Executive policymaking influence via the administrative apparatus

Abstract

Elected chief executives in the United States—that is, governors and presidents—routinely attempt to achieve their domestic policy goals by influencing the decision-making of public agencies. I provide empirical assessments of the two most frequently theorized elected executive influence tactics: political appointments and the centralization of agency decision-making. Using an expansive survey of the leaders in over 1800 state agencies, observational and experimental evidence are used to evaluate the effectiveness of these tactics. I find that state agency leaders believe that the appointment of officials to key agency posts allows the governor to better achieve his or her policy objectives than centralizing decision-making, and Republican governors are seen as more successful in using these tactics than Democratic ones. Overall, the results provide a real-world sense of how one government institution—the elected chief executive—tries to steer the policymaking of public managers and the government agencies that they lead.