Budgetary Politics, Agency Discretion, and Ideology

• In Event: Executive Power and Bureaucratic Politics

Abstract

Control of the executive branch has long been heralded as a fundamental source of presidential power in democratic government. Despite a rich theoretical scholarship that explores the conditions for bureaucratic delegation, it remains unclear whether Presidents anticipate and respond to ideological incongruence in the direction of the civil service. We study the role of ideological alignment in the context of federal budgetary politics. Using a comprehensive dataset of Presidential budget requests from 1972 to 2019 (n = 11,987), we investigate the conditions under which agency funding varies. Combining these data with personnel records of the United States federal bureaucracy, we test the hypothesis that Presidents reward congruent agencies and penalize ideological opponents. Our findings provide new evidence about how partisanship structures executive policymaking and highlight a novel mechanism by which the President exerts influence over the bureaucracy.

Authors

• Jon C. Rogowski, University of Chicago

• Jeremiah Cha, Harvard University