Dissertation Research: Interest Groups, Regulators, and Clean Air: A Structural Policy-Making Framwork

虽然关于官僚机构政治控制的学术早已认识到行政结构对政策成果的重要性，但在这方面各行为者实际采取战略行动的经验证据有限。在这篇论文支持研究项目中，学生详细阐述了一个“结构性政策制定框架”，将有组织的利益集团作为政策变化、演变和重点的中心催化剂。该框架将行政安排的设计、使用和利用确定为政策成果最核心的两个方面。在审查政策结构的一系列关键组成部分之间的联系时，得出了关于战略行为的性质和不同政策行为者的相对影响力的推断。这个项目不同于以前通过行政设计机制进行的官僚控制工作，因为它努力提供一个系统的经验账户，将利益集团的战略行动与官僚输出联系起来。自1990年以来，将该框架应用于美国空气质量监管，该项目衡量了州和国家层面的结构性政策制定特征。该项目提供对策略设计、利用率和性能结果的测试。它直接评估了这些领域中相互竞争的政策行为者的相对影响，并对环境监管、利益集团政策行为和联邦制对政策制定的影响具有重要的学术意义。

While scholarship on the political control of bureaucracy has long recognized the importance of administrative structures to policy outcomes, there exists limited empirical evidence of strategic actions actually taken by various actors in this regard. In this Dissertation Support Research project the student elaborates a "structural policy making framework," placing organized interest groups as central catalysts to policy change, evolution, and focus. The framework identifies the design, of, and utilization of, administrative arrangements as the two dimensions most central to policy outcomes. In examining the linkages between a series of critical components of policy structure, inferences about the nature of strategic behavior and relative influence of various policy actors are drawn. This project differs from prior work on bureaucratic control through administrative design mechanisms because of its effort to provide a systematic empirical account linking interest group strategic action to bureaucratic output.Applying the framework to American air quality regulation since 1990, the project measures characteristics of structural policy-making at both state and national levels. The project provides tests of policy design, utilization, and performance outcomes. It directly assesses the relative impact of competing policy actors in each of these areas, and possesses significant for scholarship on environmental regulation, interest group policy behavior, and federalism's impact on policy-making.