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Back-Channel Representation: A Study of the Strategic Communication of Senators with the US Department of Labor
Abstract
An underappreciated way members of Congress represent interests is by pursuing policy goals through their communication with the bureaucracy. I argue that the bureaucracy provides an alternative, covert way for cross-pressured legislators, who face diverging pressures from party leaders, interest groups, and subconstituencies, to satisfy conflicting interests. Using original data of senators’ communication with the US Department of Labor from 2005 to 2012 (109th through 112th Congresses), I show that, when faced with cross-pressures from party and constituency, senators strategically choose less visible, back-channel means for pursuing policy goals. These findings provide a new perspective on representation by demonstrating that legislators pursue policy goals outside of the legislative process in an effort to evade accountability.
... These avenues of influence should be considered in light of literature examining the causes and consequences of political control of the administrative state. Methods include the appointments process (Calvert et al., 1989;Lewis, 2008), the oversight process (Clinton et al., 2014;McCubbins & Schwartz, 1984), agency design and procedural selection (Bawn, 1995;Lewis, 2003;McCubbins et al., 1987), active "lobbying" of administrators by legislators, including letter-marking Mills et al., 2016;Ritchie, 2018;Ritchie & You, 2019), the directing of contracts (Gordon, 2011;Witko, 2011), and more. ...
... This relationship exists despite the presence of objective evaluative criteria. 15 Other literature shows agencies are more likely to respond more quickly and more favorably to legislators in particularly influential positions (Lowande, 2019;Weingast & Moran, 1983) and there exists considerable heterogeneity in how often legislators even attempt to influence administrative agencies (Lowande, 2019;Ritchie, 2018). Indeed, the mixed evidence regarding legislative influence is puzzling due to strong theoretical reasons for agencies to accommodate legislators (Arnold, 1979), particularly those more senior (Helland, 1999;Lowande, 2019;Roberts, 1990;Rundquist et al., 1996;Young & Sobel, 2013), serving on relevant committees (Alvarez & Saving, 1997;Hudak, 2014;Kim et al., 2020;Lowande, 2019;Rundquist et al., 1996;Weingast & Moran, 1983; but see Berry et al., 2010), in the majority (Albouy, 2013;Berry et al., 2010;Dynes & Huber, 2015;Helland, 1999), or in the executive's party (Berry et al., 2010; but see Dynes & Huber, 2015). ...
... First, previous literature suggests members of relevant oversight committees are more likely to contact agencies (Lowande, 2019;Ritchie, 2018) and agencies are more likely to respond more quickly (Lowande, 2019) and more generously (Hudak, 2014;Rundquist et al., 1996), with the relationship also sometimes holding outside of the US context (Kim et al., 2020). 16 Indeed, as Arnold (1979) notes, "committee members are more likely to know and have frequent contact with program administrators, both formally during [legislative] hearings and informally throughout the year… [which] gives them better opportunities to criticize past bureaucratic actions and make suggestions about future actions" (pp. ...
To what extent are elected legislators able to influence administrative decisionmaking? Recent research has been divided on this question, with some studies suggesting legislators are effectively unable to influence administrative outcomes, whereas others suggest influence is common. Here, we examine this question in the context of Pennsylvania's Abandoned and Orphan Well Plugging Program (WPP). Despite the WPP using objective evaluative criteria to prioritize which abandoned and orphan oil and gas wells should be plugged before others, our results suggest legislators are able to influence the WPP's decisions. Specifically, we find that wells are plugged more quickly when the districts in which they are located are represented by (a) more experienced legislators, (b) legislators who sit on the state House or Senate Environmental Resources & Energy Committees, and (c) more liberal/Democratic legislators. These results have implications for those interested and involved in the legislative-administrative nexus.
