Agency Independence and Compliance with Administrative Procedures: (Not) Providing Information under the Congressional Review Act

• In Event: Holding the Executive to Account in the 21st Century: lessons from the US Congress and the UK House of Commons

Abstract

When delegating authority, legislatures employ a wide variety of institutional arrangements in order to exercise control over administrative policy. One such arrangement is the use of administrative procedures to influence the agenda, structure, and process of agency decision-making. An inherent assumption in most of the scholarship that explores the implementation and effect of administrative procedures is that federal agencies follow statutorily prescribed procedural mandates. Yet there is increasing evidence that federal agencies find a way to skirt these administrative requirements. Using new data on compliance with one such procedure – the reporting requirements of the Congressional Review Act – from 2000 to 2017, I find that, while Congress may design agencies with structures that foster independence in order to promote expertise and impartiality in policy implementation, political insulation not only limits oversight but makes agencies less likely to comply with administrative procedures. My research has broad implications; if agencies do not, in fact, follow statutorily mandated procedures, then scholars’ theoretical understanding of the relationship between procedures and political control of the bureaucracy likely needs revisiting.

Author

• Jennifer L. Selin, University of Missouri, Columbia