Suchergebnisse

Based on a chapter of his forthcoming book entitled, "Risk by choice: regulating health and safety in the workplace."

Presidential oversight is a core citizen duty, yet competence is rarely assessed. I use 855 interviews conducted during the final Bush and initial Obama terms to test a novel citizen oversight assessment tool: a classification matrix created by juxtaposing historically important presidential assessment values (effectiveness, morality, and prudence) against equally familiar evaluative "targets" (presidential traits, actions, and results). Eighty‐one percent of mentioned evaluative criteria fit the matrix, establishing its construct validity and enabling meaningful assessment of citizen competence. The yield is (1) a cross‐time record of how Americans judge presidents and (2) new findings concerning the comparative importance of presidential results and actions, citizen sensitivity to presidential differences, and the worrisome rise of partisanship.

Oversight function is a major component of the activities of modern legislatures irrespective of the form of government in practice. This study examines the extent to which the Nigerian legislature, characterised by infrequent appearances on the political scene and operating in an environment largely dominated by the executive arm, has performed its oversight role. The study, which is basically empirical, argues that the Nigerian legislature has been incapable of effectively performing its oversight role because, in addition to constraints like executive interference, crippling internal conflict, inexperience and high rate of members turnover hampering legislative efficiency, the legislature has compromised its role. However, occasional flashes of a measure of assertiveness by the legislature suggest that with effective mitigation of its internal problems its performance will improve as legislative culture deepens. Adapted from the source document.

Given gridlock in Congress, presidents and subunits of Congress are increasingly pursuing their policy goals in the executive branch. Yet we know little about how they go about doing so. In Chapter 1, I introduce the broad notion of positive agenda control by the president. Up until this point, the existing literature has been narrowly focused on presidents' negative agenda control over agencies (Moe 1985; Nathan 1983) and has only recognized positive agenda control in terms of executive orders (Moe and Howell 1999; Howell 2003). I argue that presidents direct their resources toward allied agencies to strengthen, pass, and implement policies the president supports. Using a newly collected dataset, I look at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the most important innovation in presidential power in 35 years, and I show that Presidents Clinton and Obama were disproportionately likely to use OIRA to review the policies of relatively more liberal agencies and President George W. Bush was disproportionately likely to use OIRA to review the policies of relatively more conservative agencies. This finding differs from the conventional wisdom that OIRA is a presidential watchdog and it changes how we think about presidential power in administrative oversight.In Chapter 2, together with Abby Wood and Sean Gailmard, I turn to congressional committees and their pursuit of policy goals in the executive branch. We introduce the theory that congressional committees use oversight of bureaucracy as a means to mitigate agency problems they face with the bureaucracy. Up until this point, scholars have not systematically connected the oversight activity of Congress to the democratic problems created by delegation. The landmark analysis of Aberbach 1990 placed oversight in a framework centered on Congress and the broad contours of the national policymaking environment, without taking into account agency policymaking activity. In contrast, we present a principal-agent model of oversight and find support in a newly-collected dataset of on-the-record legislative hearings for the model's three observable implications: legislative oversight is increasing in agency policymaking activity, increasing in the amount of ideological conflict between committees and agencies, and increasing in the amount of ideological conflict between House and Senate committees during divided Congresses. Our results provide evidence that committees oversee agencies not merely to position-take for the next campaign cycle, but to influence actual policy outcomes. In Chapter 3, I return to a focus on the president and I treat limiting lobbyist influence as a policy goal in its own right. I argue that lobbyists going "offensive" in their lobbying strategies combined with underwriting some of the work of under-resourced agencies puts lobbyists in a position to set the agenda in the executive branch. I contribute a bargaining model in which an agency, the president, and a lobbyist each have agenda-setting power some of the time. I derive the conditions under which the president, so long as he or she is not perfectly ideologically aligned with the agency, can limit the influence of the lobbyist on the agency's policies by acting as a "tough" bargaining agent. This model reveals a tradeoff from the standpoint of the agency between working with an ideologically aligned president (an ally on policymaking goals) and working with an ideologically unaligned president who can help limit lobbyist influence.

Intro -- PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENTS: OVERVIEW AND THE 110TH CONGRESS -- PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENTS: OVERVIEW AND THE 110TH CONGRESS -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- Chapter 1 PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENTS TO FULL-TIME POSITIONS IN EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS DURING THE 110TH CONGRESS, 2007-2008* -- Summary -- Introduction -- The Appointment Process for Advice and Consent Positions -- Selection, Clearance, and Nomination -- Senate Consideration -- Appointment -- Recess Appointments -- Temporary Appointments -- Appointments During the 110th Congress -- Length of Time to Confirm a Nomination -- Organization of This Chapter -- Executive Department Profiles -- Additional Appointment Information -- Department of Agriculture (USDA) -- Department of Commerce (DOC) -- Department of Defense (DOD) -- Department of Education (ED) -- Department of Energy (DOE) -- Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) -- Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) -- Department of the Interior (DOI) -- Department of Justice (DOJ) -- Department of Labor (DOL) -- Department of State (DOS) -- Department of Transportation (DOT) -- Department of the Treasury (TREAS) -- Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) -- Appendix A. Presidential Nominations, 110th Congress. -- Appendix B. Nomination Action, 110th Congress. -- Appendix C. Senate Intersession Recesses and Intrasession Recesses of Four or More Days, 110th Congress. -- Appendix D. Abbreviations of Departments -- Appendix E. Change in Methodology from Previous Tracking Reports -- Acknowledgments -- End Notes -- Chapter 2 PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENTS TO FULL-TIME POSITIONS ON REGULATORY AND OTHER COLLEGIAL BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS, 110TH CONGRESS* -- Summary -- Introduction -- The Appointment Process for PAS Positions -- Selection, Clearance, and Nomination -- Senate Consideration -- Appointment