Nelson C. Dometrius

Measuring Gubernatorial Power

THE CONCEPT OF POWER has always played a key role in American political thought and action. Since the eighteenth century we have gone full circle: from limiting the exercise of power through such devices as checks and balances and referenda, to demanding responsibility and efficiency via the short ballot and, today, back to curbing Presidential hegemony. Throughout it all, academics have agonized over defining, locating and measuring power. This paper examines the problem with reference to one set of political actorsstate governors. The most commonly used measure, Schlesingers Formal Power of the Governors Index, will be critiqued and revised in an effort to improve its measurement validity.

GOVERNORS AS CHIEF ADMINISTRATORS The Linkage Between Formal Powers and Informal Influence

Although formal gubernatorial powers have often been employed as a surrogate measure of actual gubernatorial influence, the linkage is more complex than that. This article builds and tests the argument that formal gubernatorial powers are translated into influence largely through the mechanism of the governors informal political resources. That is, formal powers do relatively little to bolster a governors influence where informal resources are lacking, but a combination of formal powers and informal resources contributes greatly to gubernatorial influence. Tests of an interactive model of the governors influence over state administrative agencies strongly support this interpretation.

State Legislative Influence over Agency Rulemaking: The Utility of Ex Ante Review

Scholars have argued that legislatures can use administrative procedures to constrain bureaucratic discretion and maintain policy control when delegating authority. One such mechanism is the formal authority to review agency rule proposals. We find that legislatures with stronger formal authority to review rules ex ante are viewed by agency heads as more influential in their rulemaking decisions, but this power is mitigated when such review is checked by the governor. Our analysis demonstrates the impact of institutional arrangements on general state legislative influence over policy implementation. Understanding this element of legislative control over state bureaucracies helps explain variations in state-level policymaking. The General Assembly finds that it must provide a procedure for oversight and review of regulations adopted pursuant to [the] delegation of legislative power to curtail excessive regulation and to establish a system of accountability so that the bureaucracy must justify its use of the regulatory authority before imposing hidden costs upon the economy of Pennsylvania. Regulatory Review Act of 1982 Pennsylvania General Assembly

Gubernatorial Approval and Administrative Influence

The connection between the government and the governed is often evaluated using election results. This article explores this connection between elections using data on gubernatorial approval in the states. Specifically, I ask the question, Do governors with greater job approval ratings have greater influence over the state bureaucracy than governors with lower approval ratings? Measures of both gubernatorial influence and administrator contact with gubernatorial staff are regressed on gubernatorial approval ratings from state polling data, along with controls for other state characteristics. The results show that approval does affect a governors influence with the bureaucracy, and as such, serves as an additional connection between the government and the governed.

Governors, Legislatures, and State Budgets across Time

Prior research by Abney and Lauth concluded that governors were losing ground to legislatures in shaping the state budget. Goodman examined Abney and Lauth’s explanations for this change and found empirical support for some but not others. This article’s findings reveal that governors, as a group, have not declined in budgetary influence, although some have gained and others lost during recent decades. The longitudinal analysis arrives at two major conclusions: (1) executive—legislative influence changes that take place stem primarily from political rather than structural changes, and (2) budgetary influence is not unidimensional as governors and legislatures compete in a non-zero-sum game in pursuit of different budgetary outcomes.

Organizational Regeneration and Political Change: A Model with Applications to Affirmative Action

This paper develops a model of organizational regeneration-the process by which organizations reconstitute themselves over time through replacement of their members. Though not often studied by political scientists, the regeneration process is fraught with political implications. Model development is wrapped around the substantive case of the employment of women in state and local governments in the United States. Some 1980 data are factored into the model along with a series of alternative assumptions to generate simulated 1990 figures on the sexual composition of the state and local government work force. This prospective modeling, then, helps clarify the probable future consequences of policy choices in the present.

Organizational Regeneration Reconsidered: Women in State and Local Government, 1980-90

Theory: A model of organizational regeneration produced 1990 forecasts of the gender composition of the state and local government workforce that were at odds with the actual results for 1990. Hypotheses: The errors arise from changing government practices rather than from errors in the model per se. Methods: More recent data are examined to identify possible changes in the models parameters. Results: The rates at which women enter or leave state and local government jobs have indeed changed, resulting in the models erroneous forecasts. These changes also suggest continued growth of female representation among officials and administrators, but little improvement for the workforce as a whole.

Strategies for Measuring Influence over State Agencies

In the summer 2006 edition of State Politics and Policy Quarterly, Michael Baranowski and Donald Gross examined two methods of measuring influence over state agency activities: freestanding versus paired comparison. Their analysis led them to conclude that the paired-comparison measures might be theoretically superior, but are often impractical. Using the American State Administrator Project (ASAP) surveys, we supplement Baranowski and Grosss analysis by identifying conditions that sometimes make freestanding instruments superior measures and, at other times, paired comparisons both superior and practical to use.

Costs, Benefits and Careers in the U.S. House of Representatives: A Developmental Approach

Many have observed the rise of, and changes in, careerism in the U.S. House of Representatives, but few have attempted an explanation for careerisms emergence and change. We posit a cost-benefit model as an explanation for careerism with the Houses structure and environment affecting the cost-benefit calculus. The model is not testable per se, but it is compared, and seems to fit well with the historical record of careerism and the political environment.

State-Level Measures of Institutional Budgetary Influence from the American State Administrators Project 1964–98

The American State Administrators Project is a half-century long research program surveying the attitudes and behavior of state agency leaders. The project has produced a voluminous number of publications and conference papers. At the same time it has also faced several difficulties in making its data more widely available to the scholarly community. This paper describes the Project, some of the data difficulties it has faced, and the portion of the data being distributed with this article.