A Strategic Theory of Bureaucratic Redundancy

Do redundant bureaucratic arrangements represent wasteful duplication or a hedge against political uncertainty? Previous attempts at addressing this question have treated agency actions as exogenous, thus avoiding strategic issues such as collective action problems or competition. I develop a game‐theoretic model of bureaucratic policy making in which a political principal chooses the number of agents to handle a given task. Importantly, agents have policy preferences that may be opposed to the principal's, and furthermore may choose their policy or effort levels. Among the results are that redundancy can help a principal achieve her policy goals when her preferences are not aligned with the agents'. But redundancy is less helpful if even a single agent has preferences relatively close to the principal's. In this environment collective action problems may cause multiple agents to be less effective than a single agent. Redundancy can also be unnecessary to the principal if the agent's jurisdiction can be terminated.     

The possibility of cooperation in an n-person prisoners' dilemma with institutional arrangements

We investigate how cooperation is possible among self-interested individuals in an n-person prisoners' dilemma from the viewpoint of institutional arrangements. Assuming that individuals create by their free consent an institutional order to enforce an agreement of cooperation, we present a noncooperative game model in which individuals have negotiations for creating an enforcement agency and also for cooperation in advance of taking actual actions. The noncooperative solution of our institutional arrangement game shows that the probability of each individual participating in negotiations monotonically decreases and converges to zero as the number of individuals becomes larger and larger. Our noncooperative game model for institutional arrangements is applied to an environmental pollution problem and some numerical results are given.The research for this paper was started when I stayed at ZiF, University of Bielefeld, in 1987–88 to participate in the Research Project Game Theory in the Behavioral Sciences. Financial support and warm hospitality from ZiF is gratefully acknowledged. I am grateful to Hartmut Kliemt, Elinor Ostrom, James Rhodes and Koichi Suga for their very helpful suggestions and discussions. Of course, any remaining errors are of mine. Financial support by the Murata Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.     

The private provision of public goods via dominant assurance contracts

Many types of public goods can be produced privately by profit seeking entrepreneurs using a modified form of assurance contract, called a dominant assurance contract. I model the dominant assurance contract as a game and show that the pure strategy equilibrium has agents contributing to the public good as a dominant strategy. The game is also modelled under incomplete information as a Bayesian-Nash game.     

我国农地管理的主体行为与博弈分析

我国现行的农地管理未能达到预期的效果,其核心原因在于宏观政策缺乏微观执行基础.基于此,分析了农地管理主体(包括中央政府、地方政府和村集体)的行为,并探讨了农地管理中不同主体之间的利益博弈、不同管理主体的行为变化对各主体利益的影响以及由此引发的农民的利益变化.利用博弈论分析方法建立了三个主体的博弈分析模型.首先从子博弈分析出发,分析中央政府与地方政府在农地管理中的博弈过程,其次分析地方政府与农民集体利益的代表——村集体的博弈分析,最后建立三个主体的主博弈模型.研究发现:在农地管理过程中,地方政府间联合与中央政府博弈的可能性不大,因而通过自上而下的政府规制,白下而上做实农地管理的微观主体——包括明确农民的使用权益、提高农民的市场地位,有利于消除农地管理中的寻租行为,提高农地管理的效率.     

The Rule of Law in the Fight against Terrorism

What is the role of legal limits on executive power, if any, when citizens demand more security from terrorism, and allowing executive officials legal flexibility of action appears necessary to achieve it? We develop a game‐theoretic model to show that when the executive faces increased electoral incentives to provide security and has legal flexibility to choose any policy it finds optimal, security from terrorism can actually decrease. In contrast, when the executive faces increased electoral incentives to provide security and there is an explicit legal limit on executive counterterrorism activities, security from terrorism increases. We also show that the executive achieves the objective of terrorism prevention more effectively when there are some limitations on its counterterrorism powers. The article provides a security rationale for legal limits on executive power and has implications for understanding how to design the institutional structure of liberal governments when the social objective is terrorism prevention.     

The gender politics of executive candidate selection and reselection

This research provides new theoretical and empirical insights into the gender politics of the springboards to chief executive office. The extremely masculinised composition of the relatively few top national executive positions has posed a serious impediment to empirically assessing the conditions that may facilitate women's under-representation and men's over-representation. To overcome this constraint, this study looks at the top regional executive office across four West European countries that present a multilevel state structure – namely Austria, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. Using two original datasets, the article examines the ways in which the selection and reselection of regional prime ministerial candidates is shaped by individual, organisational and institutional factors that produce heterogeneous experiences and career opportunities across sex. The results show that women have not shattered the glass ceiling at the regional level and pinpoint the fact that they are held to higher standards, benefit less from the political resources they possess and are more dependent on the decision environment in which parties select executive candidates. The conclusion is that the rules of the game guiding selection and reselection processes are strongly biased towards men.     

