Analytic Bureaucracy and the Policy Process: Evidence from California

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740231164414
• Author: Henry Flatt,Nhat-Dang Do
• Date: 01 July 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Analytic Bureaucracy and the Policy

Process: Evidence from California

Henry Flatt

1

and Nhat-Dang Do

2

Abstract

We argue that “analytic”bureaucratic agencies are essential actors in the policy process because of their role acting as both

information processing organizations and policy design specialists. Analytic agencies can exert unique inf‌luence over lawmak-

ing activities because legislators consider them expert informational sources in a multitude of areas. Rather than assume policy

advice falls rigidly into either “political”or “technical”forms of information, we show that an analytic off‌ice can produce both

types of content. Whereas previous policy process scholarship almost exclusively examines elected off‌icials and federal agen-

cies, this article tests our theory using a state agency, California’s Department of Finance (DOF). Our f‌indings demonstrate

how the Governor delegates partisan legislative signaling duties and neutral expert budgetary advice to the same trusted ana-

lytic personnel. The data include every introduced bill in six recently completed legislative sessions and show how DOF rec-

ommendations are strongly associated with bill passage and the Governor’s veto.

Keywords

analytic bureaucracy, policy advisory system, policy process, information processing, legislative politics

Introduction

Even literature that affords special attention to bureaucracy has

mostly ignored the importance of bureaucratic actors during

the initial policy design and projection phases, instead focusing

on policy implementation (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984;

Sabatier, 1986), problem identif‌ication (Workman, 2015;

Workman et al., 2017), and solution development (Wilson,

1989). In addition, recent work analyzing bureaucratic involve-

ment in the early stages of the legislative process focuses

on area-specif‌ic personnel (Bradley & Haselswerdt, 2018;

Kroeger, 2022a), neglecting the essential role occupied by ana-

lytic bureaucrats whom policymakersregularlyrelyonfor

essential information and expertise. In light of the above discus-

sion, we seek to answer the following question: how do analytic

bureaucratic agencies inf‌luence the policy process?

This study adds important nuance to the bureaucratic politics

literature by demonstrating how “analytic”agencies tasked with

bill analyses, revenue projections, and policy recommendations

occupy a central role in lawmaking. Instead of examining indi-

vidual legislators or bureaucrats dedicated to service delivery,

we argue that analytic agencies should be examined in greater

detail to obtain a fuller portrait of what determines the failure

and passage of legislation. How these trusted bureaucratic

agents impact the outcome of legislation is an understudied

question largely ignored in extant scholarship.

We begin with an overview of the rich literature detailing

bureaucratic information processing and its relationship

with legislative signaling. By integrating arguments from the

agenda-setting and bureaucracy literatures, we argue that spe-

cialists in analytic bureaucracies occupy a vital role in the

policy process. Incorporating the insights of these actors is a

critical but often overlooked step toward understanding why

some bills fail while others pass. The article proceeds by pre-

senting the data, which includes every introduced bill in both

chambers of the California legislature from 2007 to 2018,

along with bill analyses and recommendations produced by

the Department of Finance (DOF), the Governor’s“chief

f‌iscal policy advisor.”

1

After demonstrating that the recommen-

dations by the DOF are tightly linked with bill outcomes, we

discuss the f‌indings and highlight avenues for future research.

Theory and Hypotheses

Information Sources and Legislative Signaling in the

Policy Process

Although legislators are not intentionally recruited to be

experts in any single policy area, they are often expected to

1

Department of Government, The University of Texasat Austin, Austin, TX,

USA

2

Department of Political Science, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA

Corresponding Author:

Henry Flatt, Department of Government, The University of Texas at Austin,

158 W 21st St STOP A1800 Austin, TX 78712, USA.

Email: hf‌latt@utexas.edu

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2023, Vol. 53(5-6) 243–257

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/02750740231164414

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