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Political Restraints and Bureaucratic Discretion: The Case of State Government Rule Making
Author(s) -
Grady Dennis O.,
Simon Kathleen M.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
politics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.259
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 1555-5623
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2002.tb00139.x
Subject(s) - rulemaking , discretion , legislature , state (computer science) , public administration , bureaucracy , political science , devolution (biology) , politics , government (linguistics) , home rule , administrative discretion , federalism , law and economics , law , economics , sociology , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , computer science , anthropology , human evolution
State government agencies have increased their role and responsibilities in recent years under the national policy of devolution, and as these agencies have produced more rules and regulations to carry out these expanded duties, elected leaders across the states have increased the restraints placed on them. The typical means for doing so is through the State Administrative Procedure Act. This research examines the means by which states provide access channels to groups and individuals during the rulemaking process and the formal controls in place in the mid 1990s to restrict the discretion of state administrative entities during rulemaking. The work relies on information provided by the actors involved in rules review and oversight across the country during that time. After developing indices that compare the states on citizen access and institutional control, we attempt to explain why some states were more restrictive than others over rulemaking. The primary finding is that the shift of partisan control of at least one chamber in the state legislature following the 1994 elections best explains increased restrictiveness across the states.