Learning from the Americanists (Again): Theory and Method in the Study of Delegation

European(ist) scholars have largely followed their American(ist) colleagues in the formulation of theories about delegation of powers to non-majoritarian institutions, most notably through the application of principal-agent models of relations between legislative principals and their executive and judicial agents. This article suggests that Europeanists can once again learn from recent developments in both theory and method in the study of delegation in American politics. The first section discusses the methodological challenges of testing hypotheses about the conditions under which agents might enjoy some degree of autonomy from their legislative principals, and draws lessons from the recent Americanist literature. The section examines the development in American politics of a second wave of principal-agent analysis which aims to formulate and test hypotheses about the conditions under which legislative principals might delegate authority and discretion to bureaucratic agents. The third and final section of the article examines some preliminary applications of the principal-agent approach to the European Union and to the comparative study of European parliamentary democracies, and proposes a research agenda for the comparative study of national-level delegation in the parliamentary systems of Western Europe.     

To Revoke or Not Revoke? The Political Determinants of Executive Order Longevity

Though many scholars study the formation of policy, less attention is given to its endurance. In this article, I seek to determine what contributes to the longevity of policy by examining the case of presidential unilateralism. While scholars widely recognize presidents’ ability to unilaterally make policy with executive orders, they largely do not account for how these same orders can be easily changed by subsequent administrations. To address this deficiency, I develop a theory of executive order duration based on both time‐invariant characteristics of the order and time‐variant changes in the political climate it faces. Using survival analysis to examine all orders revoked between 1937 and 2013, I find support for the theory. This study has implications for understanding the endurance of executive orders and other policy instruments as part of the law as well as understanding the strategic actions of policy makers given the transient nature of these tools.     

The impact of real estate agents on house prices near environmental disamenities

The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of real estate agents on the price of houses that are located close to an environmental disamenity. Our main hypothesis is that real estate agents obtain higher prices than those theoretically expected when the houses are located closer to an environmental disamenity. We attribute this result to agents' ability to effectively match potential buyers to house sellers as well as their influence on bargaining power. Estimates from a sample selection corrected hedonic model suggest that the percentage increase in the house price obtained by a real estate agent is greater than the commission rate.     

Government executives as Gamesmen: A metaphor for analyzing managerial behavior

Public management requires a diffuse set of activities that extend far beyond the simple activities once encompassed in the study of public administration. The study of public management is hampered by the lack of theory to guide research on the roles and contributions of public managers. By viewing the government executive as a player in a game—more accurately, as a player in many games occurring simultaneously and at different levels, each with its own rules of play—we can begin to gain an integral view of the reality in which they operate.     

Vote-seeking incentives and investment environments: The need for credit claiming and the provision of protectionism

Incentives to cultivate a personal reputation encourage legislators to generate policy outcomes for which they can claim credit. We show that these incentives make themselves felt in international agreements – a domain that might typically be considered within the purview of the executive branch. Through a cross-national analysis and brief case studies, we show that countries with electoral systems that encourage personal vote seeking are more likely to negotiate exceptions to treaties meant to liberalize their investment environments. Legislators benefit by being able to claim credit for having protected their constituents from the competition an unrestricted agreement would entail.     

转型社会的政治决策：期权博弈与公平均衡解释

在转型社会中，政治决策是拥有主要政治权力的行政主体，与反映主要群体利益的社会主体之间的博弈均衡。现实的各种政治后果可以从考虑期权价值的延迟均衡和抢先均衡来说明，也可以表现为考虑心理动机的“公平均衡”。在如同海峡两岸博弈这样复杂的均衡组合中，作者推论存在可以称为“虚妄公平”的均衡概念。转型社会的各个主体因此必须寻求“真实公平”策略选择，才能实现真正公平的政治决策目标。     

Why is there a seniority system? To solve an agency problem

It is generally recognized that principals and agents both have an incentive to minimize shirking, and that this is often accomplished by entering into long term relationships in which the agent is offered rewards that increase with seniority. This paper considers that the congressional seniority system may exist as a means of insuring that representatives (agents) are faithful to the demands of constituents (principals). The unique feature of the seniority system, that tenure is rewarded with increasing power rather than increasing pay, is explained as a consequence of the need for each group to make credible commitments to the other. Rules changes adopted by the House of Representatives in the mid 1970s are used to test the impact of alternative rules on election outcomes.I wish to thank Mark Crain, Thomas Fomby, John Lott and Philip Porter for their comments.     

Towards parliamentarisation of foreign and security policy?

Abstract

It is customary to argue that foreign policy is very much dominated by the executive, with parliaments wielding limited influence. However, with the exception of the US Congress, legislative?executive relations in the realm of foreign and security policy have attracted remarkably little scholarly attention. Drawing on a principal?agent framework, this collection scrutinises the conventional wisdom of ‘executive autonomy’ in foreign affairs, indicating that even though parliaments have arguably become more involved in foreign and security policy over time, any notions of parliamentarisation need to be treated with caution. While expectations of consensus in the name of the national interest continue to play an important role in foreign policy decision-making, the papers highlight the role of party-political contestation structuring parliamentary debates and votes in this increasingly politicised issue area. This introductory paper introduces the analytical framework and hypotheses guiding the contributions in this collection, summarises their main findings and suggests avenues for future research.     

