Presidential Sovereignty
Congressional primacy, however, is contested by scholars who assert that the president is better able to manifest his preferences on the bureaucracy. The presidential sovereignty thesis also resides in three mechanisms: appointment power (Moe 1994; Wood and Waterman 1991), (re)organization (Meier 1980), and budgeting (Wood 1988). The president, as the chief executive, has the ability to shape the bureaucratic leadership, through patronage appointments, most of whom the Congress does not approve. Political appointees ensure that presidential priorities are implemented and that department policy is congruent with his ideology. Every single cabinet secretary is a political appointee along with the top leadership at almost every agency. Political appointees are a powerful tool in the presidential arsenal to shape the agenda of agencies, determine their policy priorities (Lewis 2008; Wood 1988; Wood 1991), and interpret ambiguous congressional language in statute so as to ensure that it conforms to the president’s philosophy (Lewis 2009). The spoils system has not been completely vanquished from the modern bureaucracy.
Further, the president has the ability to reorganize the bureaucracy to streamline the reporting structure, shape how agencies are run, and implement pet programs. For instance, President Kennedy’s creation of the Peace Corps program initially without congressional consent exemplifies the institutional power the president has to shape policy direction. President Kennedy created the Peace Corps via Executive Order 10924 in 1961. In it he established an agency of the Peace Corps within the Department of State, to be funded by the Department of State. The purpose of the Peace Corps was “training and service abroad of men and women of the United States in a new program of assistance to nations and areas of the world.” (Executive Order 10924, 1961). Though programs such as the Marshall Plan and other national assistance programs had been established at the end of World War II, Kennedy looked to establish a volunteer organization to help economically disadvantaged countries and bypassed Congress with its creation. As William Howell details: “For several years prior, Congress had considered, and rejected, the idea of creating an agency that would send volunteers abroad to perform public works. . . . Democrats refused to put the weight of their party behind the proposal to ensure its passage” (Howell 2005). With Kennedy unilaterally creating the Peace Corps in 1961 and then redeploying contingency accounts within the Department of State to fund it during its first year, he effectively reorganized part of the State Department to fund a program important to him. Basically, Kennedy grew tired of waiting for Congress to authorize and appropriate funds for a new program he wanted to create. By issuing an executive order and establishing it outright, he created a new agency and then, strategically, placed Congress in a very uncomfortable position of cutting hundreds of jobs and halting the spread of good-will from volunteer Americans across the developing world. Even though many members of Congress were generally opposed to its creation since it served as a vehicle to dodge the draft, with the program effectively running, through Kennedy’s unilateral action it was a fait accompli and Congress formally approved the program in 1962.
Along with appointment power and reorganization, budgeting is a shared tool between the president and Congress. They jointly must agree on funding levels for agencies annually, and budgeting is “the battleground upon which many of the most significant policy debates [between Congress and the president] are fought” (Canes-Wrote, Howell, and Lewis 2008, pg. 8). Congress effectively delegated budgeting power to the presidency in the Budget Reorganization Act of 1921. Due to the collective action issues facing Congress, it was easier for one person, the executive, to propose a blueprint budget for agencies for the Congress then to consider. The delegation, therefore, gives the president first-mover advantage with regards to agency budgeting (Ragsdale and Theis 1997), thus imprinting his preferences prior to congressional action. Even though Congress is the final decision-maker in budgeting, they are largely operating in an informational disadvantage and are reacting to what the president has proposed (Moe 1987).
External Actors
While the president and the Congress are the only two principals that have specific constitutionally enshrined oversight of the bureaucracy, there are other actors in the network that influence bureaucratic decision-making (Hill 1991). The courts have less direct control on bureaucratic daily business since they only have veto power and not agenda-setting power (Spriggs 1996; Canon and Giles 1972). Further, in a departure from a direct principal-agent framework, extra-governmental organizations’ influence, such as interest groups, are relationship based and can form an interdependent information exchange between the regulated and the regulators (Yackee and Yackee 2006; Lowery and Brasher 2004). The public, in the form of public opinion, also influences policy change across government and have an interest in having their preferences reflected in the bureaucracy (Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson 1995, 2002). While the literature has progressed in recognizing that hierarchical control models must account for multiple principals (Moe 1984), there is no integrated theory predicting when each principal is important and under what conditions which particular principals can exert more or less control to have their preferences reflected in bureaucratic policy.
Bureaucratic Autonomy
At its core, principal-agent theory is primarily concerned with studying the ubiquitous problem of delegation: How much discretion does a principal delegate to an agent and what are the consequences of the delegation for getting work accomplished, or policy implemented in a manner that is congruent with the principal’s wishes (Kiewiet and McCubbins 1988). In disentangling whether the Congress or the president has more influence over bureaucratic activity, some agencies are created to have more independent policy-making authority outside of the Cabinet (Kollman 2017). Typically, they are governed by a board that serves staggered terms so that different presidents, often of different parties, can make appointments. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an example of an independent agency. It has six commissioners some of whom were appointed by President Obama, some nominated by President Trump, and some are Obama’s appointments renominated by Trump once their term expired. The FCC’s mission is to regulate “interstate and international communications” (“The FCC’s Mission,” 2019). It grants licenses and promulgates regulations largely independent from direct Congressional or presidential influence and neither principal can remove the FCC’s leadership without cause. Unlike other political appointments, commissioners serve not at the pleasure of the current president, but until their term has ended.
Independent agencies exercise more autonomy from their political principals, and there are conditions that engender some agencies from operating more independently from their political masters. Daniel Carpenter defines bureaucratic autonomy as “occur[ing] when bureaucrats take actions consistent with their own wishes, actions to which politicians and organized interests defer even though they would prefer that other actions (or no action at all) be taken” (Carpenter 2001, 4), and this gives rise to independent policy-making power. It occurs when an agency: is an active participant in writing laws that govern them (MacDonald 2015), has the staff capacity and policy expertise to resolve problems that occur, and responds to interest groups but is not captured by them (Fukuyama 2014). Further, the bureaucracy has an informational advantage over Congress and the president since they are not only repositories of expertise but they are also suppliers of vital information upon which many important policy decisions are made (Workman 2015). Moreover, often the farther an agency is from its political masters, the more that political influence it can wield (Selin 2015; Kennedy 2014). Agencies can, at times, largely operate outside of traditional principal–agent relationships with Congress and the president and can exercise more policy-making authority over their sphere of influence.
Peeking under the “black box”: An Agent-Centric View of Political Control
Understanding delegation from Congress and the president, however, is the core of the principal–agent problem. Utilizing the principal–agent