Abby K. Wood

Agency Performance Challenges and Agency Politicization

In this paper we evaluate the relationship between political control and bureaucratic performance using information requested by researchers via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and congress via congressional committee requests. The information requested was the same, and the timing of requests was similar. We find modest evidence of a relationship between agency politicization and a lack of responsiveness to requests for information from the public and Congress. Politicized agencies are slower to respond to requests even when controlling for agency size and workload. There is little evidence, however, that these agencies are more likely to respond poorly when they do respond. The difficulties in responding appear to be due to poor performance of the FOIA offices, either because political actors focus more on other agency activities or because of poorer management agency-wide. We conclude that efforts to make agencies responsive to elected officials may hurt management performance.

Caught in the Act but Not Punished: On Elite Rule of Law and Deterrence

Most literature on criminal deterrence in law, economics, and criminology assumes that people who are caught for a crime will be punished. The literature focuses on how the size of sanctions and probability of being caught affect criminal behavior. However, in many countries entire groups of people are “above the law” in the sense that they are able to evade punishment even if caught violating the law. In this paper we argue that both the perceived probability of being punished if caught and the cultural acceptance of elites evading punishment are important parts of theorizing about deterrence, particularly about corruption among political elites. Looking at data on parking violations among diplomats in New York City 1997–2002, we explore how diplomats from different rule-of-law cultures respond to sudden legal immunity. The empirical observations provide clear evidence of both the stickiness and the gradual weakening of cultural constraints.

In the Shadows of Sunlight: The Effects of Transparency on State Political Campaigns

In recent years, the courts have invalidated a variety of campaign finance laws while simultaneously upholding disclosure requirements. Courts view disclosure as a less-restrictive means to root out corruption while critics claim that disclosure chills speech and deters political participation. Using individual-level contribution data from state elections between 2000 and 2008, we find that the speech-chilling effects of disclosure are negligible. On average, donors to state-level campaigns are equally likely to contribute in subsequent elections in states that increase the public visibility of campaign contributions, relative to donors in states that do not change their disclosure laws or practices over the same time period -- estimates are indistinguishable from zero and confidence intervals are narrow around zero. Moreover, we do not observe heterogeneous effects for small donors or ideological outliers despite an assumption in First Amendment jurisprudence that these donors are disproportionately affected by campaign finance regulations. In short, the argument that disclosure chills speech is not supported by the data.