The electoral consequences of racial fluidity

Brazilian politicians have seemingly adopted new racial identities en masse in recent years. What are the electoral consequences of asserting membership in a new racial group? In the Brazilian case, politicians who change how they racially identify themselves and secure greater access to campaign resources may become more electorally competitive. If voters learn a politician has changed their self-declared race, however, the politician’s reputation is likely to be tarnished and their chances of victory are likely to decline. Building on evidence that voters acquire greater information about election front-runners in high-profile contests than other types of politicians, I expect incumbents running for executive offices who change how they publicly identify themselves to suffer an electoral penalty. Drawing on data from local elections in Brazil, I find limited evidence that voters penalize city council candidates who adopt new racial identities. I show that incumbent mayors seeking reelection, however, receive significantly fewer votes after they assert membership in new racial groups.     

The Odyssey of Senior Public Service: What Memoirs Can Teach Us

This article examines the political, psychological, and moral challenges of senior public service in the executive office. The study uses memoirs published by members of the Clinton administration. The memoirs discuss the consistent background conditions of senior public service as the personality of the chief executive, the vagaries of election cycles, the tension between staff and agency executives, and the role of the media. Senior executives adopt a number of stances to address the tension between the realities of public service and the ideals they bring. The memoirs suggest several stances, such as politics as original sin, seduction, hard work and compromise, and game. The memoirs demonstrate the high cumulative cost that public service exacts on the health and personal lives of senior officials. Finally, the study reveals a number of consistent themes about how senior appointed public officials can navigate the dilemmas and challenges of senior public service at all levels of government.     

Supreme Court Appointments as a Move-the-Median Game

A three-stage model isolates conditions under which an executive appointment to a collective choice body, such as a court or a regulatory agency, has an immediate bearing on policy. The model strikes a balance between previous formal models that predict either excessive gridlock or excessive policy responsiveness as a consequence of the politics of appointments. I test the model using approximately four decades of data on U.S. Supreme Court appointments. Two hypotheses summarize the unique predictions of the model and are strongly corroborated. A third, less distinctive hypothesis about strategic judicial retirements is weakly supported .     

The Impact of Divided Government on Legislative Production

It seems obvious that divided governments should produce less legislation than unified governments. Yet studies have consistently failed to find such an effect. Because almost all existing studies focus on the experience of the U.S. national government, the data have limited analysis to a consideration of executive–legislative division and ignore the impact of division between bicameral chambers. The state-level data set employed in this study is not so limited. The results show that divided legislatures decrease the production of laws by almost 30%. Nonetheless, consistent with previous studies using national-level data, executive–legislative divisions have no impact of legislative production. The reason for this asymmetry is theoretically motivated. Additional hypotheses of interest are also tested, including whether Republican-controlled legislative chambers are more “conservative” than Democratic chambers in the sense of producing fewer laws than their Democratic counterparts.     

Executive budget proposal,executive veto,legislative override,and uncertainty: A comparative analysis of the budgetary process

This study examines the roles of the executive budgetary proposal, the executive veto, the legislative override, and legislative uncertainty about the executive's preferences in determining the outcome of a budgetary process. A sequential model of the budgetary process with three institutional agents — a legislature, an appropriations committee, and an executive — is presented. To focus attention on the executive proposal, the veto, the override provision, and uncertainty, simplifying assumptions are made: (1) the appropriations committee has monopoly agenda power, and (2) there is a closed amendment control rule. In order to characterize sequential equilibria of various combinations of veto rules and override provisions, we examine a particular arrangement of agents' preferences and a two item budget. The results demonstrate that the final budget depends critically on the executive proposal, the executive veto rule, the override provision, and the uncertainty. We achieve three striking results. First, the executive proposal may be effective in reducing the frequency of the exercised veto. Second, for a given override provision, a movement from the item veto to the item reduction veto leaves the executive worse off in some cases. Third, with the same change in institutions, the government budget may increase.     

Accountability in Accounting? The Politics of Private Rule‐Making in the Public Interest

Over recent decades governments have increasingly delegated domestic and international regulatory functions to private-sector agents. This article examines the reasons for such delegation and how private agents differ from public ones, and then analyzes the politics of regulation post delegation. It argues that the key difference between delegation to a public agent and delegation to a private one is that in the latter case a multiple-principals problem emerges that is qualitatively different from the one usually considered in the literature. An agent's action will be determined by the relative tightness of competing principal–agent relationships. This tightness is a function of the relative importance of each principal for the agent's financial and operational viability as well as its effectiveness in rule making. Further, the article posits that exogenous changes in the macro-political climate can deeply affect the nature of principal–agent relationships. The authors test their hypotheses about the politics of regulation in the postdelegation period through the study of accounting standards setting in the United States, a case of delegation of regulatory authority to a private agent that goes back to the New Deal era and has received renewed public attention in the wake of recent corporate financial scandals.