Appointees as Managers: Directing Policy Implementation
Introduction
The president can only infer an appointee's talent and the difficulty of the management problem facing the appointee. In each case, granting additional political concessions to the bureaucrat improves the appointee's standing with the president and guarantees that he will retain his position.
Related Literature
To cultivate bureaucratic support, appointees may engage in advocacy, advocating the bureaucracy's positions rather than the president's policy agenda (Heclo 1977). Both aspects of the appointee management problem are well known to appointees and bureaucrats.
The Formal Model
I refer to bureaucratic bias,b, as the degree of bureaucratic resistance, as it reflects the degree of disagreement between the administration and the bureaucrat. If the bureaucrat is hostile (i.e., b=bh), then the bureaucrat is difficult to motivate and the bureaucrat needs more policy concessions to make efforts.
Analysis
The president's beliefs are given by ˆτ : x1×y1→ [0,1]and assigns to each policy choice and outcome (x1,y1) a probability that the appointee is talented (θ =1). If β < β, then the president believes that the appointment is sufficiently probable to face an easy managerial problem.
The Evolution of Presidential Control
Instead, if office benefits are large enough (i.e., ρ ≥ ρ), then weak appointees facing a difficult governance problem can mimic the policy success of talented appointees. Only weak appointees are captured if management problems are likely to be difficult and incumbency benefits are large (i.e. β ≥ β, ρ > ρˆ).
Conclusion
Proposition A.1 In any equilibrium that maximizes the president's welfare and satisfies sophistication D1, talented appointees are retained with probability 1. Lemma B.3 In any PBE, at most one type of appointee is indifferent between delegating authority and exercising policy direction.
Appointees as Policy Experts: Delegating Authority
Introduction
Previous work highlights this trade-off between loyalty to the president's policy agenda and competence in presidential appointments (e.g., Lewis 2010; George A. Krause and O'Connell 2019). Krause and O’Connell (2019) show that political appointees vary in their competence and ideological alignment with the president.
A Model of Political Appointments with Executive Oversight
After the first period and after observing the appointee's delegation decision, the president decides to either keep the appointee (r = 1) or remove (r = 0). Based on the appointee's delegation decision, the president forms beliefs about the appointee's competence level, given by κˆ(d1,bP): d1×bP → [0,1], which for each possible first period delegation decision d1 ∈ {0 assigns ,1 } and appointee ideology, a probability that the appointee is an expert (θP = 1). I assume that the president bases retention decisions on appointees' formal participation in the policy-making process – rather than the appointee's unobserved policy decisions (Acs 2018; Potter 2019).
Moreover, from a purely theoretical point of view, the appointee's delegation decision provides useful information to the president.
Analysis
If the first-period appointee is removed (i.e., r = 0), the executive replaces the removed appointee with an ideological ally, β2P∗ = 0. Provided that an appointee is sufficiently aligned with the executive (i.e. ., bP ∈ R), the appointed expert can compensate the executive for worse ideological alignment. Understanding an appointee's incentives to under-delegate is critical to understanding the executive's preferences for appointments in the first period when the bureaucrat is moderate.
Mainly non-professional appointees, who in the first period were sufficiently coordinated with both the bureaucrat and the executive sub-department.
Equilibrium and Dynamics of Appointments
If the bureaucrat is sufficiently aligned with the president, the ideological divergence between the president and her appointee increases in bureaucratic bias. In contrast, the president faces less of a trade-off between ideology and expertise, as competence is more abundant. Assuming the bureaucrat is sufficiently moderate, first-term appointees are always less aligned with the president than second-term appointees.
When removal is possible and the bureaucrat is sufficiently moderate, the president appoints non-allies.
Conclusion
This captures that the special interest coalition represents a relatively narrow constituency in society, whereas the majority represents a wider constituency. The political result indicates the extent to which the political effort benefits the majority or the special interest group. Then there is the difference in the incumbent's re-election probability if she pursues the majority agenda rather than the special interest agenda.
Statement 3.3 The majority can exercise more control over policy in the first period, or it increases.
Electoral Accountability and Political Competence
Related Literature
A common feature of these models is that the resulting political bias is towards the welfare of the majority, but not necessarily towards social welfare. This is because special interest coalitions and majority coalitions share a common interest in selecting competent candidates—and monitoring special interests improves candidate selection. In contrast, I develop a model that provides the opposite prediction: welfare distortions are at the expense of special interest welfare and social welfare.
However, politicians may have incentives to pursue special interest policies that further social welfare at the expense of the welfare of the majority.
The Model
If Πt =1, the political outcome favors the majority, and if Πt = 0, the political outcome favors the special interest group. As α increases, the probability that the majority is informed about the true outcome of the policy increases. The second period participant observes a private signal of the state of the world, w2, and then chooses a policy, x2.
