the politics of regulation: from new institutionalism … · the politics of regulation: from new...

PL14CH06-Coglianese ARI 11 April 2011 15:30

The Politics of Regulation:From New Institutionalismto New GovernanceChristopher Carrigan1,3 and Cary Coglianese2,3

1John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts02138; email: [email protected] of Pennsylvania Law School and Department of Political Science, Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 19104; email: [email protected] Program on Regulation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 19104

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2011. 14:107–29

The Annual Review of Political Science is online atpolisci.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.032408.171344

Copyright c© 2011 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

1094-2939/11/0615-0107$20.00

Keywords

policy making, political control, implementation, enforcement,bureaucracy

Abstract

The study of the politics of regulation has followed two distinct paths inrecent years. “New institutionalism” research has focused primarily onthe policy-making process, particularly the interplay between regula-tors (who implement policy) and their political principals (who attemptto control regulators’ activity). In contrast, “new governance” scholar-ship has focused on strategies other than traditional “command-and-control” regulation that can encourage compliance with socially valuednorms of behavior. Although these two lines of research approach highlydistinct facets of regulation and have developed largely independentlyof each other, they exhibit a generally unacknowledged and extensiveoverlap in their theoretical structure and associated results. In this arti-cle, we compare these two approaches to regulatory politics. For each,we discuss how the interactions of key actors are conceptualized, con-sider the types of regulatory mechanisms used to manage behavior, andexamine the breadth of outcomes that flow from these controls. Wesuggest that greater acknowledgment of the commonalities in the twoapproaches can advance each approach, even if they continue to be pur-sued separately, and can also help generate important synthetic avenuesfor further research.

107


INTRODUCTION

Regulation, both in its creation and in its im-plementation, is the product of actions by de-cision makers and staff in government agen-cies, legislatures, and executive offices, as wellas by representatives from businesses, advocacygroups, and other nongovernmental organiza-tions. Understanding how regulation gets madeand implemented—and who influences regu-latory decisions in order to get what, when,and how—has been a long-standing, persis-tent research challenge for political scientists,economists, and legal scholars. The processof regulating involves complicated interactionsamong a variety of governmental and non-governmental actors in a constantly changingenvironment. As a result, research on regula-tion can be both highly particularized and vastlycomplicated. Such complexity has undoubtedlyreinforced the tendency by regulatory schol-ars to focus their attention on discrete parts ofthe regulatory process. In particular, social sci-ence research on regulation has followed tworelated but heretofore largely separate paths.One route explicitly analyzes the activities ofregulatory agencies; the other track fixes itssights firmly on alternative regulatory strategiesto impact the behavior of businesses and otherorganizations. In this article, we refer to the for-mer path as “new institutionalism” (March &Olsen 1984) and the latter as “new governance”(Lobel 2004, de Burca & Scott 2006)—although in fact neither of these research tra-jectories is entirely new anymore.

New institutionalism concentrates on therelationships between electorally accountableinstitutions and the unelected regulators whodraft and enforce binding rules. New gover-nance focuses on the interplay between regula-tors and the entities they seek to govern. Whenviewed together, these two scholarly pathshighlight the fact that regulation comprisesa nested set of relationships, with politiciansinfluencing regulatory agencies and thoseagencies, in turn, influencing regulated entities(e.g., Laffont & Tirole 1991, Scholz 1991). Al-though nested, these relationships have, for the

most part, been subjected to separate lines ofscholarly inquiry, which we review in the sec-tions that follow. In doing so, we seek to exposeareas where researchers may derive furtherinsights by considering new institutionalismtogether with new governance (and vice versa)to examine the full collection of regulatoryinteractions.

We find it helpful to compare these tworesearch trajectories along three major dimen-sions: the types of regulatory actors they focuson, the mechanisms of control these actorsuse, and the outcomes associated with actors’attempts to influence others’ behavior. Weexamine each line of research with an eye to-ward applying its insights to the other area. Ouranalysis is predicated on the belief that greaterrecognition of the commonalities shared by newinstitutionalism and new governance can yieldfruitful cross-fertilization between the two tra-ditions, encourage more general insights intoregulatory processes, and generate avenuesfor inquiry that have previously remainedneglected.

NEW INSTITUTIONALISM

Most efforts to understand the forces thatcontrol government regulators arise from thebelief that these actors are not motivated solelyto achieve outcomes that best serve the overallpublic interest. Admittedly, some scholars haveargued that regulators—particularly those withno direct electoral accountability—can riseabove biased or self-interested policy making,or at least that they can do so better than electedofficials can (Mashaw 1985, Levine & Forrence1990, Spence 1997). The very fact that suchregulators are not elected may contributeto a longer time horizon and, because theywant to protect and enhance their reputations(Carpenter 2001), also to a tendency on theirpart to try to advance society’s longer-term andperhaps broader interests. Yet despite thesemore hopeful claims, many social scientistsand legal scholars studying regulation accepta more skeptical view of regulators and theirmotivations (Breyer 1982).

108 Carrigan · Coglianese


The historical interaction between theInterstate Commerce Commission and therailroads that fell under the Commission’sjurisdiction remains the classic exampleof the phenomenon of regulatory capture(Huntington 1952, Bernstein 1955). Althoughinitially charged with protecting farmers andshippers, over time the Commission developeda partnership with the railroads, with eachdefending efforts to subvert competition bothfrom other government bodies and from otherforms of transportation. Regulatory captureresults when an agency aligns itself primarilywith those it is supposed to regulate (Stigler1971). Under conditions of capture, regulationcan look less like an attempt to protect thepublic from industry abuses and more like anentry barrier erected by regulated firms toprotect them from competition (Stigler 1971).A tendency toward capture may always existbecause regulated firms are better able thandiffuse publics to overcome collective actionproblems (Olson 1965, Wilson 1980) and, thus,these existing firms are in a better position thanordinary citizens to offer the regulator benefitsfor cooperation (Peltzman 1976).

Not surprisingly, the influence of capturetheory on the research of regulatory politicshas been deep and far reaching. Its adherentspoint to many instances of regulatory activitythat are difficult to explain in terms of ser-vice to the public interest. These include li-censing requirements that protect existing pro-fessionals from entry by newcomers (Stigler1971) and rate-making regimes that do notappear to follow economic principles (Kolko1965). Vintage-differentiated regulations, suchas rules that apply stricter environmental stan-dards to new sources of pollution or exemptexisting sources from new standards, may alsobe understood as a discrete manifestation ofcapture (Stavins 2006; but see Thornton et al.2008).

Although the existence of industry pressureon regulatory policy is undeniable, suchpressure may well explain only a limited set ofdecisions by regulatory agencies. In all likeli-hood, industry influence fluctuates over time,

especially across different administrations. Asan empirical matter, the more hopeful view ofregulation is also not entirely without warrant(Quirk 1981). Extensive and costly regulationexists in situations where capture theory mightpredict it would not exist—that is, in thosearenas in which costs are concentrated on a rel-atively small segment of the population and thebenefits are broadly dispersed (Wilson 1980).Social movements in the United States in thelate 1960s, for example, seem to have succeededin pressuring legislatures and regulatory bodiesto impose costly environmental, labor, andconsumer protection controls on industry(Vogel 1989). These and other expansions ofconsumer protection, civil rights, and workersafety laws that impose additional costs onfirms are difficult to reconcile with the viewthat business interests dominate regulation(Kamieniecki 2006). Efforts to deregulateindustries in the 1970s and 1980s are hardto square with the idea that incumbent firmscontrol regulatory policy in order to maintainentry barriers to new competitors (Derthick &Quirk 1985). Although established pharmaceu-tical firms generally incur shorter waiting timesfor drug approvals from the U.S. Food andDrug Administration (FDA) than new firmsdo, public-interested regulatory officials mightwell vary approval time simply because they canbase their decisions for established companieson a history of good interactions (Carpenter2004). Undoubtedly, the notion of capture—atleast, the strong claim that industry consis-tently dominates the policy game—representsan overly simplistic view of regulatory politics.

One reason industry does not always pre-vail may be that concerns about capture havegiven rise to the creation of political institu-tions that inhibit capture’s ability to take hold(Weingast & Moran 1983). The capture tra-dition in social science research tends to over-look the mechanisms by which Congress andthe president seek to control what regulatoryagencies do—mechanisms of primary impor-tance to the new institutionalism, a literaturethat is new in the sense that it adds institutionsto a model of regulatory politics that previously

www.annualreviews.org • The Politics of Regulation 109


had included mainly just regulators and interestgroups.

