Sean Gailmard

Moral Bias in Large Elections: Theory and Experimental Evidence

We argue that large elections may exhibit a moral bias (i.e., conditional on the distribution of preferences within the electorate, alternatives understood by voters to be morally superior are more likely to win in large elections than in small ones). This bias can result from ethical expressive preferences, which include a payoff voters obtain from taking an action they believe to be ethical. In large elections, pivot probability is small, so expressive preferences become more important relative to material self-interest. Ethical expressive preferences can have a disproportionate impact on results in large elections for two reasons. As pivot probability declines, ethical expressive motivations make agents more likely to vote on the basis of ethical considerations than on the basis of narrow self-interest, and the set of agents who choose to vote increasingly consist of agents with large ethical expressive payoffs. We provide experimental evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis of moral bias.

Negative Agenda Control in the Senate and House: Fingerprints of Majority Party Power

We present evidence suggesting that the majority party in the U.S. Senate exercises significant negative agenda control. Furthermore, this majority party negative agenda control in the Senate is very similar, in empirical terms, to negative agenda control exercised by the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives. This evidence comes from comparisons of majority party roll rates across legislative vehicles (S bills, confirmation votes, and conference reports) and across chambers of Congress. Majority party roll rates respond to disagreement with other political actors as if the Senate majority party does restrict agenda access. Moreover, the response of majority party roll rates to disagreement with other political actors is very similar across the two chambers. Given that explanations of majority party negative agenda control in the House are often predicated on chamber-specific factors with no clear analogues in the Senate, the results reveal a striking cross-chamber similarity.

Politics, Principal–Agent Problems, and Public Service Motivation

ABSTRACT In this essay I make two related points about public service motivation. First, despite advances in public service motivation measurement at the level of individuals, little is known about the channels by which organizations develop a workforce comprised of people with high levels of PSM. I discuss recent political science scholarship suggesting that this development is endogenous to both personnel policies and the political position of bureaucratic agencies. Second, I contend that PSM in a workforce is useful at an organizational level primarily because it helps in mitigating or “solving” specific principal–agent problems, though it can also intensify others.

Business as usual: interest group access and representation across policy-making venues

We provide the first comprehensive study of lobbying across venues by studying interest group registrations in both the legislative and administrative branches. We present four major findings based on Federal and state data. Firstly, groups engage in substantial administrative lobbying relative to legislative lobbying. Secondly, the vast majority of groups lobby the legislature, but a large proportion of groups also lobby the bureaucracy. Thirdly, representational biases in legislative lobbying are replicated across venues: business groups dominate administrative lobbying at least as much as they do legislative lobbying. Finally, the level of interest group activity in one venue for a given policy area is strongly related to its level in the other venue. The findings potentially have important implications for the impact of institutional design on both the form and promotion of broad participation in policy-making as well as the ultimate content of policies chosen by democratic governments, broadly construed.

Whose Ear to Bend? Information Sources and Venue Choice in Policy-Making

Important conceptualizations of both interest groups and bureaucratic agencies suggest that these institutions provide legislatures with greater information for use in policy-making. Yet little is known about how these information sources interact in the policy process as a whole. In this paper we consider this issue analytically, and develop a model of policy-making in which multiple sources of information – from the bureaucracy, an interest group, or a legislatures own in-house development – can be brought to bear on policy. Lobbyists begin this process by selecting a venue – Congress or a standing bureaucracy – in which to press for a policy change. The main findings of the paper are that self-selection of lobbyists into different policy-making venues can be informative per se, and that this self-selection can make legislatures prefer delegation to ideologically distinct bureaucratic agents over ideologically close ones. Changes within the FederalTrade Commission during the 1970s are reinterpreted in the context of our model.

Intercameral Bargaining and Intracameral Organization in Legislatures

We argue that chambers have an incentive to create committees unrepresentative of themselves. In a bicameral setting, a committee within a chamber has two roles: as policy advisor for the parent chamber, and an additional role, less often recognized in the literature, as an agent for bargaining with the other chamber. In the former role, sound advice requires that the committee be representative of the chamber’s preferences. In the latter role, a committee can be an effective bargaining agent if it is willing to reject proposals that the chamber cannot commit to reject. But this requires the committee to be unrepresentative of the chamber. Optimal committee design reflects a tension between the chamber’s desire for a trustworthy (and therefore representative) advisor and a “tough” (and therefore unrepresentative) bargaining agent. Thus intercameral interactions can affect optimal intracameral arrangements; therefore, unicameral theories of legislative organization may overlook important factors.

Building a New Imperial State: The Strategic Foundations of Separation of Powers in America

Separation of powers existed in the British Empire of North America long before the U.S. Constitution of 1789, yet little is known about the strategic foundations of this institutional choice. In this article, I argue that separation of powers helps an imperial crown mitigate an agency problem with its colonial governor. Governors may extract more rents from colonial settlers than the imperial crown prefers. This lowers the Crown’s rents and inhibits economic development by settlers. Separation of powers within colonies allows settlers to restrain the governor’s rent extraction. If returns to settler investment are moderately high, this restraint is necessary for colonial economic development and ultimately benefits the Crown. Historical evidence from the American colonies and the first British Empire is consistent with the model. This article highlights the role of agency problems as a distinct factor in New World institutional development, and in a sovereign’s incentives to create liberal institutions.