Abstract
Since the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887, Congress has insulated certain agencies from politics in the hope of promoting policy expertise and efficient regulation. The traditional story scholars tell about the development of agency autonomy suggests that this sort of insulation allows federal administrators, who operate outside of reelection constraints, to take a long-run policy perspective and correct for political representation that may privilege some interests over others. Put simply, politicians delegate authority to agencies that are insulated from politics to create policy that is impartial and durable and to credibly commit not to interfere with future policies.
However, too often this traditional story fails to account for the presence of multiple principals or recognize that, after delegation, politicians’ actions may undermine the authority of autonomous federal administrators. In Above Politics, Gary Miller and Andrew Whitford address these gaps in the literature and explore the circumstances under which federal administrators act independently of their political principals. Through a series of theoretical models and a case study of financial regulation, Miller and Whitford conclude that a truly autonomous agency pursues social welfare when professional administrators operate in a conflict-laden political environment. The book provides several key insights that inspire a reevaluation of the routine assumptions scholars make regarding how federal administrators exercise and protect independence and when and why politicians allow federal agencies to operate autonomously.
Scholars commonly recognize that delegation to the bureaucracy can result in loss of political control, as bureaucrats become experts in their policy domain and can potentially pursue their own interests at the expense of elected officials. Yet Miller and Whitford also acknowledge that politicians themselves can contribute to problems resulting from delegation. Politicians can engage in their own form of shirking by pursuing individual benefits or circumventing bureaucratic policies instead of acting to incentivize federal administrator investment in social welfare. This provides justification for agency independence. To the extent that politicians act to promote social inefficiency, however, aligning bureaucratic preferences with those of political principals will only magnify this problem. In contrast, delegation to autonomous federal agencies can operate to further social welfare if federal administrators offset politicians’ self-interested pursuits.
Under what conditions can this occur? First, political principals must design a system under which federal administrators operate as trustees tasked with promoting social efficiency. This trustee model of delegation requires that federal administrators act on preferences that are different than those of politicians and that politicians cannot engage in actions that interfere with bureaucratic policy making. Second, not only must politicians credibly commit not to interfere with autonomous agency policy making, but federal administrators themselves must also be bound by some agreement to serve a higher good. Although there is no guarantee that a certain type of administrator will always pursue social welfare, administrators who are members of a corporate profession are more predictable than nonprofessionals. Professions institutionalize a set of norms and incentives that promote expertise and encourage individuals to view their pursuits with a long-term perspective.
Miller and Whitford note that these two conditions are most likely to arise when different politicians want different things from federal agencies. Self-interested politicians would very much like to dominate federal policy, personnel, and structure. However, the sheer number of veto points and competing interests in our separation of powers system generally prevents politicians from doing so. This conflict means that no individual politician can get his or her own way, and therefore must negotiate and compromise. These compromises produce environments that foster bureaucratic autonomy, as coalitions of self-interested politicians seek to prevent their opponents from exercising influence.
In explaining this theoretical framework, Miller and Whitford draw attention to three aspects of the relationship between federal administrators and their political principals that are underappreciated in the study of autonomous federal administrative policy. First, too often scholars think about the relationship between federal administrators and their principals in terms of what is optimal for political principals rather than what is optimal for society as a whole. An implicit assumption scholars make when considering the connection between self-interested politicians and unelected administrative officials is that politicians’ preferences reflect constituent preferences. This implicit assumption is by no means inappropriate, but does raise concerns for social welfare if active interests are skewed toward the representation of a certain segment of society. Put another way, we presume that bureaucratic accountability to politicians is desirable because of the electoral connection. Yet this accountability can be problematic if politicians’ cater to constituent demands that are not in the best interest of the broader public.
Second, Miller and Whitford note that the problem of credible commitment is much more pervasive than we generally recognize. Certainly, agency autonomy can be attractive because of the political uncertainty over the preferences of future politicians. Yet Miller and Whitford stress that each politician also recognizes his or her individual incentives to operate in a way that undermines social welfare. Agency autonomy thus can arise when individual political actors wish to credibly commit to themselves and to others not to interfere with particular policy outcomes. Although this idea is by no means new, seeing credible commitment problems as commonplace in a democratic system should inspire scholars to consider agency autonomy as an institutional solution across a wider array of policies than traditionally assumed.
Finally, the authors note the importance of stable, quality leadership. Bureaucratic autonomy is most likely to advance social welfare when administrative leaders create a culture of commitment to organizational goals. This does not mean setting a rigid system of rules and sanctions, but instead requires a leader to generate a level of confidence and trust that his or her organization will act in a socially efficient manner. A leader who is most likely to build this culture of commitment and trust is one who is dedicated to the organization, and not one who is simply passing through the organization on the way to something different. This has important implications for bureaucratic structure. Agency design choices regarding the number and type of political appointees at the top of a federal agency, whether agency leaders operate under legal protections such as fixed terms, and other aspects of an agency’s leadership structure affect whether a dedicated and quality leader is likely to emerge. Statutory provisions which outline the parameters of agency leadership are important not only because they affect the ability of political principals to influence agency policy, but also because they affect the type of leaders who are likely to be attracted to the agency and ultimately shape the agency’s work environment.
Although Above Politics draws attention to underappreciated aspects of public administration, a careful reader of the book is left without answers to two fundamental questions. First, it is still not clear precisely when we should expect to see autonomous institutions and when we should not. The arguments Miller and Whitford rightfully make about the pervasive nature of the credible commitment problem and the conflict that arises from our separation of powers system suggest that we should see agency autonomy more often than we do. In the recent era of polarization and conflict between the legislative and executive branches, what explains political principals’ decisions to design some insulated agencies, and at the same time, design some agencies that are more political in nature?
In addition, Miller and Whitford’s case study of financial regulation raises questions about trends in institutional changes in agency structure and autonomy across time. For example, although institutional, partisan, and constituent conflict during the New Deal era resulted in autonomous financial regulatory agencies, this conflict gradually subsided and the unification of political interests led to more accountable federal agencies. However, Miller and Whitford note that the politicization of financial agencies was also the result of academic support for deregulation and changes in powerful constituencies. This leaves the reader wondering whether there are ways to anticipate these sorts of environmental changes or whether scholars will only really be able to understand modifications to agency autonomy after post hoc analysis.
Overall, Above Politics is an important piece of scholarship that encourages the reader to think about common claims made in the literature on bureaucratic accountability and political control. Bureaucratic and public administration scholars will find that the book pushes them to evaluate the assumptions made in their own work. In addition, the book is appropriate for graduate courses on executive politics and public administration. A careful study of the authors’ analysis certainly will provide new avenues for research in public administration, political science, and public policy.