How Do Bureaucrats Learn in the Absence of Autonomous Sources of Expertise?

• In Event: Poster Session: Legislative Studies & American Political Economy
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: American Political Economy

Abstract

A large body of literature points to bureaucratic expertise as an important factor in policy outcomes, yet the question of how bureaucrats obtain policy-relevant information remains relatively understudied. I demonstrate that in a policy environment where policy-specific expertise is concentrated in firms, the acquisition of bureaucratic expertise is contingent upon the political influence of private interests. Bureaucrats tend to give more credibility to information from politically aligned firms while also being aware of the information advantage held by these firms. By combining a novel dataset revealing the bureaucratic monitoring behavior of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program with a measure of political alignment between firms and bureaucracy, constructed from voter registration data, I test the impact of firms' partisan alignment on bureaucrats' learning. These findings highlight the underlying, yet underappreciated, sources of bureaucratic expertise when establishing an autonomous source of information is impossible.

Author

• Dahyun Choi, Princeton University