Agency Input as a Policy-Making Tool

• Author: José D. Villalobos
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399712438378
• Date: 01 September 2013
• Published date: 01 September 2013
• Subject Matter: Articles

Administration & Society

45(7) 837 –874

© 2012 SAGE Publications

DOI: 10.1177/0095399712438378

aas.sagepub.com

438378AAS45710.1177/009539971243

8378VillalobosAdministration & Society

© 2012 SAGE Publications

1University of Texas at El Paso, USA

Corresponding Author:

José D. Villalobos, Department of Political Science, University of Texas at El Paso, Benedict Hall

111, 500 W. University Avenue, El Paso, TX 79968, USA.

Email: jdvillalobos2@utep.edu

Agency Input as a

Policy-Making Tool:

Analyzing the Influence

of Agency Input on

Presidential

Policy Success in

Congress

José D. Villalobos1

Abstract

This study posits a theoretical framework for understanding the role and

value of agency input in presidential-legislative policy making. The author as-

serts that by using agency input for policy development, presidents instill

their proposals with a degree of bureaucratic objectivity, expertise, process

transparency, and agency support, which aids their legislative passage while

lowering the extent of changes made to policy substance in the process. To

test his hypotheses, the author conducts binar y and ordered logistic regres-

sion analyses using pooled cross-sectional data across 12 administrations

from 1949 to 2010. The author finds that agency input serves as a key com-

ponent for increased presidential-legislative success.

Keywords

President, agency input, policy making, Congress

Article

838 Administration & Society 45(7)

When presidents take the lead in the policy-making process, they hold the

potential to influence three stages: policy development, agenda setting (i.e.,

the policy proposal stage), and the legislative outcome. Although scholars

have long considered how presidents can influence the policy-making pro-

cess at the proposal and legislative outcome stages, relatively fewer studies

have explored the policy development stage. To help fill this gap in the litera-

ture, I address the development phase of the policy-making process by con-

sidering how presidents can best manage and develop their policy initiatives

using agency input to maximize their policy performance in the legislative

arena. Understanding this issue is important because whether and to what

extent presidents can achieve their policy goals largely depends on their abil-

ity to propose their initiatives in a manner that Congress will be willing to

enact them.

In this study, I posit that agency input affords presidential policy develop-

ment with added measures of bureaucratic objectivity, expertise,1 process

transparency, cooperative consultation with legislators, and agency support,

each of which imbue presidential proposals with a measure of bureaucratic

legitimacy that strengthens a president’s legislative policy performance. To

test my hypotheses, I conduct a series of binary and ordered logistic regres-

sion analyses using pooled cross-sectional data on presidential-legislative

proposals covering the period 1949 through 2010. I find that agency input,

among other factors, serves as a key component to increased presidential-

legislative policy success, both with respect to policy outputs and outcomes.

In light of these findings, I prescribe a new policy-making strategy with

agency input at its core that builds on previous knowledge concerning presi-

dential-bureaucratic management and its impact on legislative policy

making.

Centralized Policy Making Reconsidered

In their managerial role, presidents may look to White House staffers or the

vast resource of executive departments and agencies for assistance to help

develop their policy proposals. Carrying out this process requires that presi-

dents effectively collect, organize, and sort out information. As Neustadt

(1990) puts it, “a president is helped by what he gets into his mind. His first

essential need is information” (pp. 128-129). In general, presidents have at

their disposal two primary resources for policy making: the “responsive com-

petence” of White House personnel and the expertise of agency civil servants

(see Heclo, 1999; Moe, 1985; Rourke, 1992; Rudalevige, 2002; Wolf, 1999).

To manage the process, presidents may centralize policy development within

Villalobos 839

the Executive Office of the President (EOP), delegate its formation to the

wider bureaucracy (i.e., decentralize), or use some combination of the two

(Rudalevige, 2002).2

When presidents seek information for policy development, they may

experience a measure of friction, which scholars commonly refer to as a

“transaction cost” (Coase, 1937, 1990; Milgrom & Roberts, 1990; North,

1990; Williamson, 1979, 1998; Williamson & Masten, 1995; see also Hall &

Taylor, 1996, p. 951; Epstein & O’Halloran, 1994, 1999). Friction may occur

when presidents, in seeking information to develop their policy proposals,

encounter opposing viewpoints and contradictory interests espoused by an

assortment of executive branch personnel, be they from the outer agencies/

departments or the EOP.

To minimize transaction costs, presidents often seek the cheapest source

of trusted information to help them develop their policy proposals (Rudalevige,

2002). In doing so, presidents typically aim to maximize the value of a policy

proposal in terms of their own policy leanings. As such, scholars find that

when faced with the option of centralizing the development of a policy pro-

posal within the White House staff or delegating its development to executive

agency actors, presidents generally prefer to centralize the process whenever

possible as it lowers the front-end managerial transaction costs and maxi-

mizes their personal policy preferences (see Moe, 1985; Moe & Wilson,

1994; Nathan, 1983).

Torn between high public expectations for policy performance and a lim-

ited amount of formal authority within a fragmented and fractious political

system, a president’s preference for centralization may be seen as an institu-

tionally rational, if not ultimately effective, approach to take (Moe, 1985,

1989). Given the post-1930s growth of the executive branch, it makes intui-

tive sense that presidents increasingly focus their policy activities around the

White House Office and larger EOP. However, little systemic quantitative

work has explored the extent to which presidents have used varying sources

of information for policy development or the relative impact of such informa-

tion on presidential performance in the legislative arena.

Although a large literature has helped unearth major insights on presiden-

tial efforts to cope with and manage the development and institutional growth

of the modern presidency (e.g., Burke, 2000; Dickinson, 1997; Moe, 1985;

Ragsdale & Theis, 1997; Walcott & Hult, 1995, 2005), this area of research

has been mainly dominated by case studies that are not systemically general-

izable. Furthermore, relatively few studies have addressed directly the merits

of centralization in presidential policy development. One exception is

Rudalevige’s (2002) study, which provides the first major quantitative