Expanding the political market framework to explain executive decision‐making during the COVID‐19 crisis

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• Author: Cali Curley,Peter Stanley Federman,Ruowen Shen
• Date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13613

SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE

Expanding the political market framework to explain

executive decision-making during the COVID-19 crisis

Cali Curley

1

| Peter Stanley Federman

2

| Ruowen Shen

3

1

Department of Political Science, University of

Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA

2

Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and

Environmental Affairs, Indiana University –

Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis,

Indiana, USA

3

Hugo Wall School of Public Affairs, Wichita

State University, Wichita, Kansas, USA

Correspondence

Peter Stanley Federman, Paul H. O’Neill School

of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana

University –Purdue University Indianapolis,

Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.

Email: federman@iu.edu

Abstract

The traditional political market framework (PMF) argues that elected officials

respond to policy demands by adopting policy that furthers their goal of reelec-

tion. However, an emerging crisis can make this approach to decision-making chal-

lenging as the immediacy of response, the needs of the public, and technical

expertise may conflict with reelection goals. This conflict can encourage elected

officials to engage in blame avoidance by delegating policy-making powers to the

bureaucracy. Utilizing a mixed methods approach to analyze state-level governor

responses to COVID-19, this paper expands the PMF by capturing the influence of

bureaucratic demands on elected official decisions to delegate or transfer power

to the bureaucracy. We find evidence that bureaucratic expertise, under the right

set of circumstances, influences policymaker decisions to delegate policymaking

power. Lastly, we advocate for a renewed focus on democratic principles and the

consequences of delegation for transparency, accountability, and social equity. In

understanding the specific dynamics at play when bureaucrats and executives

work to develop policy in crisis, practitioners may gain a better understanding of

how to navigate difficult decisions. The specific executive orders across states are

not particularly well-known, and providing evidence of the steps other states took

to combat the crisis may prove useful to practitioners in the emergency manage-

ment space. If practitioners have a more complete understanding of why policy is

made and by what mechanisms, they may apply a focus on implementation strate-

gies that are effective and relevant.

Evidence for Practice

•In understanding the specific dynamics at play when bureaucrats and executives

work to develop policy in crisis, practitioners may gain a better understanding

of how to navigate difficult decisions.

•The specific executive orders across states are not particularly well-known, and

providing evidence of the steps other states took to combat the crisis may prove

useful to practitioners in the emergency management space.

•If practitioners have a more complete understanding of why policy is made and

by what mechanisms, they may apply a focus on implementation strategies that

are effective and relevant.

Moments of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, often

invite a significant amount of urgent policy-making by

elected officials. These moments may require technical

expertise, the taking of political risk, and a willingness

to make decisions despite uncertainty. In fact, the

expectations for elected and administrative leaders during

crises often do not match the reality of the implemented

actions (Boin & Hart, 2003) and to complicate matters even

further, the priorities of administrative and elected officials

during the crisis may clash, at times with meaningful

Received: 15 April 2022 Revised: 13 January 2023 Accepted: 26 January 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13613

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2023 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1281–1299. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar 1281

implications for equity, transparency, and accountability

(Hicklin et al., 2009;Scavoetal.,2008). This clash may be

caused by a mismatch of either technical expertise or

appetite for political risk, which may be more apparent

under circumstances of increasing polarization. Despite

this, there is little research that theorizes on how these two

factors, which undoubtedly influence policy-making during

a crisis, inform the decision-making process for executives.

While we can turn to research on the public health crises

in America to guide our thinking about such an event

(Nickels, 2019;Roberts,2006), many questions remain about

the motivations and processes of executive decision-making

and policy choice during such crises and their implications

for democracy. The political market framework (PMF) is one

theoretical avenue to consider the role of community

demands in shaping elected official policy preferences

(Feiock & Kim, 2021). However, the PMF does not consider

how bureaucratic politics or the demands of bureaucrats

influence the executives preferred policy outcomes. In

addition, the PMF emphasizes the influence of these

factors—the elected officials’desire for reelection and the

preferences of community members—on policy choices

(Bae & Feiock, 2013; Deslatte et al., 2018). Typically, policy

choices are thought of as policy tool choices (Yi &

Feiock, 2014); however, policymakers can also decide to del-

egate policymaking power to avoid political risks for unpop-

ular decisions (Bach & Wegrich, 2019).