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... Un análisis más amplio de otras instituciones públicas establecerá un panorama más claro sobre los aspectos positivos o negativos de la imagen y de las representaciones sociales de las instituciones públicas de esa zona. Hunter, 1998;Du Gay, 2005;Richardson, 2011;Ahumada, Giacone y Hirtz, 2014) desde la administración pública (Crozier, 1964;Jenning, 1966;Blau y Meyer, 1971;Carrasco Canals, 1975;Hummel, 1977;Arnold, 1991;i nap, 2005;Meier y Bohte, 2007;Byrkjeflot y Engelstad, 2018;Carnevale y Stivers, 2019), e incluso desde la filosofía (Eymar, 2009), el derecho (Meléndez George, 2005) y la historia (Cañas Gálvez, 2012), mientras que en el campo de la comunicación también existen investigaciones sobre la burocracia que se han centrado en la impersonalidad de las relaciones entre las personas y los servidores públicos (Lystad y Stone, 1956), en la anomia de las personas frente a las instituciones públicas y la burocracia (Marsh, Dolan y Riddick, 1967), en el lenguaje persuasivo utilizado por las personas ante los servidores públicos (Danet, 1971), en los diferentes tipos de comunicación burocrática (Rubin, 1974), en la comunicación interna dentro de las instituciones burocráticas (Bacharach y Aiken, 1977), en los entornos y la cultura organizacional de las instituciones públicas (Meyer, 1995), en los problemas burocráticos y la corrupción de grandes empresas (Picard, 1996), en la vinculación de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación con la burocracia para generar procesos de transparencia (Snellen, 2001) o para que las instituciones públicas sean más funcionales (Bovens y Zouridis, 2002), en el reemplazo de la burocracia mediante las tecnologías de la información y comunicación (Harris, 2006;Ionescu, 2016), en la mejora de los servicios de las instituciones burocráticas (Pärna y von Tunzelmann, 2007), en los procesos de innovación de las instituciones públicas (van Duivenboden y Thaens, 2008), en las dinámicas de interacción de las instituciones públicas para convertirlas en instituciones flexibles adaptadas al entorno (Klemsdal, 2013), en la interacción entre la burocracia de las instituciones públicas y los medios respecto a la ayuda extranjera (Joly, 2014), en la transición hacia el e-Gobierno mediante las tecnologías de información y comunicación (Buffat, 2015), en los procesos burocráticos de comunicación interpersonal (Monteiro, 2016), en el establecimiento de una agenda política a través de la burocracia (Baekgaard, Mortensen y Seeberg, 2018) o en el uso de la política como parte de la comunicación burocrática (Ritchie, 2018), así como en las experiencias burocráticas de comunicación interpersonal mediadas por las tecnologías de información y comunicación (Hansen, Lundberg y Syltevik, 2018). ...
... Sin embargo, ninguna de esas investigaciones ha tomado como punto de partida la imagen de una institución pública y su vinculación con las representaciones sociales como parte de un proceso de comunicación o interacción social. Aunque la burocracia es inoperante para la mayoría de las personas, es muy funcional para ciertos grupos privilegiados que la utilizan como una herramienta de poder, permitiéndoles establecer agendas políticas y económicas de control y dominación, además de obstaculizar la transparencia de la información y alcanzar una verdadera democracia (Baekgaard, Mortensen y Seeberg, 2018;Ritchie, 2018), por lo que seguir investigando sobre ella todavía es relevante para comprender otros aspectos que rodean a este modelo de organización, trabajo y administración de las instituciones públicas. ...
A pesar de que la burocracia y la función pública son modelos, actuaciones y resultados
de una forma muy específica de organización, trabajo y administración, inoperante para
la mayor parte de la sociedad civil, las instituciones públicas que las practican generan
una imagen institucional y diversas representaciones sociales que pueden ayudarnos a
comprender las percepciones, aspiraciones, experiencias, juicios de valor y explicaciones,
positivas o negativas, que las personas tienen al interactuar con ellas. Por lo que, a
través de las redes semánticas naturales, se pudieron determinar los campos semánticos que hay sobre la burocracia y la función pública de una institución en 100 personas de
la ciudad de Villahermosa, Tabasco. Los resultados arrojan la coexistencia de valores
positivos y negativos como parte de la imagen y de las representaciones sociales. De
manera más específica, la burocracia tiene una imagen y representación social negativa,
pero los funcionarios públicos tienen una imagen y representación social positiva. Un
análisis más amplio de otras instituciones públicas establecerá un panorama más claro
sobre los aspectos positivos o negativos de la imagen y de las representaciones sociales
de las instituciones públicas de esa zona.
