views, this study examines the effects of both rule characteristics pertaining to implementation and the political environment of an agency on rulemaking timing, exploring the role of participatory rulemaking in mediating those relationships. Analyzing federal rulemaking from 2000 to 2020, it finds that delays in promulgating the final rules are associated with a greater degree of implementation uncertainty and the expected interest group opposition. Such delays are partially attributed to the increased use of participatory rulemaking processes. These findings indicate that regulatory timing reflects bureaucrats’ strategic efforts to balance between bureaucratic and democratic values.