You are invited to join us for the Spring quarter COR Faculty Workshop…

Graeme Boushey, Political Science, UCI

Discussants: Amihai Glazer (Social Sciences) and Philip Bromiley (Merage)

Date: Friday, April 24, 2015
Time: 12:00-1:15pm
Venue: SGSB 1321

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP by Friday, April 17 to cor@uci.edu.

Title: Experts, Amateurs, and Bureaucratic Influence in the American States

Abstract: This paper explores the growing policy influence of administrative agencies in U.S state politics. Drawing upon a large data set of proposed and adopted regulations issued by state governments from 1990 through 2010, we explore whether eroding policy expertise of state representatives has resulted in increased bureaucratic participation in the policy process, as amateur politicians rely more heavily on professionalized executive agencies to define problems and develop solutions. Specifically, we argue that as the gap between executive and legislative compensation increases in a state, the legislature both delegates and abdicates more, leading to increased policymaking volume by the state bureaucracy. We find robust evidence for such a relationship and illustrate the importance for this finding in the context of recent and recurring debates concerning institutional reform.