Initially, new institutionalist research onU.S. policy making focused on Congress as theprimary actor engaging with regulatory agen-cies. New institutionalist research showed howlegislators use the legislative committee systemto maximize their chances of future electoralsuccess (Shepsle & Weingast 1987). Becausevoters in one district or state have differentinterests from those in another, lawmakers gainconsiderably by allowing each other to exercisespecialized authority over issues of specificimportance to each member’s constituents.By designing committees to oversee particularareas, such as agriculture and transportation,members of Congress both respond to voterneeds through legislative proposal power andminimize the ex post temptation to renegeon vote-exchange agreements (Shepsle &Weingast 1987). Once legislation has beenpassed, legislators then leave responsibilityto agencies that they control (Weingast &Moran 1983).

Although early institutionalist research ex-plained why the legislative branch is structuredas it is, it did not really explain why Congressdelegates authority to regulatory agencies in thefirst place (Rose-Ackerman 2007)—nor howCongress oversees the agencies to which itassigns tasks. In fact, even today the extentto which Congress effectively oversees agencyactivities remains unclear (Niskanen 1971,Wilson 1980, Croley 2008). In addition to thepaucity of noticeable, direct evidence of the ef-fects of congressional oversight on agency be-havior, the theoretical advantages that agencyofficials hold over legislators in their areas ofexpertise and the relatively low public salienceof agency choices would suggest that agencyregulators can operate with substantial discre-tion (Niskanen 1971, Wilson 1980). Of course,the fact that Congress does still voluntarily del-egate regulatory policy making and implemen-tation to agencies might appear to suggest thatat least members of Congress themselves haveconfidence that they can manage how agenciesuse their discretion (Weingast 1984). But we

would caution against inferring too much aboutthe effectiveness of oversight from the existenceof delegation itself. Members of Congress maysimply reap electoral rewards from the symbol-ism of creating agencies to respond to publicproblems and then, later, from showing theirconstituents they are working for them by bat-tling with these same agencies (Mayhew 1974).

In battling with agencies, Congress canwield two types of mechanisms of control(McCubbins & Schwartz 1984). The first, of-ten called “police-patrol” oversight, focuseson direct congressional efforts to uncover ev-idence of agency decision making that conflictswith congressional preferences. The second,“fire-alarm” oversight, relies on interest groupsand citizens to alert government officials whenproblems arise. If offered the choice, Congresswill typically prefer the latter because it bothminimizes costs borne by legislators and fo-cuses attention on those issues most importantto constituents (McCubbins & Schwartz 1984).

Congress can create rules and proceduresto facilitate fire-alarm oversight. For exam-ple, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of1946 mandates that agencies give advance no-tice before adopting new policies, solicit feed-back from interested parties, and provide a clearstatement of the link between evidence and de-cisions (McCubbins et al. 1987, 1989). Throughits various procedural requirements, the APAcan be said to facilitate interest-group moni-toring of agencies. Administrative proceduresmay also be used by an enacting coalition inCongress to try to “stack the deck” in favorof the law’s intended beneficiaries, both cur-rently and into the future. For example, theNational Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of1969 helped environmental groups by forcingagencies to assess the environmental impactsof their actions and allowing environmental-ists the opportunity to sue agencies for failingto weigh these impacts seriously (McCubbinset al. 1987). Of course, procedures have theirlimits as instruments of congressional control.They may merely keep agency discretion withinwide bounds that do not set off fire alarms(Moe 1987). Furthermore, by requiring greater



transparency, participation, and rational analy-sis, procedures may actually serve to insulateregulators from ad hoc pressures by individualmembers of Congress on behalf of their con-stituents (Croley 2008).

Discerning the extent to which Congress asan institution controls regulatory policy mak-ing cannot be divorced from an assessment ofthe influence of other branches of government(Spence 1997). Under the principal-agentframework that has dominated the study ofregulatory policy making for decades (Miller2005), the presence of additional overseerswith competing agendas can limit the ability ofany one institutional actor to control an agencyvery well—providing another reason why reg-ulators can operate with substantial autonomy(Wilson 1989, Miller 2005). The presence ofadditional principals may, however, have theopposite effect by creating a contentious envi-ronment that impedes regulators instead. TheConsumer Product Safety Commission’s abil-ity to regulate consumer products, for example,is generally thought to have been hampered bymultiple reorganizations, procedural changes,and mission reorientations, all driven by thestruggle between Congress and the president—not to mention competing interest groups—tocontrol its activities (Moe 1989).

However, adherents of the “presidentialdominance” view of regulatory agency controlhave not been content simply to point out thatpresidents can hamper the ability of legislatorsto control regulators (Moe 1987). They haveargued, on the contrary, that presidents ac-tually possess greater influence over agenciesthan legislators do. Although legislators havethe power to approve budgets and confirmappointments, they typically respond to theproposals and priorities issued by the president,who holds considerable agenda-setting power(Moe 1987, Moe & Wilson 1994). The CivilService Reform Act of 1978 also allows thepresident to restructure agencies at lower levelsthrough reductions in force or transfers (Wood& Waterman 1991). The White House evenretains subtle but effective mechanisms to con-trol the so-called independent agencies—those

whose administrators are appointed to fixedterms and can be removed only for specialreasons, and whose decisions are not formallysubject to White House review. Even at theseagencies, the Department of Justice (headed bythe president’s Attorney General) still plays arole in regulatory enforcement. Furthermore,in practice, the heads of independent agenciesoften resign at the beginning of new presi-dential administrations, allowing presidents toappoint their own nominees (Moe 1982).

Presidents’ willingness to act unilaterallycan also influence regulators (Moe & Wilson1994, Howell & Lewis 2002). With relativelylittle resistance from Congress, the role of theOffice of Management and Budget (OMB) inthe regulatory process greatly expanded withPresident Ronald Reagan’s Executive Order12291, which mandated that agencies submiteconomic analyses for major regulatory propos-als to the OMB and, whenever legally possible,only adopt those regulations for which the so-cietal benefits exceed the costs (Moe & Wilson1994, Kagan 2001). All subsequent presidentshave retained the OMB’s role in reviewingproposed regulations, and OMB oversight hascome to be regarded as an important mecha-nism in presidential control of regulation (Moe& Wilson 1994). President Bill Clinton soughtto expand executive authority still furtherthrough his use of directives to agency leadersand public announcements of regulatory activ-ities (Kagan 2001), and President George W.Bush’s administration espoused a theory of theunitary executive that emphasized presidentialpower over the bureaucracy.

Whether the president or Congress exer-cises more control over regulatory agencies isultimately an empirical question. Numerousstudies have sought to measure congressionalcontrol, which definitely exists even thoughthe results of these studies have sometimesbeen mixed. The volume of FDA inspectionsover a 50-year period ending in 1995 appearsto have been substantially impacted by theideological views of the oversight committeeand of Congress overall (Shipan 2004). FederalTrade Commission antitrust enforcement in



the 1970s seems to have been highly affectedby turnover in Congress (Weingast & Moran1983); however, subsequent examination ofthe Commission has suggested more limitedlegislative branch influence (Moe 1987).Furthermore, analysis of case selection duringthe 1970s and early 1980s at the Departmentof Justice Antitrust Division, another antitrustenforcement agency, reveals that the Divisionwas influenced not by congressional oversightbut rather by internal organizational changes(Eisner & Meier 1990). Although some workshows that budget cuts in the early 1980shad only minor impacts on enforcement atthe Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)(Ringquist 1995), congressional oversight andappropriations decisions have been found tobe important predictors of activity levels at theEPA and other agencies through the late 1980s(Wood & Waterman 1991).

Researchers have also studied how agencyoutcomes might be affected by specific admin-istrative procedures. This research suggests thatspecific policy analysis requirements, such as re-quiring agencies to conduct benefit-cost analy-ses, appear to be more constraining to currentagency decision making than general notice-and-comment procedures (Morgenstern 1997,Potoski & Woods 2001). So far, however, re-search findings have generally not supportedthe early new institutionalist view that proce-dures can be used to stack the deck so that futureregulatory decisions favor certain groups or ide-ological positions (Balla 1998, Shapiro 2002;but see de Figueiredo & Vanden Bergh 2004).Structural choices, such as defining the institu-tion’s mission and jurisdiction, apparently affectagencies’ behavior more than mere proceduralrestraints (Spence 1999).

When comparing congressional controlwith presidential control, most studies confirmthat both branches of government can influ-ence regulatory decision making (Moe 1985,Wood & Waterman 1991, Furlong 1997). TheNational Labor Relations Board’s voting pat-terns reveal that the legislative and executivebranches influenced the Board’s members fromthe late 1940s through the 1970s (Moe 1985).