... Members of Congress communicate with agencies through informal channels (e.g., letters, emails, phone calls, meetings) thousands of times each year. Despite previous assumptions that these interactions are confined to casework and requests for grants, about a quarter of these contacts are about matters of national policy (Ritchie 2018). Of course, House members and senators (and their staff) contact agencies to support grants for their districts and states and to expedite passport renewals and visa applications, but they also contact agencies to comment on regulations, offer interpretations of law, and to request the agency's assistance in crafting legislation. ...
... These data have led to several novel substantive contributions. We now know that members of Congress regularly contact agencies about policy, and that these interactions are widespread across legislators, rather than exclusive to committees with oversight (Ritchie 2018). These data have also provided evidence of agency responsiveness to requests from House members and senators (Ritchie and You 2019) and shown how women, racial and ethnic minorities, and veterans in Congress advocate for their respective communities through their interactions with agencies (Lowande, Ritchie, and Lauterbach 2019). ...
... We begin with the congressional practice of correspondence as a method of control. Studies such as Lowande (2018) and Ritchie (2018) focus on inquiries (contacts) made by individual legislators to agencies. This form of communication is informal and nonstatutory but, as with hearings, can take the form of oversight as communication between legislature and agency about legislative priorities. ...
Oversight, scholars argue, allows Congress to control the executive agents it empowers to implement law. Yet the tools of oversight are rather limited and debate continues as to how much influence oversight provides. How well can members of Congress motivate bureaucratic performance? To measure the efficacy of oversight, we create a new dataset matching oversight efforts to a bureaucratic deficiency Congress has sought to reduce since the early 2000s: improperly made payments to contractors and clients. We estimate the effect of congressional hearings, one of the most important tools of congressional oversight, as well as correspondence, appropriation committee reports, statutes, and executive action. We find that hearings lead to subsequent declines in improper payments. The magnitude of the effect, however, is small relative to the scope of the problem, suggesting strong limits on the efficacy of oversight. Our findings imply that America’s elected officials struggle to effectively manage implementation of policy.
... Errors may involve incorrect benefit calculations, improper disqualification of claimants, or delays in benefit disbursement. A U.S. Department of Labor report [25] underscored that states with robust DM frameworks reported fewer administrative errors and discrepancies in benefit distribution. By minimizing errors, UI programs can promptly and accurately deliver entitled benefits to eligible claimants, thereby enhancing overall program reliability and trustworthiness. ...
The research paper titled "The Transformative Impact of Business Intelligence on Unemployment Insurance: Enhancing Decision Making and Operational Efficiency Through a Mixed-Methods Approach" explores the role of Business Intelligence (BI) in improving Unemployment Insurance (UI) systems. It examines how BI enhances decision-making (DM) and operational efficiency (OE) in UI administration. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews to analyze the impact of BI on UI outcomes. Key findings suggest that BI significantly improves decision-making capabilities, leading to enhanced operational efficiency and more effective UI program management. The paper contributes to the Resource-Based View (RBV) theory, highlighting BI as a strategic resource for improving organizational performance in public sector services.
... Another, even less visible, activity is lobbying bureaucracies on behalf of (groups of) constituents (Lowande et al., 2019;Judge-Lord et al., 2018). Indeed, legislators spend a fair amount of their time contacting bureaucratic agencies-especially for traditionally underrepresented groups like women, minorities, and veterans (Lowande et al., 2019)-when agency goals conflict with parties' agendas or core constituents' demands (Ritchie, 2018). These legislative requests can have influence on policy decisions and implementations by U.S. bureaucracies (Ritchie and You, 2019;Mills and Kalaf-Hughes, 2015). ...
