Andrew B. Whitford

Voter Choice in Multi-Party Democracies: A Test of Competing Theories and Models

We contrast social-structural theories of voting behavior with spatial theories of voting behavior to explain voter choice in the Netherlands and Great Britain. We hypothesize that voting behavior is best explained by the spatial theory of voting. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation is used to estimate multinomial probit (MNP) and multinomial logit (MNL) models of voter choice, for which we calculate Bayes factors for the purpose of model comparison. We find that the joint social-structural/spatial model is the best explanatory model in the Netherlands. Our results indicate that the MNP model outperforms the MNL model in our Dutch sample. In Great Britain, on the other hand, a purely spatial model is the best explanatory model, and our MNL model outperforms our MNP model. These results suggest the question of whether to employ MNL or MNP depends crucially on the data at hand.

Trust and Incentives in Principal-Agent Negotiations: The 'Insurance/Incentive Trade-off'

The canonical principal-agent problem involves a risk-neutral principal who must use incentives to motivate a risk-averse agent to take a costly, unobservable action that improves the principal’s payoff. The standard solution requires an inefficient shifting of risk to the agent. This article, however, summarizes experimental research that throws doubt on the validity of this conclusion. Experimental subjects were routinely able to achieve efficiency in agent effort levels without inefficient risk-sharing. These experimental outcomes, while anomalous from the standpoint of principal-agency theory, are quite consistent with other experimental data testing notions of trust-based implicit contracting. Such contracting within a hierarchy may allow an outcome preferred, by both principal and agent, to that deemed possible by principal-agency theory. If this is true, then the lessons to be learned from principal-agency theory are all the wrong ones. Concentrating on incentives can crowd out the very qualities in a relationship that make social efficiency possible.

The Pursuit of Political Control by Multiple Principals

I examine how the legislature and the president sequentially enable and constrain agencies in a tug-of-war over the exercise of bureaucratic discretion, partly in response to past political interventions. I provide evidence from a duration analysis of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys enforcement of hazard waste law for the acceleration and deceleration of policy implementation in response to sequential interventions by multiple, competing principals. I document the use of agenda-setting and solution-forcing statutes by Congress and case clearance mechanisms by the president. Sequenced political control means that agencies face shifting political expectations, caused in part by how the agency responds to past control attempts. While previous empirical research has portrayed a largely static world in which Congress and the president have influence, this study reveals a dynamic portrayal in which there is move and countermove from these principals.

Decentralization and Political Control of the Bureaucracy

In contrast to principal-agency theory, the possibility of the political control of the bureaucracy depends on bureaucratic structure. In this article, I argue that the functional decentralization of responsibility and authority for policy formulation and implementation involves a net loss of political control. I show that the choice by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to transfer responsibility to its Regional Offices changed the ability of national political superiors to intervene in policy implementation in the field. Examining Regional Office data on the enforcement of reactor regulations from 1975 to 1996, I present statistical tests of the changing influence of national political institutions, local policy preferences, and the Regions’ task environment. I find that decentralization insulated the NRC from national political oversight, and that the Regions were more responsive to local oversight postdevolution and deviated from a ‘natural rate’ of enforcement.

Perceiving Credible Commitments: How Independent Regulators Shape Elite Perceptions of Regulatory Quality

Numerous recent studies have addressed how the investment choices of firms depend on elite perceptions of the quality of national regulatory regimes. Likewise, other studies show that government structures can help to support credible commitments that protect market mechanisms. We provide the first analytic discussion of elite perceptions of national regulatory quality as a function of the independence of regulators in a countrys political system. Our central claims are that market operations depend on perceptions of regulatory quality and that independent regulators facilitate elite perceptions of regulatory quality because they check actors in domestic political systems. Cross-national statistical evidence suggests that regulatory independence supports elite perceptions of high regulatory quality. We also provide evidence that regulatory independence is more likely where political competition shapes incentives to intervene in business markets.

Decentralized Policy Implementation

This article develops a regime-splitting process model of decentralized policy implementation to integrate two theoretical approaches rooted in the tension between local flexibility and national control. The author estimates a model that simultaneously assesses the ability of each approach to explain the outcome it is meant to map onto (case-level discretion for local flexibility and aggregate responsiveness for national control) as well as each approachs extensibility to the other approachs domain. The data for the study come from the implementation of eight primary statutes by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys regional offices. The results are counterintuitive: the national control approach largely explains case-level discretion, the domain of local flexibility, but retains some power for explaining aggregate responsiveness. The local flexibility perspective contributes to both case-level discretion and aggregate responsiveness. Both models work outside their traditional domains, but neither is a sufficient explanation for decentralized policy implementation.

The Structures of Interest Coalitions: Evidence from Environmental Litigation

This paper addresses the intersection of coalition formation, judicial strategies, and regulatory politics. Coalitions are a low-cost means for assembling minority interests into more powerful blocs. However, in most cases in regulatory politics, judicial strategies are high cost efforts. I argue that coalitions among interests form one basis for judicial participation, but that participation manifests in an array of coalition microstructures. For any one event, the microstructure of the interest group coalition varies, but across events the coalitions take on general forms. The paper offers evidence for a variety of coalition microstructures in interest group participation as amici curiae (friends of the court) in cases before the United States Supreme Court. The evidence is drawn from the case of the Group of Ten, a stable, long-term coalition of environmental interest groups that operated from 1981 to 1991.

Collaborative Behavior and the Performance of Government Agencies

ABSTRACT While collaboration among individuals, work groups, and organizations is central for understanding the performance of public agencies, most studies have focused on collaboration between organizations or sectors. We develop a model that focuses on two types of collaborative behavior: between persons (both horizontal and vertical) and between work units. We empirically test our hypotheses using data on work collaboration and perceptions of public agency performance from the United States federal government. We introduce a method for estimating the impact of different types of collaborative behavior that also accounts for nonlinear effects and a dependent variable that takes ordered values. We find that intra-organizational collaborative behavior has a large impact on organizational performance and that horizontal collaborative behavior between workers has the greatest impact among the specific types.

Institutional Foundations of the President’s Issue Agenda

In this study, we focus on an unresolved problem in our understanding of the construction of the presidential issue agenda: how to reconcile the president’s responsiveness to public opinion with his institutionalized electoral cycle. We argue that the president’s responsiveness is contingent: that the president allocates agenda space to discretionary issues when the strength of public opinion is high and the electoral cycle dictates responsiveness. We provide evidence for this claim by simultaneously addressing the potential influence of other relevant political actors, intra-administration considerations, and objective phenomena in the case of the president’s attention to crime issues over the second half of the twentieth century. Our statistical models show that while the president also responds to cues from other political actors, executive attention to public opinion depends on the president’s electoral circumstances. At the same time, because crime is a discretionary issue, we also find that presidents adjust their agenda to address competing domestic priorities.

Policy windows, public opinion, and policy ideas: the evolution of No Child Left Behind

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the policy process that led to the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in the United States and the Bush Administrations role in this process.Design/methodology/approach – The research design is historical and archival. A description of the NCLB Act is given and the major provisions and implementation are focused upon. How the Bush Administration helped create the opportunity to pass the NCLB Act by building coalitions, and how public opinion affected the evolution of the policy process is focused upon. Finally, a description is given on how policy ideas like the concept of “accountability” shaped the policy process, and both inspired and constrained the Bush Administration.Findings – The paper argues that the Bush Administration helped create the opportunity to pass the NCLB Act by building coalitions, and public opinion affected the evolution of the policy process. Policy ideas like the concept of “accountability” shaped the policy process, a...