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Cooperative Regulatory Enforcement and the Politics of Administrative Effectiveness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

John T. Scholz
John T. Scholz*
Affiliation:
State University of New York Stony Brook
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Abstract

Even when political interests control bureaucratic outputs, the control of policy outcomes is complicated by trade-offs between controllable versus effective implementation strategies. I use a nested game framework to explain why a cooperative strategy can increase enforcement effectiveness in the narrow administrative game and why principal-agent control problems and collective action problems associated with the strategy lead policy beneficiaries to oppose the effective strategy in the broader political games. Analyses of state-level Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforcement provide evidence that cooperation does enhance the impact of enforcement in reducing workplace injury rates but that policy beneficiaries oppose and sabotage cooperation. The interactions between administrative effectiveness and interest group politics in this and other implementation situations require that both be analyzed simultaneously, and the nested game framework can provide a systematic approach to such analyses.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 115 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1991 

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