There is an optimism that a growing number of women in political office will reorient the focus of international politics towards more social and humanitarian issues. One basis for this optimism are arguments that women legislators hold distinct foreign policy preferences and act on them to affect changes in policy. However, we know little about gender differences in the behavior of individual legislators on these issues. This study investigates the behavior of individual legislators of the United States, one of the most important actors in international politics, in the context of development aid. Analyzing a diverse set of legislative behaviors in the U.S. Congress, we find no evidence that women legislators behave any differently than men with regard to these issues. Beyond its contribution to our understanding of the making and future of American foreign policy, this study contributes to broader debates about women’s representation and foreign policy.
... First, they allow them to act on behalf of their constituencies in a manner that is outside of and unconstrained by the legislative process (ritchie 2015, 2018). second, direct requests, often in the form of letters or phone calls, offer a traceable, credible device for credit claiming (Fiorina 1989;ritchie 2015, 2018, which can elude legislators' ability to link their efforts to other policy outcomes (arnold 1990;Lee 2003Lee , 2004Mayhew 1974). 3 When legislators reach out to agencies with requests, it signals to agencies both the legislator's preference and that the request is a priority for the legislator. ...
Public policy is produced by elected and unelected officials and through the interactions of branches of government. We consider how such interactions affect policy implementation and representation. We argue that legislators try to influence bureaucratic decisions through direct communication with federal agencies, and that such contact is effective and has consequences for policy outcomes. We provide empirical evidence of this argument using original data about direct communication between members of Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) along with decisions made by the DOL regarding trade and redistributive policies. We find that direct contacts influence DOL decisions, and the agency is more likely to reverse previous decisions when requested to do so by legislators. Our results challenge key assumptions and findings in the previous literature and have important implications for interbranch relations and informal means of control over the implementation of national policy.
Despite Congress' Article I powers, challenges within and outside of Congress prevent lawmakers from influencing policy outcomes. Legislators confront obstacles when trying to pass bills, and legislation is often not implemented as intended. What strategies do lawmakers have for controlling policy outcomes? We argue that legislators use formal and informal means to influence policy, but that they choose an instrument that exploits their comparative advantage in Congress. Authority over legislative functions and access to stages of the legislative process influence lawmakers' strategy. We merge two datasets to measure the statutory tools drafted into legislation and House members' informal interactions with agencies between 2005 and 2012, drawing on nearly 14,000 bills and 65,000 contacts. Our findings contribute to theories of delegation and oversight—by focusing on the allocation of authority among individual legislators rather than transitory interbranch political explanations—and advance our understanding of the distribution of power in Congress.
The federalism structure of the US government requires active cooperation from state governments to successfully enforce federal environmental regulations. What explains the variation in state governments’ participation in lawsuits against firms that are accused of violating major environmental statutes? We argue that firms’ political connections with state politicians affect a state government’s decision to join the litigation process. By constructing a novel dataset on the EPA’s civil cases and settlements for the period 1998–2021, we show that state environmental agencies are less likely to join the EPA in court when the defendant firms contributed to Republican state legislators. We do not find the same pattern when firms have connections with Democratic legislators. We present various mechanisms of how state politicians influence behaviors of state bureaucrats. Our findings highlight how state politics can be an avenue for firms to exert influence on federal environmental regulations.
Members of the US Congress held over 25,000 town hall meetings over the last eight years, and yet we know very little about the role that these events play in American politics. In this article, we present new data on congressional town hall meetings held in the 114th to 117th Congresses (2015–2022) to explore why politicians hold such meetings. In short, we do not find consistent evidence that electoral vulnerability drives legislators to their districts. Nor do we find support for claims of a zero‐sum tradeoff between lawmaking and district representation. However, members of the president's opposition party clearly and consistently host more town hall meetings, suggesting that party messaging may be at the heart of this often‐overlooked congressional behavior.