In addition, the EPA’s implementation of haz-ardous waste law suggests the presence of vig-orous competition between Congress and theWhite House to control the pace of enforce-ment (Whitford 2005).

Divided party control of government inthe United States accentuates the competitionfor control between the legislative and exec-utive branches. When the policy preferencesof agency heads (appointed by the president)diverge from those of members of Congress,Congress can be expected to try to reduceagency discretion by imposing substantive andpotentially procedural constraints on regula-tory agencies (Epstein & O’Halloran 1996,Volden 2002, de Figueiredo & Vanden Bergh2004, Yackee & Yackee 2009). At the state level,experience with Medicaid implementation sug-gests that legislative efforts to control agenciesincrease in the presence of divided governmentif legislators are capable of writing detailed leg-islation and if few alternative vehicles for con-trolling bureaucrats exist (Huber et al. 2001). Ofcourse, such control efforts on the part of thelegislative branch can be expected to promptcounter-efforts by the executive branch (How-ell 2003). President Clinton actively used hisoversight of executive branch agencies to pushhis agenda in the face of a hostile RepublicanCongress (Kagan 2001).

Although most new institutionalism re-search on regulatory policy making has focusedon the interplay between the legislative andexecutive branches, research on the courts—a third overseer of U.S. regulatory policymaking—also shares the new institutionalistemphasis on mechanisms of control. Most re-search focuses on the courts’ use of their author-ity to review agency rules and set aside thosefound to be “arbitrary or capricious” (Melnick1983, McGarity 1992). Under the “hard look”doctrine developed in the 1970s and 1980s,courts articulated a role for judicial review thatconsidered whether the agency had followeda rigorous decision-making process that con-sidered all of the relevant evidence (Seidenfeld1997). The Supreme Court later appeared torelax, in at least some respects, the judiciary’s



role in overseeing agency decisions; a widelycited example is the Court’s decision in Chevronv. Natural Resources Defense Council, which holdsthat courts should defer to reasonable agencyinterpretations of ambiguous statutes (Merrill& Watts 2002). However, despite doctrinalsuggestions that courts should defer morereadily to agencies, empirical research suggeststhat cases such as Chevron have had remarkablylittle impact on courts’ actual propensity toaffirm agency rulings (Schuck & Elliott 1991).

Legal scholars have criticized judicial re-view for discouraging bureaucratic action,leading to the “ossification” of agency rule-making (McGarity 1992, Pierce 1995). Ofcourse, as already suggested, oversight by anybranch of government—and, in particular,competitive oversight by multiple branches ofgovernment—could discourage agency action(McGarity 1992, Seidenfeld 1997). Neverthe-less, most legal scholarship on ossification treatsthe judiciary as the primary institution discour-aging agency output. Specifically, the claim hasbeen that hard look review creates uncertaintybecause what one court views as reasonable an-other might consider arbitrary and capricious(Melnick 1983, Seidenfeld 1997). Scholars haveargued that this uncertainty not only has drivena decline in rulemaking but also has pushedagencies to substitute policy statements, guid-ance documents, and other forms of “nonrulerulemaking” for more formal rules (McGarity1992, Spence 1997).

The early empirical evidence for ossificationcame from case studies of individual agencies(Mashaw & Harfst 1991, McGarity 1992).More recent statistical research has failed tofind support for that hypothesized outcome(Shapiro 2002). Not only did the numberof pages in the Code of Federal Regulationsalmost double from 1976 to 1996 (Coglianese2002), but agencies that more frequentlyappear in court cases also appear to enact asubstantial portion of their rules more quickly(Yackee & Yackee 2010). Furthermore, thesignificant uptick in regulatory rulemakingthat typically occurs at the end of presidentialadministrations belies any simple belief that

agencies have retreated from making rulesin response to heightened judicial oversight(O’Connell 2008).

The scholarship on judicial review and theossification of rulemaking might be said tosymbolize the literature of new institutionalismmore generally. Initial theoretical predictionsin this field, as in other areas of scholarlyinquiry, sometimes fail to withstand empiricalscrutiny. But this should not be too surprising,especially given the complexity of the regu-latory process and the variation that can existacross different domains of regulation. Anyanalysis of a process that can have so manymoving political parts and institutional featureswill undoubtedly make it difficult to deriveand sustain empirically broad generalizations(Wilson 1989).

Nevertheless, new institutionalism has sofar yielded substantial payoffs with respect toimproving our understanding of regulatorypolitics, even if some of its insights may re-main, for the moment at least, largely tentativeconjectures. First, new institutionalism hasmade clearer the ways that regulatory agenciescan evade capture and even at times wieldsubstantial levels of discretion, notwithstand-ing various attempts by overseers to controlwhat agencies do (Carpenter 2001). Second,in conjunction with more celebrated forms ofoversight such as appointments and hearings,other mechanisms such as procedures and insti-tutional structures may at times play importantroles in shaping agency behavior. Finally, stud-ies of oversight and control mechanisms—mostparticularly the literature on the ossification ofrulemaking—have highlighted the importanceof considering not only intended or positiveeffects of institutional controls but also theirpotential unintended or undesirable effects.

NEW GOVERNANCE

As we have seen, new institutionalism de-veloped in part as a reaction to the overlysimplified view of the relationship amongpoliticians, interest groups, and regulators—the actors in the regulatory process.



Similarly, new governance research has grownup in response to an earlier, simplified view ofregulation—in this case, a view focused on themechanisms by which regulators seek to con-trol business behavior. Under the traditionalview, these mechanisms—sometimes referredto as “command-and-control” regulations—would impose specific, unyielding mandateson firms in an effort to solve public problems.These kinds of mandates would direct regu-lated entities to take specific actions (or refrainfrom taking specific actions), or to achievehighly specific, desired outcomes but throughmeans that the regulated entity chooses onits own. Either way, the actual application ofthese traditional approaches has frequentlybeen viewed as either blunt and costly or toorigid or inflexible to deal with complex, chang-ing regulatory problems. As a consequence,researchers have increasingly taken an interestin alternative mechanisms that regulators canuse to achieve regulatory goals (Dorf & Sabel1998). Such alternatives include:

� management-based regulation, whichrequires regulated entities to gather in-formation and develop plans to solve reg-ulatory problems but not necessarily totake other steps imposed by governmentor even to implement their own plans;

� information disclosure requirements,which mandate the release of informa-tion but not necessarily any substantivebehavioral change; and

� voluntary programs and self-regulationinitiatives, which have no formal man-dated requirements.

In contrast to the many varieties of new gov-ernance mechanisms, traditional regulation haslargely taken two forms. When such regula-tion dictates the particular activities in whichbusinesses must engage (such as installingsmokestack scrubbers) (Breyer 1982), it canbe called means-based regulation, or technol-ogy, design, or specification regulation. Means-based regulation imposes the same requiredaction or technology on each regulated entity,even if other actions or technologies would be

more effective or less costly for specific firms. Italso locks in particular actions, as firms cannotadopt more innovative approaches that differfrom what the regulation mandates. An alter-native, but still traditional, regulatory approachis to set a performance standard telling regu-lated entities what end state must be achievedbut not dictating how to achieve it (Viscusi1983). Under performance-based or ends regu-lation, regulated entities are granted flexibilityto find the best or most cost-effective steps totake to meet the performance limit, and therebyare encouraged to innovate (Gunningham1996).

In practice, performance-based regulationcan be applied at the firm or industry level.When established industry wide, performancestandards can be structured to permit greaterflexibility across firms, since the performanceachieved by individual firms within the industrydoes not need to be uniform as long as theoverall or average level of performance meetsthe regulatory goal. An example of an industry-wide performance standard is an environmentalregulatory approach called emissions trading ormarket-based regulation. Under market-basedregulation, firms with relatively low marginalcosts have reason to achieve greater-than-average emissions control, while allowingthose with high marginal costs to realize lessstringent and more optimal compliance levels(Ackerman & Stewart 1985, Hahn & Hester1989, Tietenberg 1990, Stavins 1998).

