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AbstractDoes ideological extremism curb a public agency's desire to grow? This article theorizes that changes in the political environment affect a public agency leader's growth aspirations. Specifically, increased ideological extremism across an agency's elected principals leads an agency leader to be more cautious and less growth‐minded. The assessments of over 10,000 American state agency leaders are studied across 11 points in time from 1964 to 2018 and matched to data capturing the leader's ideological environment. Agency leaders, who face heightened extremism from elected state officials, are found to report a reduced interest in future growth. The results are strongest during periods of divided government, which may occur because the signal sent from greater extremism is more useful to agency leaders during these periods. When aggregated across thousands of agencies, the article's findings imply a driver of slower growth in the future size and scope of government.

Abstract
Observers regularly assert that government regulations are captured—meaning the content of the regulation is diverted away from the public interest and toward the interests of regulated industry. I argue that the label of regulatory capture is often applied differently by policy losers than by policy winners. I hypothesize that when an entity is unsuccessful in achieving its goals during regulatory policy making, that entity is more likely to deem the process captured. With data from 41 FDA regulations and guidance documents, I find that—even when provided a common definition—those interest groups engaged in the same rulemaking vary as to whether or not they would categorize the process as captured. Moreover, this variation is negatively associated with whether the entity achieved its policy goals during the rulemaking. These findings imply that scholars ought to reassess capture's occurrence, as well as the political and policy implications attached to its invocation.
Evidence for Practice

The study provides evidence drawn from policy making at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that the label of regulatory capture is applied inconsistently by interest group participants in the agency rulemaking process.
The research demonstrates a partiality toward categorizing a rulemaking as captured when an interest group participant does not get its way. This finding implies that public agency officials—when they do not heed the advice of public commenters—may need to worry about capture accusations.
The study's results raise the provocative possibility that capture's designation may be employed strategically—or even opportunistically—by an interest group to delegitimize an agency regulation when the group does not agree with it.
Given that policy makers and practitioners from both sides of the political aisle routinely highlight the need to address regulatory capture, the evidence uncovered in this article strongly suggests that more attention from the field of public administration is needed to better understand how regulatory capture is actually used in practice.

Abstract
I test the proposition that interest groups achieve greater policy success when they lobby during the agency guidance document development process as opposed to the notice and comment process. Policymaking via guidance documents often receives lower levels of public attention, which provides greater flexibility to accommodate lobbying requests. I analyze the hypothesis during the creation of 41 rules by one US government agency—20 of which were promulgated using the notice and comment process and 21 via the guidance document process. I measure regulatory policy change using a content analysis of government documents and lobbying texts, and I also incorporate a telephone survey of interest groups who lobbied on these same rules. I find that interest groups perceive—and achieve—greater policy success when lobbying during the agency guidance process. The results yield new insights into the relationship between lobbying and regulatory policymaking.

The legitimacy of government agencies rests in part on the premise that public administrators use scientific evidence to make policy decisions. Yet, what happens when there is no consensus in the scientific evidence—i.e., when the science is in conflict? I theorize that scientific conflict yields greater policy change during administrative policymaking. I assess this claim using data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I identify policy change—what I refer to as "policy development" in this article—between the FDA's draft and final rules with a novel text analysis measure of shifts in regulatory restrictions. I then go on to find that more policy development does occur with scientific conflict. Moreover, using corresponding survey data, I uncover suggestive evidence that one beneficiary of such conflict may be participating interest groups. Groups lobby harder—and attempt to change more of the rule—during conflict, while an in‐survey experiment provides evidence of increased interest group influence on rule content when scientific conflict is high.

Rulemaking is a critical part of American government and governance. This article reviews the political underpinnings of modern rulemaking. Specifically, it highlights the process and impact of agency regulations, as well as the key tools used by the legislature, elected executive, and courts to oversee the rulemaking process. The article also reviews who participates in the rulemaking process, as well as who influences regulatory content. Finally, new directions in regulatory policymaking are explored, including data collection advancements, as well as the potential role for guidance documents as replacements for more traditionally issued notice and comment regulations.

Do health and health policy professionals (HHPPs) participate in the formation of agency health regulations? Passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 has necessitated the writing of many health‐related national and state regulations. This article examines the participation patterns of HHPPs during rulemaking to gain insights that may be transferable to future health‐related administrative decision making. The author suggests that the mix of public participants active during rulemaking has implications for health policy outputs. This proposition is tested using data drawn from 39 state health regulations and survey data from more than 380 participants and 23 interviews with agency officials. The author finds that HHPPs participate across the majority of the sample regulations, and when their activity across a rule increases, so does participant satisfaction with regulatory outcomes. More broadly, the results suggest a desire for even greater participation by HHPPs in future health‐related rulemaking.