This paper is an exploratoryeffort to propose a theoret-

ical refinement of the PMF. This refinement will incorporate

bureaucratic preferences as an element of demand and

expand policy choices to include an executive’s choice to

delegate. The proposed expansion to PMF occurs in two

primary ways: (1) incorporating bureaucratic demands into

the demand side of the PMF, and (2) expanding the range

of actions that executives can take in order to achieve their

desired equilibrium. In other words, policies can be

adopted by the executive or through delegation to avoid

political backlash in the event that the public does not

want or support that particular policy.

To that end, this paper seeks to identify potential

mechanisms that may lead state executives to delegate

or transfer power to state agencies via executive order. In

this case, we adapted the PMF and proposed that its

expansion could examine the influence of policy supply

and demand factors (community and bureaucratic) that

lead state-level elected officials to delegate policy-making

power to appointed administrative actors. This paper con-

ducts an initial analysis to determine the plausibility of

the proposed theoretical expansion in the context of the

COVID-19 public health crisis. We have conducted a

mixed methods analysis that includes a quantitative anal-

ysis of executive orders adopted across all 50 states dur-

ing the initial phase of the crisis and a set of comparative

case studies across six states that vary in the relevant fac-

tors, derived from literature on bureaucratic politics and

political markets that influence delegation decisions.

POLITICAL MARKET FRAMEWORK (PMF)

The PMF describes the choices of elected policy-makers

such as governors as shaped by their desire to supply pol-

icy benefits to constituents that will generate political sup-

port for them (Feiock & Kim, 2021). The PMF connects

transaction costs faced by constituency groups to the

design of programs and policies (Carr, 2015;Curley,

Federman, et al., 2021; Curley, Harrison, & Federman, 2021).

This approach has been applied across a diverse set of sub-

national policy areas such as economic development (Lubell

et al., 2005; Lubell, Feiock, & Handy, 2009; Lubell, Feiock,

Ramirez, & La Cruz, 2009), service delivery (Andrew, 2009),

transportation (Tong et al., 2019; Zhao et al., 2021), and con-

servation (Curley, Federman, et al., 2021; Curley, Harrison, &

Federman, 2021).

Given that policymaking during exogenous events,

such as a crisis, is highly visible and potentially politically

divisive, the actions of policymakers during a crisis are

placed under extreme scrutiny particularly by the media

(Wolfe, 2012). In instances of executive decision-making

where all policy options have “high economic and social

costs, crisis politics will be fraught with political conflict,

delay, …”(Walter, 2016, 842). One potential strategy for

elected officials to address a politically fraught crisis with-

out harm to their political position is to shift policy-

making away from the executive and onto the technocrat

(Walter, 2016). The PMF, traditionally used to apply to a

decision maker’s choice between policy tools or instru-

ments (Bae & Feiock, 2013; Deslatte et al., 2018; Howlett &

Ramesh, 1993; Yi & Feiock, 2014), may be expanded to

inform the willingness of decision makers to transfer or

delegate power to a bureaucrat.

Supply

The PMF argues that elected officials supply policies that

generate support from constituents sufficient to enhance

the likelihood that they will be re-elected. In this case, politi-

cal resources such as votes are exchanged for the benefits

that result from policy actions. However, besides electoral

benefits, the elected officials need to consider costs incurred

in the process of exchange (Dixit, 1998; Williamson, 1998).

For example, the elected officials would consider costs

incurred in the bargaining process and costs arising from

the decision that deviates from their own ideological beliefs.

Thus, the policy decision depends on the willingness of

elected officials to supply policy support, calculating mar-

ginal costs of alternative policy choices. Factors that moti-

vate elected official’s willingness to supply include their

policy preference, background and experience, and partisan

ideology, and so forth. (Feiock & Kim, 2021). Recent research

finds that the party identity of the governor itself is less

important than the governor’s perceptions of the wants of

1282 EXPANDING THE POLITICAL MARKET FRAMEWORK DURING THE COVID-19 CRISIS