Predicting Bureaucratic Control: Evidence from the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments

The extent to which politicians control bureaucracies that are delegated authority over public policy involves fundamental positive and normative issues for the study of politics. Considerations related to such issues have stimulated a great deal of debate about whether the legislature exercises control over bureaucratic performance. However, establishing the measurable empirical conditions under which elected officials do and do not assure agency responsiveness remains unsettled.
In light of this state of affairs, we try to determine whether it is possible to develop a general means of predicting control, or at least of predicting what we term "intent to control," based on the assumption that legislators' preferences toward agency responsiveness reflect the nature of the policy environment. Our application to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 finds strong empirical evidence that statutory provisions vary predictably, depending upon whether legislators possess the requisite technical ability and are likely, or wish, to be held politically accountable. Our results indicate that control varies for reasons that fit well with our understanding of how elected officials deal with complexity and their own political situations. Our findings also imply that subtle, but measurable, differences in the specific policy environment are crucial for understanding control.