Although performance-based regulationscan have certain advantages over means-basedregulations (and vice versa), they both havetheir challenges. Both types of traditionalregulation may less effectively address diffusesources of regulatory damage; an exampleis the environmental problem of nonpointpollution—that is, pollution from dispersesources such as farm run-off rather than dis-crete industrial pipes (Segerson 1988). Part ofthe challenge traditional regulation faces in ad-dressing problems from diffuse origins is that,even when set up broadly, both means-basedand performance-based standards requiregovernment regulators to obtain substantial



information. With means-based regulation, theregulator must understand both how businessoperations contribute to the policy issue andwhat specific actions should be required inorder to alleviate the problem. Performancestandards do not require that the regulatorunderstand what particular means will workbest for every firm, but they do require that theregulator be able to set a meaningful outcomestandard and then monitor and assess actualoutcomes in such a way that the standardscan be enforced (Ayres & Braithwaite 1992).Even a market-based regulation such as emis-sions trading requires affordable and effectivemonitoring technologies (Huppes & Kagan1989, Stavins 1998). In addition to the infor-mation demands associated with traditionalmechanisms, some scholars have worried thattraditional tools encourage regulators to be-come too rigid in their application of the rules(Bardach & Kagan 1982). Instead of workingwith the natural variations in the abilities offirms to adhere to particular standards, inspec-tors may simply enforce the rules as stated,thereby encouraging adversarial interactionsand unnecessary firm resistance (Kelman 1981,Bardach & Kagan 1982, Scholz 1984).

In reaction to some of these perceivedinadequacies in traditional forms of regulation,new governance researchers have taken interestin alternatives that provide more flexibility toregulated entities and impose fewer informa-tion demands on regulators (Richards 2000).Although in this way new governance scholarsfocus on the interplay between regulators andthose entities whose behavior they seek tochange, unlike the new institutionalists theyhave not generally conceived of the relationshipbetween regulators and firms as one akin to aprincipal-agent relationship. One reason is thatmany of the alternative regulatory mechanismsnew governance scholars have studied typicallyrequire substantial cooperation between theprincipal and agent (Kagan 1994). Another isthat new governance approaches encompassmechanisms that involve entities besidesthe principal and agent. In fact, under newgovernance, changed behavior by regulated

entities may be induced as much by publicpressure as by fear of regulator-imposed sanc-tions (Mehta & Hawkins 1998, Vogel 2005).Organizational and occupational culture as wellas managerial attitudes can also play importantroles, encouraging employees to believe itis their duty to comply regardless of anypunishment associated with noncompliance(Braithwaite & Makkai 1991, Gunninghamet al. 2003, May 2004).

New governance mechanisms vary con-siderably. Some, such as management-basedregulation, more closely resemble traditionalregulatory tools but afford the regulated entitymuch more flexibility. Under management-based regulation, firms must engage in plan-ning activities associated with achieving certainsocially desirable goals (Coglianese & Lazer2003). Although management-based regulationprovides flexibility to firms’ managers in theirchoice of appropriate mitigation actions, suchan approach does still mandate the developmentof internal planning and procedures—but with-out necessarily mandating the attainment of aparticular output, as performance standards do,or the adoption of any specific actions beyondthe general planning steps, as means standardsdo. As a result, management-based regulationhas sometimes been described as “enforcedself-regulation” or “mandated self-regulation”(Bardach & Kagan 1982, Ayres & Braithwaite1992, Hutter 2001). No matter what it is called,such regulation aims to encourage good man-agement practices for dealing with regulatoryproblems—practices that include monitoringprocedures, policies for employee training, andinternal evaluation efforts (Coglianese & Lazer2003).

In addition to its use in areas such asfood safety and industrial accident preven-tion, management-based regulation has beenadopted by several states to reduce pollution(Bennear 2007). In Massachusetts, for in-stance, the Toxic Use Reduction Act (TURA)mandates that firms that handle substantialquantities of toxic chemicals analyze their use,develop plans to reduce their emission, andsubmit reports to the state environmental



agency for approval (Karkkainen 2001).Although plans must be approved by a cer-tified pollution-prevention planner, the lawdoes not require a firm to comply with itstoxic use reduction plan nor even to makeits plan available to the public. As a result,management-based regulation, at least whendesigned like TURA, operates on the premisethat directing firms to engage in the planningprocess encourages them to find ways to helpachieve social goals. By allocating decision-making responsibility to the company’smanagers, management-based regulation canboth encourage innovation and reduce internalresistance, since employees will likely viewinternally created rules as more reasonable thangovernment directives (Ayres & Braithwaite1992).

From the standpoint of the government reg-ulator, management-based regulation reducesthe costs of gathering information that wouldotherwise be needed to promulgate moretraditional rules. But while management-basedregulation seeks to make use of the infor-mational advantages that firms have over theregulator, it creates a risk that the regulator willbe taken advantage of by the firms. Businessesmay respond to management-based mandatesby doing only the bare minimum required,treating required management planning asmerely a paperwork exercise (Coglianese &Lazer 2003). Furthermore, when companiescan keep their plans private, they can also lessenany potential community or public pressuresto undertake corrective action (Gunninghamet al. 2003). Therefore, in these situations,regulators that implement management-basedmechanisms may have to augment them withother mandates, inspections, or third-partyaudits (Scholz 1984, Braithwaite 2002). Inthe end, enforcement of management-basedregulation can be problematic—both costlyand potentially ineffectual—because the sameinformational demands that may lead regu-lators to leverage firms’ own planning maysimultaneously make it hard for regulators todecide whether those firms are truly actingresponsibly (Coglianese & Lazer 2003).

Information disclosure is another new gov-ernance alternative to traditional regulation.Instead of requiring firms to produce plans,regulators simply compel companies to gatherand disclose data about their current operations(Kleindorfer & Orts 1998, Karkkainen 2001,Graham 2002). Like management-based regu-lation, information disclosure does not legallynecessitate any explicit change in firm behavior,either in terms of outcomes or in terms of spe-cific control or mitigation actions. In additionto its long association with regulating securi-ties markets (Ferrell 2007), mandatory disclo-sure has more recently become a mechanism ofsocial regulation, implemented in areas such asauto safety (Graham 2002) and consumer prod-ucts (Fung et al. 2007).

One recent example involves disclosureof restaurant inspection results ( Jin & Leslie2003). By merely requiring establishmentsto post inspection grades prominently nearrestaurant entrances, regulators seek to usepublic pressure to encourage hygiene im-provements. This may occur with informationdisclosure regulation because the disclosure“shames” entities into making improvements(Graham 2002) or facilitates media scrutiny(Hamilton 2005). If the information is readilyavailable and has clear implications for con-sumer behavior, a firm’s incentives to keepits clients will help align its behavior moreclosely to broader public goals ( Jin & Leslie2003).

Another set of new governancemechanisms—voluntary programs—are evenfurther removed from traditional formsof regulation and even more flexible thanmanagement-based regulation and informationdisclosure. Whereas both management-basedregulation and information disclosure requirethe regulated entity to do something, even ifonly to collect information, no requirementexists with voluntary regulation. Governmentsinstead seek to encourage socially desirablebehavior by offering educational resources,financial assistance, awards and certifications,and exemptions from more formal require-ments, especially for firms that have a history



of solid regulatory performance or that meetstandards of excellence.

Rewarding businesses that meet programstandards has been used extensively to addressenvironmental issues. In fact, during the pastseveral decades, the U.S. EPA has developedmore than 60 such programs, and state govern-ments have adopted dozens of similar programs(Borck et al. 2008). From 2000 to 2009, forexample, the EPA ran a program called theNational Environmental Performance Track.To join Performance Track, a facility, suchas a manufacturing plant, had to meet severalrequirements, including the execution of aformally assessed environmental managementsystem, a record of sustained environmentalcompliance, and a demonstrated commitmentboth to making ongoing environmental im-provements and to engaging with the facility’slocal community. If accepted into PerformanceTrack, a facility could remain a member forthree years, during which time it was expectedto make progress toward its commitmentsas well as to complete annual performancereports. These reports were made public boththrough the member and through the EPA.In return, firms would receive benefits suchas reduced inspections, limited regulatoryexemptions, and public recognition.

Voluntary programs such as PerformanceTrack seek to induce better behavior throughpositive rather than negative incentives (Mehta& Hawkins 1998, Vogel 2005). Unfortunately,because these programs are voluntary, it cansometimes be difficult to know whether theyactually cause companies to improve theirbehavior, or whether instead these programssimply attract facilities that already (for otherreasons) behave well. The EPA has been un-able, for example, to demonstrate that pollutionreductions made by Performance Track mem-bers came about because of the program. Thishas made the program politically vulnerable.Environmental groups, including the NaturalResources Defense Council and the Environ-mental Integrity Project, have criticized Perfor-mance Track, arguing that it amounted in effectto a public relations ploy and an abdication of

the EPA’s traditional enforcement responsi-bilities (Coglianese & Nash 2009). Apparentlyin response to this kind of criticism, the EPAshut down Performance Track in early 2009.