I explore the potential impact of rulemakers’ professional experience on the efficiency of rulemaking by U.S. federal agencies. I highlight two types of professional experience rulemakers may have—inside experience gathered by working in the federal government, if not the same agency, and outside experience gained before entering the civil service or between stints in government. I discuss several plausible mechanisms through which inside and outside experience may affect rulemaking efficiency. Using data combining rulemakers’ career backgrounds with rulemaking life-cycles from 1999 to 2023, I show that outside experience, and not inside experience, is associated with two measures of rulemaking efficiency: a higher likelihood for proposed rules to be promulgated as final and a lower likelihood of unanticipated events—extensions of public comment periods, other delays to the rulemaking timetable, and the withdrawal of rules already issued.
Do elections increase responsiveness of legislators to their constituents? Previous studies that examine the effect of electoral proximity have been unable to hold the roll-call agenda constant and control for differences in unobserved covariates between legislators. This paper utilizes a natural experiment in four state legislatures—Arkansas, Illinois, Florida, and Texas—where term length was randomly assigned. This design compares the responsiveness to constituency opinion of those randomly assigned to a two-year term to those assigned a four-year term on different issue areas, like the economy, environment, and crime. I find no evidence for an electoral proximity effect on responsiveness. In addition, in the Illinois State Senate, the causal effect of electoral proximity on responsiveness is measured on several individual roll-call votes, including the legalization of medical marijuana and gay marriage.
Foreign policy scholars often assume that leaders pursue a national interest. However, states often spread their foreign policy authority thinly across bureaucracies and programs with overlapping or conflicting interests. This is especially pronounced in foreign aid, which serves a clear foreign policy purpose but is often mired in bureaucracy. Why is foreign aid often so fragmented? Focusing on the United States, I explain foreign aid fragmentation as a byproduct of domestic politics. When moderate legislators are ideologically diffuse, leadership must persuade them to support a foreign aid agenda by offering pet projects. This increases aid’s fragmentation. In contrast, when moderates are relatively homogeneous, leaders can gather support through more traditional compromise, decreasing the need for fragmented pet projects. I test this theory using a mixed-methods approach, employing a novel agency-level dataset of US foreign aid appropriations and a case study of a 1992 act delivering aid to the former Soviet Union.
Bureaucracy is everywhere. Unelected bureaucrats are a key link between government and citizens, between policy and implementation. Bureaucratic politics constitutes a growing share of research in political science. But the way bureaucracy is studied varies widely, permitting theoretical and empirical blind spots as well as opportunities for innovation. Scholars of American politics tend to focus on bureaucratic policy making at the national level, while comparativists often home in on local implementation by street-level bureaucrats. Data availability and professional incentives have reinforced these subfield-specific blind spots over time. We highlight these divides in three prominent research areas: the selection and retention of bureaucratic personnel, oversight of bureaucratic activities, and opportunities for influence by actors external to the bureaucracy. Our survey reveals how scholars from the American and comparative politics traditions can learn from one another.
Congress has long exercised its power to oversee the executive branch. Important research has examined empirical patterns in congressional investigations, finding institutional, individual, policy, and partisan incentives motivate legislative inquiry. Yet, scholars largely have overlooked one fundamental question: what is oversight? We use new quantitative and qualitative data to highlight the importance of considering oversight as a series of actions designed to serve both as a symbol and signal in the American separation of powers system. Our exploratory analysis suggests that Congress oversees the executive branch much more frequently and in more ways than previously considered by scholars.
How do interest groups decide which member of Congress to target when decisions are made collectively? Do lobbying strategies change as legislation advances? Answering these questions is challenging due to a lack of systematic observations of lobbying contacts. I answer these questions using a novel data set constructed from reports submitted by lobbyists on behalf of South Korea regarding its free trade agreement with the United States for 10 years. I show that a diverse set of politicians are contacted but the timing, intensity, and strategy of lobbying contacts vary by politicians' institutional positions as well as their predisposed preferences for free trade.
