
doi: 10.2307/2111603
This paper investigates the design of administrative procedures when policy consequences are uncertain. In general, when deciding how much discretion to delegate, legislators must trade off informational gains from agency expertise and distributive losses from bureaucratic drift. We show that when Congress has both ex post agenda control and access to information, it will delegate a large degree of discretionary authority to all agencies, regardless of differences in policy preferences. This "discretionary floor" rises as future events become more uncertain. We further show that the possibility of coalitional drift, or changing preferences of the median legislator, may lead either to "hard-wired" agencies with little discretionary authority or "soft-wired" agencies with large discretionary powers to set policy.
| citations This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 345 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 1% | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Top 1% | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% |