Although they are voluntary, programslike Performance Track still originate ingovernment action that creates and enforcesparticipation requirements. Still other newgovernance initiatives derive from actionsof the private sector. Such efforts at self-regulation typically are administered by astandards-setting organization or an industrygroup (Cheit 1990, Haufler 2001, Nash 2002).In 1996, for example, the nongovernmentalInternational Standards Organization (ISO)established a series of voluntary norms forenvironmental management called the ISO14000 standards. Since then, more than 50,000facilities have certified their environmentalmanagement systems to ISO’s standards(Prakash & Potoski 2006), many doing so vol-untarily but others only when their customersimposed contractual requirements to doso.

In addition to voluntary standards likeISO 14000 that are produced by nongovern-mental and nonprofit organizations, businessgroups themselves have created self-regulatoryprograms, such as the Sustainable ForestryInitiative of the American Forest & PaperAssociation (Meidinger 2003), the Instituteof Nuclear Power Operations created by thenuclear energy industry (Rees 1994), and theAmerican Petroleum Institute’s Strategies forToday’s Environmental Partnership for oilcompanies (Eisner 2007). Sometimes theseindustry programs or codes of conduct developas a result of a newsworthy disaster caused byone of its members (Rees 1997). Such was thecase with the Chemical Manufacturers Asso-ciation’s Responsible Care program, whichemerged with industry vigor following a 1984accident at a Union Carbide chemical facilityin India (Haufler 2001, Nash 2002). AlthoughResponsible Care did not initially require firmsto disclose information about compliance withindustry standards, the trade association dideventually respond to perceived weaknesses



in the program both by requiring membersto certify their internal health and safety sys-tems and by making members’ environmental,health, and safety records available to the public(Nash 2002).

Like voluntary government programs, ef-forts at self-regulation raise concern that suchmechanisms will become mere symbolic ges-tures. Worse still, they may have the effect oflessening the likelihood of needed governmen-tal intervention if policy makers mistakenlyconclude that industry has adequately ad-dressed the problem (King & Lenox 2000,Lyon & Maxwell 2004). Precisely becauseself-regulation can stave off more stringentgovernment regulation, members can find it totheir benefit to comply with an industry-widesystem of self-regulation (Segerson 1999). Theinterests that firms have in being membersof trade associations—such as the ability toengage in information exchange or the benefitfrom joint representation before governmentagencies—may also provide incentives tojoin organizations that have self-regulatoryrequirements. Like other new governanceinstruments, successful self-regulation requiresboth the presence of credible disciplinarymechanisms (Braithwaite 2002) and legitimatesocial pressure (Gunningham et al. 2003,Howard-Grenville et al. 2008).

Given new governance’s focus on a rangeof alternative regulatory mechanisms, many re-searchers have sought to discern whether thesevarious types of mechanisms can actually work.Attempts to ascertain empirically the impactof these tools on regulatory outcomes havebeen plagued by two related omitted-variablesconcerns. First, as already noted, the firmsthat participate in voluntary or self-regulatoryprograms may be those that would have per-formed better even in the absence of such aprogram (Gunningham et al. 2003). Second,any purported results of these programs mustbe disentangled from simultaneous factors thatmight amplify apparent program effects, suchas economic causes or the adoption of otherpolicy programs or regulatory interventions(Greenstone 2004). These sources of potential

bias need to be considered in assessing concreteexamples of new governance.

The EPA’s 33/50 program, launched in1991, provides a good example of the difficul-ties associated with determining the impact ofalternative regulatory instruments, particularlygovernment-organized voluntary programs.In inviting about 8,000 companies to mitigatetheir emissions of any of 17 designated chem-icals, the EPA hoped to reduce aggregate toxicreleases of these chemicals by 33% by 1992 and50% by 1995, relative to 1988 levels (Khanna2007). Although both goals were achieved, notall of the reductions can be attributed to the33/50 program—including, most obviously,those achieved before the program was insti-tuted (1988–1991) (Innes & Sam 2008). Severalother factors must also be considered. Theseinclude the EPA’s conventional regulations,which were adopted around the same timethat 33/50 was established and which targetedsome of the same designated chemicals. Theyalso include the Montreal Protocol’s ban onozone-depleting chemicals, which entered intoforce in 1989. Two of the 17 chemicals targetedby 33/50 were being phased out under theMontreal Protocol, and these two chemicalsalone were apparently responsible for about15%–20% of the total decline observed in33/50 chemicals (Khanna 2007). Releases ofother, similarly hazardous chemicals—butones that were excluded under the 33/50program—also fell during this period, suggest-ing that factors other than the program were atwork (Gamper-Rabindran 2006). Some studieshave attempted to address these inferentialchallenges and have indicated that the 33/50program may have contributed at most a 28%decline in targeted chemicals through 1993,although others have suggested that even thatnumber may be overstated (Khanna & Damon1999, Morgenstern & Pizer 2007).

Some researchers have nonetheless ex-pressed cautious support for the notion thatnew governance efforts like the 33/50 programcan have measurable positive impacts on reg-ulatory outcomes (Ayres & Braithwaite 1992,Braithwaite 2002). Toxic emissions in states



with management-based regulation similarto Massachusetts’ TURA are statisticallysignificantly lower than emissions in states withno comparable laws, at least for a period up tosix years after these laws are enacted (Bennear2007). Furthermore, Los Angeles County’simposition of mandatory public disclosure byrestaurants of health inspection grades has beenassociated with a 20% decline in food-relatedhospitalizations ( Jin & Leslie 2003).

Outside the context of restaurant hygiene,and perhaps also outside securities regulation,the impact of information disclosure on firmbehavior has been less clear. The same prob-lems that plague studies of new governance in-struments more generally apply to mandatorydisclosure as well. Although a substantial de-cline in toxic releases followed the creation ofthe EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory informa-tion disclosure requirement in the late 1980s(Fung & O’Rourke 2000, Thaler & Sunstein2008), this decrease has also been attributed toconventional regulation, such as the hazardousair pollutant requirements first established inthe 1990 Clean Air Act (Hamilton 2005). Arti-facts of the reporting requirements themselvesmight also explain part of the decline. Becausethe disclosure requirement applies only to facil-ities that use large amounts of toxic chemicals,companies that reduce their use to below thethreshold specified in the regulation may stillrelease emissions from the toxic chemicals buttheir level of reported emissions misleadinglydrops to zero (Bennear 2008).

For governmental and private-sectorvoluntary programs, the results are simi-larly mixed. A cross-country study of sevengovernment-sponsored voluntary programsrevealed that participants performed betterwith respect to environmental and energy-related outcomes but that the impact wascertainly not “dramatic” (Morgenstern &Pizer 2007). The establishment of ISO 14000standards appears to have had some statisticallysignificant impacts on firms’ regulatory com-pliance and pollution-control performance instudies that seek to control for selection bias,but the magnitude of the improvement of

ISO-certified facilities does not appear to bevery large (Prakash & Potoski 2006). Althoughthe self-regulatory Institute of Nuclear PowerOperations formed after the Three MileIsland nuclear accident in Pennsylvania in1979 seems to have decreased the risks ofnuclear accidents (Rees 1994), research on thechemical industry’s Responsible Care programhas suggested that participating companiesparadoxically reduced pollution more slowlythan nonparticipants (King & Lenox 2000).

Some of the differences in the effects of theseprograms may be the result of differences intheir design features or the conditions underwhich they are applied. For example, the nu-clear industry is more concentrated than thechemical industry and it interacts with just oneregulator. Concentrating regulatory account-ability in a single regulator may make it morelikely that poorly performing plants will be tar-geted with enforcement actions, thereby giv-ing firms in the nuclear industry more of anincentive to make their self-regulatory regimesuccessful (Gunningham 1995, King & Lenox2000). Perhaps differences like these help ex-plain why self-regulation works more effec-tively in some settings than in others.

As with new institutionalism, new gover-nance scholarship leaves many empirical issuesyet to be considered. Nonetheless, also likenew institutionalism, new governance analysesdo suggest some general conclusions that canguide future inquiries. First, new governanceresearch has demonstrated that alternatives totraditional forms of regulation exist and arebeing used in practice (Kagan 1994). Second,new governance research suggests that toolssuch as management-based regulation, infor-mation disclosure, and voluntary programs canand apparently do sometimes advance publicpolicy goals while reducing the costs andinformational demands on government thatare associated with more traditional means-based regulation and performance standards(Braithwaite 2002). Third, the specific char-acteristics of the firms targeted by newgovernance efforts, including their organi-zational cultures, management attitudes, and



placement in their surrounding communities,may well help one predict how effective newgovernance mechanisms will be (Gunninghamet al. 2003, May 2004). Finally, both theoryand evidence indicate that at least some ofthe impact of alternative governance toolsstems from the presence of, or threat of, moreconventional forms of regulation (Scholz 1984,King & Lenox 2000, Lyon & Maxwell 2004).

