Congressional Access and Influence in the Bureaucracy

• In Event: Oversight, Delegation, Bargaining, and Control by the U.S. Congress

Abstract

Members of Congress regularly lobby federal agencies. In fact, legislators regularly make informal appeals to agencies in an effort to influence agency policymaking. Although they are not required to register as lobbyists, members of Congress receive unrivaled access to some of the most powerful policymakers in the United States government. In this paper, I present a theory to explain how agencies respond to policy appeals from members of Congress. Departing from previous literature, I argue that agencies use a risk-averse strategy by prioritizing lawmakers who have both the capacity and motivation to retaliate against the administration. To provide evidence for my argument, I use records of inter-branch communication obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and a novel measure of agency responsiveness to examine how agencies prioritize policy appeals from members of Congress. I find that agencies prioritize lawmakers with the greatest capacity and motivation to retaliate against an unresponsive agency. Specifically, I find that agencies prioritize communications from senators, members of the committee with jurisdiction and oversight, and White House out-partisans. This last result departs from the previous literature and is important for identifying the mechanism underlying agency decision-making. Rather than prioritizing friends of the administration as often assumed, my results suggest that agencies are using a risk-averse strategy to avoid angering lawmakers who would be the most likely to retaliate through demanding oversight, attacking the administration’s reputation, or holding up appointees. In addition, I find that agencies prioritize legislators’ policy appeals over casework and grant requests. Finally, I find that agencies prioritize appeals made by groups of legislators over requests made by a single lawmaker, suggesting that it is worth legislators’ time and resources to urge their colleagues to join their efforts. These findings contribute to our understanding of how individual members of Congress can strategically influence agency policymaking outside of the legislative process and how formal authority in Congress provides informal influence with the bureaucracy.

Author

• Melinda Ritchie, The Ohio State University