Clerks or Kings? Partisan Alignment and Delegation to the US Bureaucracy

Abstract

Scholars often assert that the delegation of policy discretion to administrative agencies is driven, in part, by partisanship. In short, the “ally principle” dictates that elected officials delegate more policy discretion to agency officials when their partisanship aligns because such an alignment reduces uncertainty about future policy choices. In contrast, we draw on insights from social identity theory to theorize that partisan alignment may, in practice, <it>decrease</it> the overall perceived policy discretion by agency officials. We evaluate this hypothesis using data collected across three decades of state political elections and over 6,000 American state agency heads, finding consistent evidence against the ally principle. In fact, in keeping with our theorizing, we uncover slightly lower—not higher—levels of policy discretion are associated with partisan alignment. We conclude that partisanship may play a role in narrowing the perceived policy authority available to politically like-minded agency officials.