Control pliers in principal-agent relations: An investigation of hardship commissions in the German asylum administration

There is a remarkable gap in research regarding principal-centred analyses of control means towards—in a formal sense—rather weak independent administrative actors as agents. Therefore, the paper develops a theoretical notion to link means of ex ante and ex post control and applies it to the (re-)actions of ministries vis à vis hardship commissions in the German Länder by asking: How does the super-ordinated ministry (principal) try to control the hardship commission (agent) and with what effect? The theoretical framework is based on principal-agent theory and argues that the respective relationship is best understood by a notion of control pliers which interlinks the principal's preferences, its means of ex ante and ex post control and the agent's output. We hereby draw on partisan and organization theory. The overall research design of the paper is confirmatory and the focus on the federal states allows to control most of the external variance. We use descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling for path analysis to investigate the ex ante and ex post elements of the control pliers. Our empirical analysis is based on the output of 12 hardship commissions for the period of 2005–2017. Our results show that ex post control seems to matter more than ex ante control, but also that the effects of both may be characterized as interdependent. Furthermore, we show that partisan influence seems to matter more than organizational factors considering the output of the agent but that most can be won by combining the two approaches.