Legislative oversight allows Congress to investigate potential wrongdoing by executive branch actors. We present a model in which an incumbent exercises oversight and chooses to take corrective action against the executive before going up for reelection. We show that partisan types who prefer to take corrective action regardless of the probability of wrongdoing will always conduct oversight, but sincere types who only want to correct legitimate wrongdoing will exercise restraint to avoid appearing too partisan and losing reelection. The model also shows that oversight is increasing in the probability that the incumbent is partisan and the probability that the challenger is sincere. Finally, we present two case studies, the Elián González custody case and the attack on the Benghazi embassy, to illustrate our theory.
Increasing ideological polarization and dysfunction in Congress raise questions about whether and how Congress remains capable of constraining the activities of other actors in the separation of powers system. In this article, I argue Congress uses nonstatutory policymaking tools to overcome the burdens of legislative gridlock in an increasingly polarized time to constrain executive branch actors. I leverage a new data set of committee reports issued by the House and Senate appropriations committees from fiscal years 1923 through 2019 to empirically explore these dynamics and evaluate my argument. Traditionally, these reports are a primary vehicle through which Congress directs agency policymaking in the appropriations process. Committees increasingly turn to them when passing legislation is most difficult and interbranch agency problems are most pronounced. In this way, nonstatutory mechanisms may help maintain the balance of power across branches, even when Congress faces gridlock‐induced incapacity.
One of the fundamental principles of American governance is that each branch of government has the necessary constitutional means and motives to resist the encroachment of the other branches. Oversight is an important part of this system. In this article, we identify the legal principles that govern legislative and judicial oversight of the executive branch. These legal parameters of oversight influence informal negotiations between the branches over executive information and have important consequences for the exercise of executive power.
Members of Congress frequently collaborate on policy initiatives, reaching out to colleagues in both parties to find common ground on solutions for the problems faced by their constituents. Using a novel dataset of over 30,000 “Dear Colleague” letters sent by members of the 111th Congress, I use the collaborative relationships that exist in the earliest stages of the policy process to measure the social influence of legislators. I demonstrate that districts represented by members of Congress who are better connected to their colleagues receive a greater share of federal grant money. I argue that this is because collaborative legislators are well‐positioned to be influential allies to strategic bureaucrats who want to maintain a broad base of support for their programs in Congress. Thus, devoting resources to building relationships with their colleagues is one way members of Congress can more effectively support the communities they represent.
Bureaucratic influence in policymaking is often described as occurring subsequent to the legislative process and scholars argue that the legislative branch strategically constrains the bureaucracy via statutory language. A reality which complicates these claims and separation of powers research is that bureaucrats frequently play a role in creating the laws which ultimately govern their behavior. This project examines the extent to which bureaucrats attempt to and succeed in securing their preferred statutory language. I track bills introduced at bureaucrats’ request across 11 state legislatures. Legislatures extensively draw from agencies’ expertise in forming the agenda and crafting session law, with 9% of introduced bills and 21% of law coming from bureaucrats. A difference‐in‐differences analysis shows that committee chairs and legislators in the majority introduce more administration‐initiated bills. Bureaucrats’ extensive involvement in crafting statutory law and increased use in less professional legislatures imply that extant statutory control studies miss an important interaction.
To what extent do legislators respond to the poor? While extensive research demonstrates the poor are largely ignored in legislators’ policy calculations, little research examines the degree to which they discriminate against the poor with respect to providing constituency service. We examine this question using a series of correspondence experiments on both the offices of members of Congress and state legislators on the topic of health care. Consistent with previous studies we find no evidence that members of Congress discriminate by economic class and only mix edevidence that state legislators discriminate along these lines. We also find limited, but potentially important, evidence of partisan bias in service responsiveness for state legislators.