LINKING NEWINSTITUTIONALISMAND NEW GOVERNANCE

Research on regulation has undergone a re-markable transformation over the past severaldecades. Recognition of the importance of eval-uating the institutions that facilitate relation-ships between politicians and regulators, alongwith appreciation of the design of governancein the relationships between regulators andthe firms they attempt to control, has yieldedconceptual insights and new empirical findingsabout these relationships and the mechanismsof control used to moderate them. Such inquiryhas moved scholarly understanding beyond theoverly simplistic ideas of regulatory capture or“command-and-control” regulation.

At the same time, specialization by thoseinterested in either new institutionalism or newgovernance has, perhaps ironically, created asomewhat disjointed view of the politics of reg-ulatory policy. Despite all their circumstantialdifferences, the literatures on new institution-alism and new governance both describe partsof the same process of using regulatory institu-tions to control behavior that otherwise leadsto market failures, distributional concerns, orother public problems. New institutionalismis primarily concerned with the formationof policy by regulatory agencies, but newgovernance’s consideration of implementationby regulators seeking to control firms shouldflow naturally from any consideration of policymaking. To date, however, little research hasconsidered whether the institutions chosenby politicians to control regulatory agencieshave any relationship to the resulting control

mechanisms selected by the regulators them-selves. In some cases, agencies may be com-pelled to use prescriptive forms of traditionalregulation by the very legislation that createsthe regulatory body. In other cases, even ifagencies have the discretion to select new gov-ernance strategies, concerns about generatingso-called fire alarms may keep agencies fromexperimenting with greater use of alternative,new governance strategies, as may have beenthe case with the Obama administration’sdecision to abandon the EPA’s PerformanceTrack program. Oversight by legislators maywell have ripple effects on the willingness ofregulatory agencies to experiment with variousmethods at their disposal. Maybe the realpolicy ossification arises over agency effortsto experiment with more flexible regulatoryapproaches. Alternatively, perhaps in thewake of the implementation of institutionalarrangements that prevent capture, regulatoryagencies could be more inclined and trusted todeploy more flexible regulatory strategies.

The similarities between new institutional-ism and new governance provide opportunitiesfor valuable cross-fertilization between theseapproaches to regulatory research. In thisarticle, we have analyzed both literatures byfocusing on actors, mechanisms, and outcomes.Using these features, we can now identify someof the cross-cutting characteristics of newinstitutionalism and new governance thatcould provide fruitful opportunities for futureinquiry. For example, at their core, both newgovernance and new institutionalism describerelationships that are predicated on behavioralcontrol. In each, one or more organizations(principals) attempt to manage one or moreother organizations (agents) that, by definition,do not share the same goals. Furthermore, asin the classic principal-agent problem, for bothnew institutionalism and new governance, theagent’s actions impact the principal’s payoffsbut are, nonetheless, difficult or impossible forthe principal to observe (Miller 2005).

Notwithstanding new institutionalism’s andnew governance’s shared emphasis on control,scholars in each tradition have approached the



study of regulatory control in different ways.Although analyzing policy making from theprincipal-agent perspective has been funda-mental to new institutionalism, principal-agenttheory has garnered much less explicit emphasisfrom scholars of new governance. On its face,though, it would seem that principal-agent the-ory should be relevant to both the relationshipsbetween regulators and their overseers and therelationships between regulators and those theyregulate. Much as regulators implement au-thority granted to them—either directly fromthe public through an electoral process, or indi-rectly from legislative bodies—they also autho-rize or prohibit certain behaviors by regulatedentities. Regulated firms would hardly considerthemselves to be the regulators’ agents, butjust as the principal-agent problem arises be-cause agents’ interests diverge from those oftheir principals, so too does the problem ofregulation surface because the interests of reg-ulated firms obviously depart from those oftheir regulators (at least when regulators pur-sue the public-oriented goals they are chargedto achieve).

The principal-agent framework mightprove useful in understanding the rela-tively understudied tradeoffs created by newgovernance strategies that shift regulatoryaccountability from government officials toregulated firms (May 2007). Although new in-stitutionalists have long recognized the role ofdrift in designing control mechanisms (Epstein& O’Halloran 1994, Bawn 1995), the potentialfor drift by entities subject only to flexibleregulations has received much less systematicattention from those interested in new gover-nance. Yet the systematic rigor associated withimplementing the principal-agent frameworkcould undoubtedly help scholars of new gov-ernance develop more precise accounts of theinterplay between agencies and the firms theyoversee. Some initial work directly applyingprincipal-agent theory to new governance hasbegun to yield insights about when and howregulators use flexible or voluntary approaches.An analysis of the EPA’s voluntary programsshows that the agency’s effort to manage a type

of principal-agent relationship between itselfand participating firms (and, correspondingly,to protect itself from criticism from Congressand the president) actually leads the agency todesign its voluntary programs in ways that sig-nificantly constrain the reach and likely impactof these programs (Coglianese & Nash 2009).

Just as new governance might benefit fromnew institutionalism’s rigorous application ofprincipal-agent theory, new institutionalismmight benefit from new governance’s tendencyto consider firms and regulators to be engagedin cooperative interaction built to some de-gree on trust. The principal-agent structureunderlying new institutionalism assumes thatthe principal seeks to control the bargainingbetween the two parties (Moe 1987, Miller2005), whereas the simultaneous nature of reg-ulatory interaction emphasized in new gover-nance scholarship suggests a relationship pred-icated more on cooperation or coordinationthan on control (Scholz 1984). Coordinationmay well be a more suitable concept for un-derstanding the relationships between agenciesand their political overseers. Given the evidencethat bureaucrats sometimes retain considerablediscretion and autonomy from their politicaloverseers (Wilson 1989, Eisner & Meier 1990,Ringquist 1995, Spence 1997, Carpenter 2001),regulatory policy making may be a game be-tween rough equals rather than a relationshipbetween superior (and controlling) principalsand inferior (and constrained) agents.

The divergence in orientation between newinstitutionalism and new governance appears tohave affected the extent to which different ac-tors in the regulatory process have been studied.New institutionalism’s reaction against capturetheory’s almost exclusive focus on regulatorsand interest groups has usefully drawn atten-tion to political principals such as Congressand the president; however, in recent years thishas resulted in a greater neglect of agenciesthemselves and of affected interest groups (Moe1987). In contrast, new governance, both in itsreaction to the narrow focus of traditional reg-ulatory approaches and in its positioning of theagency as an approximately equal player with



the firm in the implementation game, has pro-ductively focused attention on the behavior offirms—at times neglecting the explicit study ofthe regulators.

Given new institutionalism’s emphasis onCongress, the president, and, to a lesser extent,the courts, and new governance’s emphasis onfirms, the relatively neglected party in bothresearch fields has been the regulatory agency.We are not suggesting that the bureaucracyhas not been studied intensely; on the contrary,public administration scholars and politicalscientists have studied it for many decades.Research on the bureaucracy has, among otherthings, forced scholars to appreciate that it istoo simplistic to characterize public servantsas interested only in shirking their duties ormaximizing their private gain (DiIulio 1994,Golden 2000). An impressive array of differentmotivations drive the behavior of differentgovernment regulators, some public spiritedand others more privately interested, suchas the desire to maximize their domains ofcontrol (Niskanen 1971), to maintain theirjobs (Wilson 1980), and to support theirorganizations’ missions (Wilson 1989).

Recently, researchers have begun to shifttheir focus from describing bureaucrats’ alter-native motivations to analyzing the implicationsof these multiple motives for observed behavior.As discussed, if regulators at the FDA are riskaverse, they may be more apt to approve drugsmade by companies with which they are famil-iar, a result that has the outward appearanceof capture but can still advance the public in-terest (Carpenter 2004). Alternatively, agencypersonnel may be sufficiently inspired by theorganization for which they work that they donot require incentive contracts but may be in-tensely resistant to change (Besley & Ghatak2005). The degree of agreement between theagency’s principals and the firms it regulatesmay explain why mission-oriented public ser-vants are variously either responsive or hostileto those they are supposed to serve (Prendergast2007).

Existing research on regulatory agencies,and their employees’ motivations and behavior,

represents only a small step toward understand-ing these large and varied organizations. Rightnow, these organizations largely fall into a crackbetween new institutionalism and new gover-nance. Fully explaining either overseer-agencyrelationships or agency-firm relationshipsdepends on better understanding the commonelement in these relationships: the agency.For example, knowing whether imposingprocedural requirements on agencies enhancesthe policy process or ossifies it depends ona better understanding of what motivatesregulators (Seidenfeld 2009), as that is likely tobe the linchpin of how these officials respondto the imposition of additional proceduralrequirements. Furthermore, differentiatingbetween collaborative regulatory relationshipsthat advance social goals and those that resultin capture will be aided by knowing betterhow and why regulators behave the way theydo. Some researchers are beginning to addressthese questions (Huber & McCarty 2004), butmuch work still remains if both new institution-alism and new governance are to move forward.

