U.S. agency growth aspirations and the effect of ideological extremism

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Susan Webb Yackee
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13710

RESEARCH ARTICLE

U.S. agency growth aspirations and the effect

of ideological extremism

Susan Webb Yackee

La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of

Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Correspondence

Susan Webb Yackee, La Follette School of Public

Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1225

Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA.

Email: yackee@wisc.edu

Abstract

Does ideological extremism curb a public agency’s desire to grow? This article

theorizes that changes in the political environment affect a public agency leader’s

growth aspirations. Specifically, increased ideological extremism across an agency’s

elected principals leads an agency leader to be more cautious and less growth-

minded. The assessments of over 10,000 American state agency leaders are

studied across 11 points in time from 1964 to 2018 and matched to data capturing

the leader’s ideological environment. Agency leaders, who face heightened

extremism from elected state officials, are found to report a reduced interest in

future growth. The results are strongest during periods of divided government,

which may occur because the signal sent from greater extremism is more useful to

agency leaders during these periods. When aggregated across thousands of agen-

cies, the article’s findings imply a driver of slower growth in the future size and

scope of government.

Evidence for practice

•Evidence from this article suggests a hitherto unidentified connection between

extremism and moderation: heightened ideological extremism across a state’s

elected officials appears to drive agency leaders to moderate their preferences

for growth.

•Perhaps provocatively and counterintuitively to some, this relationship emerges

within analyses that include extreme liberal and extreme conservative political

environments.

•The article’s results are consistent with the explanation that agency leaders

employ a more cautious approach when operating within extreme environ-

ments across the political spectrum.

•Agency leaders may use this new evidence to paint a fuller picture of how and

when ideological extremism affects their day-to-day work, including its potential

impact on future organizational expansion decision-making.

Students of public administration know surprisingly little

about the effects of elected officials’ideological ext remism

on the actions and attitudes of public agencies and their

leaders. In this article, an agency leader’s desire for future

agency growth (Arapis & Bowling, 2020; Blais & Dion, 1991;

Geys et al., 2022a,2022b; Geys & Sørensen, 2022;

Kiewiet, 1991) is connected to the ideological extremism of

the agency’s elected politicalprincipals. Select scholarscon-

ceptualize agency leaders as perpetual seekers of

programmatic and service growth, with one prominent

account calling for a “theory of the maximizing bureaucrat”

(Niskanen, 1968, p. 293; Niskanen, 1971). This argument has

been a powerful driver of scholarly thinking and has

impacted the decision-making of some major political

leaders (Blais & Dion, 1991). To explicate the scope condi-

tions for the “maximizing bureaucrat,”I measure and then

model what is referred to as a public agency lea der’s

growth aspirations.

1

Doing so helps to identify when and

Received: 11 January 2023 Revised: 17 July 2023 Accepted: 17 July 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13710

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 Author. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1785–1797. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar 1785