Legislative capacity, bureaucratic reputation, and delegation from a trust perspective: A survey experiment

Abstract

Challenging the assumptions of the principal-agent theory, the recent bureaucratic politics literature contends that politicians do not necessarily have weaker capacities and bureaucrats are not necessarily bad apples. What this means for the delegation decision remains underexplored, particularly regarding how legislative capacity and bureaucratic reputation jointly affect delegation. We examine this issue with a trust perspective and a survey experiment of city mayors. Treating bureaucratic reputation as individual trustworthiness and perceived legislative capacity as institutional trustworthiness, we find they interact in complex ways in influencing delegation. When bureaucratic reputation is high, perceived legislative capacity is not associated with delegation. Perceived legislative capacity matters only when bureaucratic reputation is low, and high capacity relates to greater delegation willingness than when capacity is not considered. The findings have implications for studies on delegation, discretion, and bureaucratic reputation.