Collaborative Research: The Instruments for Political Control of Bureaucracy in Parliamentary and Separation of Powers Systems

如果有效地利用官僚专业知识，可以在帮助民选官员实现其目标方面发挥关键作用。然而，政治环境可能会让民选官员很难影响官僚行为，从而创造出这样一种可能性，即这种专业知识将被浪费，或被官僚用来对付民选官员。为了了解民选官员的偏好如何反映在公共政策中，至关重要的是探索促进或抑制对机构决策的政治控制的机制。该项目首先提出了一个明确的政治控制的比较理论解释。这一理论的基础是期望政治家在决定是否以及如何控制官僚机构时，对他们的政治环境做出理性反应。如果这种政治环境的相关特征在不同的时间或地点有所不同，那么政客们为促进控制而采取的制度也应该有系统性的变化。应影响冲突程度的政治和体制因素包括三权分立制度中分权政府的具体形式、议会制度中治理联盟的异质性以及管理公务员选拔和晋升的机构。分治政府的形式、执政联盟的性质以及立法专业的程度应影响事前控制的成本。实证检验的数据包括作为因变量的控制工具和作为解释变量的关于政治和体制环境的信息。对于每种类型的系统，该项目审查了政治和体制变量如何影响利益冲突、事前控制战略和事后控制战略。这个项目承诺了几个好处。首先，通过研究政治环境对控制战略的影响，该项目为广泛比较了解政治家在决定如何将权力下放给官僚机构时如何应对其政治环境奠定了基础。在这样做的过程中，这项研究提炼了现有的争论，不仅是关于授权的逻辑，还包括在不同类型的政治制度中控制国家的限制和可能性。其次，这项研究涉及到创建一些新的数据集，供广泛的学者使用。国家政治学和比较政治学的学生受益于系统地编码各州和国家之间的制度和政治差异的数据。机构和政策专业的学生能够使用系统地显示不同政策、州和国家在控制方面的差异的数据。

Bureaucratic expertise, if harnessed effectively, can play a crucial role in helping elected officials to achieve their goals. The political environment, however, can make it difficult for elected officials to influence bureaucratic behavior, thereby creating the possibility that this expertise will go to waste or be used by bureaucrats against elected officials. In order to understand how the preferences of elected officials get reflected in public policy, it is crucial to explore the mechanisms that facilitate or inhibit political control of agency policymaking. The project begins by developing an explicitly comparative theoretical explanation of political control. The basis for this theory is the expectation that politicians respond rationally to their political environment when deciding whether and how to control bureaucracies. If there is variation in the relevant features of this political environment across time or place, then there should be systematic variation in the institutions that politicians adopt to facilitate control. The theoretical arguments (which are developed as formal models) and the empirical tests focus on interactions between factors affecting incentives to control bureaucrats (that is, factors affecting the degree of conflict betwseen politicians and bureaucrats) and those affecting the costs of ex ante and ex post control strategies. Political and institutional factors that should affect the degree of conflict include the specific form of divided government in separation of powers systems, the heterogeneity of governing coalitions in parliamentary systems, and the institutions that govern the selection and promotion of civil servants. The form of divided government, the nature of the governing coalition, and the extent of legislative professionalism should affect the cost of ex ante control. Electoral volatility, cabinet instability, and institutional arrangements regarding the choice of judges, the prerogative of courts vis-a-vis agencies, and the ability of legislatures or parliaments to review or veto agency decisions should influence the cost of ex post control. The data for the empricial tests consist of instruments for control as dependent variables and information about the political and institutional environment as explanatory variables. Data are collected to permit analysis of variation in the instruments of control within separation of powers systems (through an analysis of control across advanced parliamentary democracies), and variation across parliamentary and separation of powers systems (through a comparison of control processes in the two types of systems). For each type of system, the project examines how political and institutional variables affect conflict of interest, ex ante strategies for control, and ex post strategies for control. This project promises several benefits. First, by examining the impact of the political environment on strategies for control, the project lays the foundation for a broadly comparative understanding of how politicians respond to their political environment when making decisions about how to delegate authority to bureaucrats. In so doing, the study refines existing debates about not only the logic of delegation, but also the limits and possibilities of control over the state in different types of political systems. Second, the study involves the creation of a number of novel datasets of use to a wide range of scholars. Students of state and comparative politics benefit from data that systemtically code institutional and political differences among states and countries. Students of institutions and policy are able to use data that systematically demonstrate differences in control across policies, states, and countries.