Most scholarship on U.S. distributive politics either focuses on the abilities of individual representatives and senators to bring home the bacon or highlights the role the president plays in influencing funding decisions. Little attention is paid to collective efforts in Congress involved in securing grants-in-aid to states. In this paper, we assess how characteristics of House and Senate state delegations affect the collective efforts of a state’s federal officeholders to secure statewide funds. In both the House and Senate, we find that partisan cohesion in a state delegation predicts more federal funds to states. In particular, states receive more funds when larger shares of their delegations are members of a chamber’s majority party. Moreover, we find that the importance of majority party status is increasing over time. These results have important implications for the U.S. federal system and distributive politics.
The use of deception is common in elite correspondence audit studies. Elite audit studies are a type of field experiment used by researchers to test for discrimination against vulnerable populations seeking to access government resources. These studies have provided invaluable insights, but they have done so at the cost of using deception. They have relied on identity, activity, and motivation deception. In addition, they request unnecessary work. Is there a less deceptive alternative? In this article, I present results from a field experiment with state legislative offices that minimize the use of deception. Consistent with elite correspondence audit studies, I find evidence of discrimination against Hispanics among state legislative offices. In addition, I find that discrimination is mitigated when subjects believe their behavior will be public knowledge. This suggests that discrimination can be mitigated through increased monitoring. This article advances the discussion on how to minimize the use of deception in elite field experimentation and how to mitigate discrimination against vulnerable populations.
A vast literature debates the efficacy of descriptive representation in legislatures. Though studies argue it influences how communities are represented through constituency service, they are limited since legislators' service activities are unobserved. Using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we collected 88,000 records of communication between members of the U.S. Congress and federal agencies during the 108th–113th Congresses. These legislative interventions allow us to examine members' “follow‐through” with policy implementation. We find that women, racial/ethnic minorities, and veterans are more likely to work on behalf of constituents with whom they share identities. Including veterans offers leverage in understanding the role of political cleavages and shared experiences. Our findings suggest that shared experiences operate as a critical mechanism for representation, that a lack of political consensus is not necessary for substantive representation, and that the causal relationships identified by experimental work have observable implications in the daily work of Congress.
Interest groups face many choices when lobbying: when, who, and how to lobby. We study interest group lobbying across two stages of regulatory policymaking: the congressional and agency rulemaking stages. We investigate how the Securities and Exchange Commission responds to interest groups at the end of these stages using a new, comprehensive lobbying dataset on the Dodd-Frank Act. Our approach examines citations in the SEC's final rules which reference and acknowledge the lobbying activities of specific interest groups. We find that more than 2,900 organizations engaged in different types of lobbying activities either during the congressional bill stage, the agency rulemaking stage, or both. Meetings with the SEC and hiring former SEC employees are strongly associated with the citation of an organization in a final rule. Comments submitted by trade associations and members of Congress are cited more in a final rule compared to other organizations. While there is more variety in the types of organizations who lobby the bureaucracy than those who lobby Congress, presence does not necessarily lead to recognition or influence.
Theory suggests that Congress should delegate more policymaking authority to the bureaucracy under unified government, where lawmakers are less worried about the president orchestrating “bureaucratic drift.” Yet, all unified governments come to an end, making broad delegations potentially advantageous to future lawmaking coalitions (“coalitional drift”). We seek to assess how lawmakers simultaneously limit the risk of each of these pitfalls of delegation. Our answer is rooted in Congress's ability to spur agency rulemaking activity under unified government. Specifically, we expect statutes passed under unified government to require agencies to issue regulations quickly and for enacting coalitions to use oversight tools to influence agency policy choices. Such “proximate oversight” allows coalitions to cement policy decisions before a new election changes the configuration of preferences within Congress and the executive branch. We assess our argument using unique data on both congressional rulemaking deadlines (1995–2014) and the speed with which agencies issue regulations (1997–2014).
This note describes the construction and provision of an Internet database providing private and public sector union membership, coverage, and density estimates compiled from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Economy-wide estimates are provided beginning in 1973, estimates by state, detailed industry, and detailed occupation begin in 1983, and estimates by metropolitan area begin in 1986. The database is updated annually and can be accessed at http://www.unionstats.com/. (Author's abstract.)