William F. West

Presidential Power and Republican Government: The Theory and Practice of OMB Review of Agency Rules

This article focuses on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review of agency rules, a major institutional innovation of the Reagan Administration which established central clearance of administrative rules for the first time in our history. It places OMB review in theoretical perspective by examining the traditional paradigm of public administration, the breakdown of that paradigm, and the manner in which the theory offered to justify OMB review both draws on prior elements of doctrine and combines them in new and distinctive ways. In addition, it measures practice against theory by analyzing the actual impacts of OMB review on presidential power, objective or impartial administrative decision making, and the formal safeguards established by administrative procedures and court review. Finally, the article analyzes the broader institutional significance of OMB review by assessing its theory and practice in terms of their implications for adapting republican political institutions in the United States to an administrative state.

Structuring Administrative Discretion: The Pursuit of Rationality and Responsiveness

This article describes and analyzes three important developments in the process of regulatory administration over the past fifteen years. Efforts to structure agency discretion have been intended to mitigate the dilemma caused by the continuing growth of delegated policymaking authority. Considered together, they have been designed to promote the traditional, though inconsistent, goals of rational and responsive agency decision making.

Legislative Influence v. Presidential Dominance: Competing Models of Bureaucratic Control

The continued delegation of policy-making authority to the bureaucracy has made the administrative process a primary arena for competition between the American president and Congress. The fact that the president has been winning consistently in recent years thus has important implications both for the character of policy making and for the distribution of power within our political system. This article is concerned with innovations in theory that have provided impetus and justification for this development. As an exercise in institutional analysis, it integrates normative considerations of good and constitutionally-sound policy making with an empirical assessment of executive and legislative competence. We argue that the emergent model of political oversight, which advocates centralized presidential control over agency policy making while prescribing a passive role for Congress, ignores key goals of our political system as well as important external influences and internal constraints that shape institutional behavior. A theory of oversight properly reconciled with the reality of agency policy making must allow for a direct congressional role in the administrative process as a counterpoise to executive power. Oversight issues were once much simpler than they are today. As discussed in the first section, the traditional model of public administration yielded an elegant set of prescriptions for institutional control of the bureaucracy in which formal

Merit, Management, and Neutral Competence: Lessons from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, FY 1988–FY 1997

Despite the centrality of merit principles to governance in the United States over the past century, scant empirical research examines linkages between institutions, and outcomes in the implementation of merit system protections. We argue that the fate of merit principles depends, at a minimum, on two influences that may compete with neutral competence. The first is partisan responsiveness by counter bureaucracies charged with holding agencies accountable to merit principles. The second influence is the sacrifice of merit in the interest of managerial rerogatives at the agency level. This exploratory study assesses both of these influences within the federal government. Our data consist of personal interviews, analyses of U.S. Merit System Protection Board (MSPB) processes, case loads, and decisions between fiscal years 1988 and 1997, and a brief case study of the Justice Department. We find that the MSPB is largely the neutral and competent agency that Congress intended to create when it enacted the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Less positively, our analysis also reveals that federal agencies vary in how well their personnel actions fare with the MSPB. This finding is especially germane to reinventing-government reforms that decentralize personnel management to agencies or to line operators within agencies.

Oversight Subcommittees in the House of Representatives

This paper assesses the role of oversight and investigation subcommittees in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hearing data indicate that these specialized units have become less active, just as oversight has become more popular throughout the House. An examination of membership turnover supports the complementary hypothesis that oversight subcommittees have become comparatively unappealing assignments. Given the general expansion of oversight, the relatively low attractiveness and output of oversight and investigation subcommittees are probably attributable to norms of deference which restrict their opportunities to address important and rewarding issues.

Merit Protection, Federal Agencies, and the New Personnel Management Explaining Cross-Agency Variation in MSPB Appeals Decisions, FY 1988 to FY 1997

This study elaborates and extends earlier work on the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) that found that federal agencies differed in how well their personnel actions fared when appealed to the MSPB. The authors offer a theoretical framework for understanding cross-agency differences in MSPB appeals decisions and then test for face validity a variety of factors informing that framework. The authors argue that the important balance between managerial prerogative and protecting merit principles in the federal government could be jeopardized by the new personnel management (NPM) unless reformers and researchers consider in their work cross-agency variations in production functions, types of personnel actions taken, agency culture, agency structure, legitimate functional needs, anticipatory reactions, agency responsiveness, and agency learning curves.