Opportunities also abound for improvedunderstanding of mechanisms of control in theregulatory process. Tools available to controlbehavior exhibit extensive overlap in the newinstitutionalism and new governance litera-tures, ranging from direct monitoring and con-trol to the enlistment of third parties. Althoughinformation disclosure and management-basedregulation are techniques most closely associ-ated with the new governance literature, closerinspection suggests they are not much differ-ent in spirit from the notice-and-commentprocedures and mandated benefit-cost and en-vironmental impact analyses that have garneredso much attention in the new institutionalismliterature—although those affinities have so farbeen seldom acknowledged, let alone exploitedfor explicit study. Formal directives by thepresident are much more akin to the traditionalmeans standards promulgated by regulatoryofficials, but again new institutionalism scholarshave not systematically compared this commonmechanism of control with more flexiblemethods of agency control. In overseeing



regulatory agency behavior, would politiciansdo better to regulate the means by which reg-ulatory agencies develop rules (means-basedregulation) or to focus on agencies’ regulatoryoutput (performance-based regulation)? If gov-ernment regulators sometimes should allowbusinesses to regulate themselves, when shouldCongress and the president allow regulatoryagencies to regulate themselves? These kindsof questions, which one commonly associateswith new governance, have yet to find a firmfoothold within new institutionalism.

Also deserving of greater study are the typesof consequences that are wielded in efforts tocontrol. Implementing voluntary approachesthat delegate control to the agents necessitatesincorporating rewards, in addition to punish-ments, to encourage behavior that accords withthe principal’s goals. Just as employers in theclassic principal-agent scenario have a varietyof incentives for shaping employee behavior—from strict discipline to soft suasion—so toodo regulators have available a range of con-sequences to affect the conduct of their regu-lated entities, from positive reinforcement for ajob well done to direct punishments for reg-ulatory infractions. Given how much atten-tion has been paid to positive incentives in thenew governance literature, it is striking that,with few exceptions (de Figueiredo et al. 1999),they have been rather overlooked within newinstitutionalism.

Both new institutionalism and new gov-ernance have faced perhaps their mostdaunting challenges in the study of outcomes.Researchers in both traditions have certainlyconsidered outcomes, but not always with greatrigor or, in the end, with consistent findings.As discussed above, empirical analyses seekingto discern the impacts of new governance toolssuch as information disclosure and voluntarymeasures have struggled with confoundingfactors such as omitted variables and selectionbias. Moreover, we have seen that throughoutboth new institutionalism and new governance,numerous research studies reach varyingconclusions about the outcomes of regulatoryprocedures or governance strategies. More

work is especially needed on the effects ofdifferent combinations of control mechanisms.Admittedly, scholars of new institutionalismhave recognized that when Congress hascreated effective general procedures, suchas notice-and-comment, it may need to relyless on more specific efforts at control, such aslegislative hearings (McCubbins & Schwartz1984, Weingast 1984). However, few studieshave specifically tried to assess the effects ofdifferent combinations of regulatory oversight,both specific and general. Similarly, althoughthere is reason to think that more flexible, newgovernance instruments will work better withbusiness firms when combined with at leastthe specter of stringent, traditional regulation(Scholz 1984, Segerson 1999), far too littleresearch exists on the impact of regulators’combinations of different regulatory tools onindustry behavior (Gunningham et al. 1998).

A final lesson to be drawn from a compar-ison of new institutionalism and new gover-nance may be that researchers gain importantinsights by thinking broadly about the types ofoutcomes they study. New institutionalism hastaken an interesting turn by investigating theimpact of procedures not only on the align-ment of bureaucratic behavior with congres-sional and presidential preferences, but alsoon the pace and frequency of decision mak-ing (Schuck & Elliott 1991, McGarity 1992,Coglianese 2002, Yackee & Yackee 2010). Bycomparison, few new governance analyses havetaken in outcomes beyond effectiveness at solv-ing the underlying regulatory problem and(sometimes) the economic costs incurred. Forexample, comparatively little work exists on theimpact of flexible regulatory approaches on in-novation. Do more flexible approaches, such asmanagement-based regulation, actually resultin more technological or operational innova-tion? To date, much new governance work hasbeen focused on a different issue: whether such“soft” regulatory approaches can ever achievethe main goals of regulation. Having found evi-dence that they sometimes can, researchers nowhave still stronger reasons to assess other im-pacts as well.



CONCLUSION

New institutionalism and new governanceshare many similarities, including the struc-ture of the relationships among regulatory ac-tors, the types of mechanisms available, andsome similarly mixed findings on outcomes.Despite their different areas of emphasis, bothnew institutionalism and new governance arecentrally concerned with behavioral control.Precisely because of their similarities, the twoliteratures provide possibilities for productivecross-fertilization. Now that neither literature

is truly new any longer, maintaining a firm sep-aration between them seems only to inhibitsocial scientists’ ability to acquire a more ro-bust and less context-dependent theoretical andempirical account of the regulatory process—an account that seems only more likely to re-main elusive when these approaches are pur-sued separately. Increased attention on the in-teraction between, and the integration of, newinstitutionalism and new governance may wellyield demonstrably and genuinely “new,” andmore generalizable, ways of understanding thepolitics of regulation.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings thatmight be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to Steven Balla, Robert A. Kagan, Peter May, and an anonymous reviewer forreading and commenting on an earlier draft. We also appreciate assistance by Ben Meltzer andHope Steele in preparing the manuscript.

LITERATURE CITED

Ackerman BA, Stewart RB. 1985. Reforming environmental law. Stanford Law Rev. 37(5):1333–65Ayres I, Braithwaite J. 1992. Responsive Regulation: Transcending the Deregulation Debate. New York: Oxford

Univ. PressBalla SJ. 1998. Administrative procedures and political control of the bureaucracy. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev.

92(3):663–73Bardach E, Kagan RA. 1982. Going by the Book: The Problem of Regulatory Unreasonableness. Philadelphia: Temple

Univ. PressBawn K. 1995. Political control versus expertise: congressional choices about administrative procedures.

Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 89(1):62–73Bennear LS. 2007. Are management-based regulations effective? Evidence from state pollution prevention

programs. J. Policy Anal. Manag. 26(2):327–48Bennear LS. 2008. What do we really know? The effect of reporting thresholds on inferences using environ-

mental right-to-know data. Regul. Governance 2(3):293–315Bernstein MH. 1955. Regulating Business by Independent Commission. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. PressBesley T, Ghatak M. 2005. Competition and incentives with motivated agents. Am. Econ. Rev. 95(3):616–36Borck JC, Coglianese C, Nash J. 2008. Environmental leadership programs: toward an empirical assessment

of their performance. Ecol. Law Q. 35:771–834Braithwaite J. 2002. Restorative Justice and Responsive Regulation. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. PressBraithwaite J, Makkai T. 1991. Testing an expected utility model of corporate deterrence. Law Soc. Rev.

25(1):7–40Breyer SG. 1982. Regulation and Its Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press



Carpenter DP. 2001. The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. PressCarpenter DP. 2004. Protection without capture: product approval by a politically responsive, learning regu-

lator. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 98(4):613–31Cheit RE. 1990. Setting Safety Standards: Regulation in the Public and Private Sectors. Berkeley: Univ. Calif.

PressCoglianese C. 2002. Empirical analysis and administrative law. Univ. Ill. Law Rev. 2002:1111–37Coglianese C, Lazer D. 2003. Management-based regulation: prescribing private management to achieve

public goals. Law Soc. Rev. 37(4):691–730Coglianese C, Nash J. 2009. Government clubs: theory and evidence from voluntary environmental programs.

In Voluntary Programs: A Club Theory Perspective, ed. M Potoski, A Prakash, pp. 231–58. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press

Croley SF. 2008. Regulation and Public Interests: The Possibility of Good Regulatory Government. Princeton, NJ:Princeton Univ. Press

de Burca G, Scott J. 2006. Introduction: new governance, law and constitutionalism. In Law and New Governancein the EU and the US, ed. G de Burca, J Scott, pp. 1–12. Oxford, UK: Hart

de Figueiredo RJP Jr, Spiller PT, Urbiztondo S. 1999. An informational perspective on administrative proce-dures. J. Law Econ. Org. 15(1):283–305

de Figueiredo RJP Jr, Vanden Bergh RG. 2004. The political economy of state-level administrative procedureacts. J. Law Econ. 47(2):569–88

Derthick M, Quirk PJ. 1985. The Politics of Deregulation. Washington, DC: Brookings Inst.DiIulio JD Jr. 1994. Principled agents: the cultural bases of behavior in a federal government bureaucracy.

