This document discusses presidential control over the bureaucracy. It begins by introducing principal-agent theory, where Congress and the president are principals that delegate authority to bureaucratic agents. It then examines the tools available to the president to influence agencies, including personnel controls like appointments; reorganization; and centralization through the Office of Management and Budget and executive orders. While presidents have significant formal powers, bureaucratic resistance and congressional oversight also limit executive control of agencies.

1. Presidential Control of the
Bureaucracy
Bureaucratic Politics

2. Introduction
• The battle for control of the bureaucracy:
• Congress delegates its authority and wants to maintain control
(accountability).
• The president seeks to keep the bureaucracy under his direction in
order to fulfill the administration’s platform.
• The agency can use the Congress/President struggle to its advantage
(divided government):
• Sources of power
• Executive support
• Legislative support
• Two main questions we are concerned with in studying control of the
bureaucracy:
• What are the tools by which political actors seek to influence the
bureaucracy in a favorable manner?
• To what extent is political control successful given that agencies
seek autonomy and to extend their power and authority?

3. Principal-Agent Theory
• Delegation:
• In our discussion on administrative law, we mentioned that each branch has
delegated some of its authority to the bureaucracy.
• The Actors:
• The party that delegates the authority is referred to as the principal.
• Principal – an actor who enters a contractual relationship with another actor, an
agent.
• The bureaucracy actually has multiple principles in the president, Congress, and the
courts.
• The party to whom the authority is delegated is referred to as the
agent.
• Agent – the party that is entrusted to take actions that lead to outcomes
specified by the principal.
• Agencies
• Assumptions:
• Principals and agents are both motivated by self-interest.
• Principals and agents do not share the same incentives.
• Outcomes of agents may not satisfy principals.

4. Principal-Agent Theory
• Problems Faced by Principals:
• Adverse selection – the idea that principals cannot directly
observe the characteristics of agents but must rely on rough
indicators as well.
• Potential solution:
• Screening mechanisms – the means for getting agents to reveal their motivations
and skills before hiring them.
• Moral hazard – the idea that it is difficult to monitor and evaluate
agents, once selected, in their work environments.
• This difficulty allows bureaucrats to shirk their duties.
• Potential solutions:
• Institutional design – principals put agents in situations in which they find it in
their self-interest to work toward outcomes favored by principles.
• Oversight – activity where principals monitor the activities of agents in order to
ensure compliance with goals.
• Both of these problems can lead to:
• Agency loss – the behavior of agents leaves principals unable to achieve
their goals in an efficient manner or realize them at all.

5. Executive Control of the
Bureaucracy
• The president is the formal head of the bureaucracy.
• President seeks to influence both policy development and
policy implementation.
• The power or influence of the president varies depending on
the context in which he finds himself.
• Some are powerful (George W. Bush)
• Some are not (Jimmy Carter)
• The president is not an actor in the iron triangle, so president
must find other tools to control the bureaucracy.
• One problem is that the president must still rely on bureaucrats
for expertise, so the relationship of control is shaky.

6. Executive Tools of Control
Over the Bureaucracy
• Success of these tools is affected by:
• Legislative support
• Stage of the president’s term
• Nature of the issue
• Foreign Policy
• Domestic Policy
• Crisis situations
• Public support

7. Executive Tools of Control Over the
Bureaucracy: Personnel Controls
• Personnel controls – overseeing rules organizations, and
activities involved in filling administrative positions
throughout the executive branch.
• Appointment/Removal Power
• President appoints roughly 3,000 bureaucratic officials.
• 80% from the same party
• Cabinet Members
• Presidential influence: high
• Independent Agencies
• Presidential influence: high
• Independent Regulatory Boards and Commissions
• Presidential influence: lower

8. Executive Tools of Control Over the
Bureaucracy: Personnel Controls
• Politicization – systemic pressure on president’s encouraging them to
appoint loyalists and party activists, rather than technical specialists
who are politically neutral.
• Appoint people who will implement the policies in the manner you
want/ remove them if they don’t.
• Durant, Robert F. 1992. The Administrative Presidency Revisited:
Public Lands, the BLM, and the Reagan Revolution. Albany: State
University of New York Press.
• Lower Level Politicization
• Keep in mind that civil servants are not appointed which limits
presidential influence.
• Senior Executive Service (SES pool)
• Civil Service Reform Act of 1978
• President can assign managers to agencies as means for extending “reach”.

9. Executive Tools of Control Over the
Bureaucracy: Personnel Controls
• Limitations to personnel controls:
• Impossible to monitor so many people
• Bureaucratic resistance
• Heclo, Hugh. 1977. A Government of Strangers: Executive Politics in
Washington. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institute Press.
• Bureaucratic resistance – self-serving features of administrative agencies
which emphasizes gradualism, slowness, and political caution when dealing
with newly selected political leadership in the executive branch.
• Agency culture
• Going “native”
• Senate confirmation
• Empirical evidence:
• A great deal of empirical evidence suggests that presidents can have effective
control over the bureaucracy.
• Wood and Waterman 1991.

10. Executive Tools of Control Over the
Bureaucracy: Reorganization
• The power to reorganize the bureaucracy is delegated to the president by Congress.
• President presents reorganization plan to Congress where it is approved or disapproved.
• Example:
• Homeland Security Act of 2002
• Created the Department of Homeland Security
• Gave the president the authority to create a reorganization plan that would be submitted to Congress. (Section 1502)
• Merged 22 agencies and 170,000 employees
• Reorganization includes:
• Addition or subtraction of staff positions (RIF – reductions in force) or agencies.
• Consolidation
• Streamlining
• Restructuring of organizational arrangements
• Purpose:
• Helps achieve policy goals.
• Increased economy, efficiency, and effectiveness
• Control:
• Threat of job loss
• Threat of dissolving the agency
• Reorganization brings agencies in line w/president’s goals.
• Limitations:
• Not a tool that can be used over and over or it will seem illegitimate.

11. Executive Tools of Control Over
the Bureaucracy: Centralization
• Centralization – historical trend of presidents to try to strengthen direct control of
agencies, usually at the expense of independent agencies.
• Coordinated control
• Means the president wants to centralize authority over the bureaucracy.
• The Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
• Agencies must submit proposed rules to the OMB for approval before they can seek to
implement those rules.
• Executive orders – formal statements by the president with which executive agencies are
required to comply.
• Numbering scheme
• Executive order 12291 (2/17/81)
• All agencies are required to conduct cost-benefit analyses of any new rules.
• No rule may be promulgated if the total costs outweigh the total benefits.
• Executive order 12498 (1/4/1985)
• All agencies must submit their cost-benefit analyses to the OMB for review.
• OMB must examine agency analysis and provide a report to the agency and the president, noting objections
• All agencies must respond to OMB objections either by withdrawing or amending the proposed rule, or by
formally contesting the OMB.
• OMB can then bring all rules into line with presidential goals and agenda.
• Limits:
• Congress may provide exceptions to these executive orders in the agency’s guiding statute or
under limited exceptions.

12. Executive Tools of Control Over the
Bureaucracy: Other Controls
• Information resources
• The presidential bureaucracy, which we discussed at
the beginning of class, helps the president to close the
knowledge gap.
• Executive Office of the President (EOP)
• Budget Controls
• Next time!