This captures that most voters always prefer policy to match the state of the world, ωt.
Analysis
A special interest voter's expected utility given the expected power of the second period held is equal to. Therefore, a special interest voter will re-elect an incumbent if and only if the incumbent is more likely to be competent. A special interest voter only re-elects the incumbent if the incumbent is more competent than a substitute: ν∗j > 0 only if κˆ∗j ≥ κ.
As the size of the special interest coalition increases, the incumbent is more likely to be reelected if she pursues the minority agenda.
Results
In majority discipline equilibria, the majority is able to exact some responsibility from the incumbent politicians. The majority is only able to establish limited discipline among competent politicians, as it is not credible that the majority retains politicians who are likely to be more competent due to politicians' second period incentives to pursue specific interest policies. If the majority is sufficiently informed and politicians are sufficiently motivated, the majority can exercise more control over the policy choice.
This control over first-period politics is at the expense of the majority's second-period welfare, as the re-election motivation prevents competent politicians from revealing their competence to voters.
Welfare Implications
In the equilibria identified in the previous section, the majority has limited control over first-period policy only if the special interest group is sufficiently small (ie, Ns ≤ Ns). When the special interest group is small enough, the benefits of majority support in re-election outweigh the costs of a policy of pursuing the interests of the majority. If the special interest coalition is small enough—or the majority large enough—the information about the incumbent's ability conveyed by the policy outcome allows the majority to make a better choice based on competence.
If the special interest coalition is large—or the majority sufficiently small—the additional information about the incumbent's ability enables the special interest electorate to elect competent politicians.
Conclusion
Proposition 3.5 If the special interest coalition is sufficiently large (i.e. Ns ≥ Nbs), policy leadership in the first period improves electoral selection, or κ˜≥ κ. Public Administration in the Third Century of the Constitution: Supply Management, Privatization or Public Investment?”. In: Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 8.4, pp. 1991). Reagan's Terrible Swift Sword: Reforming & Controlling the Federal Bureaucracy.
Are we getting the best candidates when we need them most?” In: https://www.federicaizzo.com/pdf/DWG20180906.pdf.
Formal Proofs
Finally, weak appointees who face a light management problem will not be given a lucrative variance. If ρ ≥ ρ, then in an equilibrium that maximizes the president's welfare and satisfies D1 sophistication, the president retains policy control only if the bureaucracy is aligned (ie, b = bl) and both talented and weak appointees face rigid leadership. the problem is covered by x1∗(bh;θl)= x1∗(bh; 1)= x.ˆ. A weak appointee faced with the problem of light management will not prefer to deviate from any action along the way.
However, in this case, a weak appointee faced with a difficult management problem will not prefer to deviate from the given situation.
Off-Path Beliefs
By definition, it is the policy that leaves the weak type facing easy management indifferent between perverting policy to secure retention and not perverting policy, which ensures removal. This means that the retention threshold for a weak type facing an easy problem can be rewritten as . If ρ < ρ, then off-path beliefs~ are captured by the first case in the proof of Theorem 1.3.
If ρ ≥ ρ, then off-path beliefs are captured in the second case in the proof of Theorem 1.3.
Structure of Equilibrium Strategies
First, only a weak appointee facing an easy management problem and a talented appointee facing a difficult management problem can generate success with policy x ∈ [bh− (1−c),x].ˆ. If a weak appointee chooses a policy ˜x ∈ [bh− (1−c),xˆ], then it must also be chosen by a talented appointee facing a difficult problem. For any on-path policyx∗ ∈ [bh−(1−c),x]ˆ that is not chosen by a weak appointee facing a simple problem, the talented appointee must be retained with probability 1.
Now consider a policy in progress, x∗, which is also chosen by a weak appointee facing an easy problem.
Principal Welfare Maximizing Equilibrium
Formal Proofs
Given the refinement D1 requires κ∗(1,bP)= 0, for this to be an equilibrium strategy, the following must hold. There does not exist a complete union equilibrium∀bP ,0∈∆∗∩Refining D1 requires off-pathκ∗(1,bp)=0 and. The executive will then choose her appointee's ideology to maximize first-period control.
1−κ}there are many possible holding options that support the same delegation behavior but do not affect the manager's expected utility.
Uniqueness
I show that for each designated bP ∈R there is a unique probability of delegation in any equilibrium satisfying D1.
Structure of Equilibrium Appointee Strategies
Formal Proofs
Therefore, neither type of politician will prefer re-election as a social welfare cost in period t = 1 if Ns > Ns. In order for this to be a balance, the competent politicians must still have a choice between x1= w1 and x1 =1−w1 or
Equilibrium with Weak Special Interest Group
Observe whether the incentive constraint is satisfied for the competent politician, this implies that the incentive constraint is satisfied for the incompetent politician.