J. Public Admin. Res. Theory 4(3):277–318Dorf MC, Sabel CF. 1998. A constitution of democratic experimentalism. Columbia Law Rev. 98(2):267–473Eisner MA. 2007. Governing the Environment: The Transformation of Environmental Regulation. Boulder, CO:

Lynne RiennerEisner MA, Meier KJ. 1990. Presidential control versus bureaucratic power: explaining the Reagan Revolution

in antitrust. Am. J. Polit. Sci. 34:269–87Epstein D, O’Halloran S. 1994. Administrative procedures, information, and agency discretion. Am. J. Polit.

Sci. 38(3):697–722Epstein D, O’Halloran S. 1996. Divided government and the design of administrative procedures: a formal

model and empirical test. J. Polit. 58(2):373–97Ferrell A. 2007. Mandatory disclosure and stock returns: evidence from the over-the-counter market. J. Legal

Stud. 36(2):213–51Fung A, Graham M, Weil D. 2007. Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency. New York: Cambridge

Univ. PressFung A, O’Rourke D. 2000. Reinventing environmental regulation from the grassroots up: explaining and

expanding the success of the Toxics Release Inventory. Environ. Manag. 25(2):115–27Furlong SR. 1997. Political influence on the bureaucracy: the bureaucracy speaks. J. Public Admin. Res. Theory

8(1):39–65Gamper-Rabindran S. 2006. Did the EPA’s voluntary industrial toxics program reduce emissions? A GIS

analysis of distributional impacts and by-media analysis of substitution. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 52(1):391–410

Golden MM. 2000. What Motivates Bureaucrats? New York: Columbia Univ. PressGraham M. 2002. Democracy by Disclosure: The Rise of Technopopulism. Washington, DC: Brookings Inst.Greenstone M. 2004. Did the Clean Air Act cause the remarkable decline in sulfur dioxide concentrations?

J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 47(3):585–611Gunningham N. 1995. Environment, self-regulation, and the chemical industry: assessing Responsible Care.

Law Policy 17(1):57–109Gunningham N. 1996. From compliance to best practice in OHS: the roles of specification, performance and

systems-based standards. Aust. J. Labor Law 9(3):221–46Gunningham N, Grabosky PN, Sinclair D. 1998. Smart Regulation: Designing Environmental Policy. Oxford,

UK: Oxford Univ. Press



Gunningham N, Kagan RA, Thornton D. 2003. Shades of Green: Business, Regulation and the Environment. PaloAlto, CA: Stanford Univ. Press

Hahn RW, Hester GL. 1989. Marketable permits: lessons for theory and practice. Ecol. Law Q. 16(2):361–406Hamilton JT. 2005. Regulation through Revelation: The Origin, Politics, and Impact of the Toxics Release Inventory

Program. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. PressHaufler V. 2001. A Public Role for the Private Sector: Industry Self-Regulation in a Global Economy. Washington,

DC: Carnegie Endow. Int. PeaceHoward-Grenville J, Nash J, Coglianese C. 2008. Constructing the license to operate: internal factors and

their influence on corporate environmental decisions. Law Policy 30(1):73–107Howell WG. 2003. Power without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

Univ. PressHowell WG, Lewis DE. 2002. Agencies by presidential design. J. Polit. 64(4):1095–114Huber JD, McCarty N. 2004. Bureaucratic capacity, delegation, and political reform. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev.

98(3):481–94Huber JD, Shipan CR, Pfahler M. 2001. Legislatures and statutory control of bureaucracy. Am. J. Polit. Sci.

45(2):330–45Huntington SP. 1952. The marasmus of the ICC: the Commission, the railroads, and the public interest. Yale

Law J. 61(4):467–509Huppes G, Kagan RA. 1989. Market-oriented regulation of environmental problems in the Netherlands. Law

Policy 11(2):215–39Hutter BM. 2001. Regulation and Risk: Occupational Health and Safety on the Railways. Oxford, UK: Oxford

Univ. PressInnes R, Sam A. 2008. Voluntary pollution reductions and the enforcement of environmental law: an empirical

study of the 33/50 program. J. Law Econ. 51(2):271–96Jin GZ, Leslie P. 2003. The effect of information on product quality: evidence from restaurant hygiene grade

cards. Q. J. Econ. 118(2):409–51Kagan E. 2001. Presidential administration. Harvard Law Rev. 114:2245–385Kagan RA. 1994. Regulatory enforcement. In Handbook of Regulation and Administrative Law, ed. DH

Rosenbloom, RD Schwartz, pp. 383–422. New York: Marcel DekkerKamieniecki S. 2006. Corporate America and Environmental Policy: How Often Does Business Get Its Way? Palo

Alto, CA: Stanford Univ. PressKarkkainen BC. 2001. Information as environmental regulation: TRI and performance benchmarking, pre-

cursor to a new paradigm? Georgetown Law J. 89(2):257–370Kelman S. 1981. Regulating America, Regulating Sweden: A Comparative Study of Occupational Safety and Health

Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT PressKhanna M. 2007. The U.S. 33/50 voluntary program: its design and effectiveness. In Reality Check: The Nature

and Performance of Voluntary Environmental Programs in the United States, Europe, and Japan, ed. RDMorgenstern, WA Pizer, pp. 15–42. Washington, DC: Resour. Future

Khanna M, Damon L. 1999. EPA’s voluntary 33/50 program: impact on toxic releases and economic perfor-mance of firms. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 37(1):1–25

King AA, Lenox MJ. 2000. Industry self-regulation without sanctions: the chemical industry’s ResponsibleCare program. Acad. Manag. J. 43(4):698–716

Kleindorfer PR, Orts EW. 1998. Informational regulation of environmental risks. Risk Anal. 18(2):155–70Kolko G. 1965. Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. PressLaffont JJ, Tirole J. 1991. The politics of government decision-making: a theory of regulatory capture.

Q. J. Econ. 106(4):1089–127Levine M, Forrence JL. 1990. Regulatory capture, public interest, and the public agenda: toward a synthesis.

J. Law Econ. Org. 6:167–98Lobel O. 2004. The renew deal: the fall of regulation and the rise of governance in contemporary legal thought.

Minnesota Law Rev. 89:342–470Lyon TP, Maxwell JW. 2004. Corporate Environmentalism and Public Policy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.

Press



March JG, Olsen JP. 1984. The new institutionalism: organizational factors in political life. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev.78(3):734–49

Mashaw JL. 1985. Prodelegation: why administrators should make political decisions. J. Law Econ. Org.1(1):81–100

Mashaw JL, Harfst DL. 1991. The Struggle for Auto Safety. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. PressMay PJ. 2004. Compliance motivations: affirmative and negative bases. Law Soc. Rev. 38(1):41–68May PJ. 2007. Regulatory regimes and accountability. Regul. Governance 1(1):8–26Mayhew DR. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. PressMcCubbins MD, Noll RG, Weingast BR. 1987. Administrative procedures as instruments of political control.

J. Law Econ. Org. 3(2):243–77McCubbins MD, Noll RG, Weingast BR. 1989. Structure and process, politics and policy: administrative

arrangements and the political control of agencies. Virginia Law Rev. 75:431–82McCubbins MD, Schwartz T. 1984. Congressional oversight overlooked: police patrols versus fire alarms.

Am. J. Polit. Sci. 28(1):165–79McGarity TO. 1992. Some thoughts on “deossifying” the rulemaking process. Duke Law J. 41:1385–462Mehta A, Hawkins K. 1998. Integrated pollution control and its impact: perspectives from industry. J. Environ.

Law 10(1):61–77Meidinger EE. 2003. The new environmental law: forest certification. Buffalo Environ. Law J. 10:211–300Melnick RS. 1983. Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act. Washington, DC: Brookings Inst.Merrill TW, Watts KT. 2002. Agency rules with the force of law: the original convention. Harvard Law Rev.

116(2):467–592Miller GJ. 2005. The political evolution of principal-agent models. Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 8:203–25Moe TM. 1982. Regulatory performance and presidential administration. Am. J. Polit. Sci. 26(2):197–224Moe TM. 1985. Control and feedback in economic regulation: the case of the NLRB. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev.

79(4):1094–116Moe TM. 1987. An assessment of the positive theory of “congressional dominance.” Legis. Stud. Q. 12(4):475–

520Moe TM. 1989. The politics of bureaucratic structure. In Can the Government Govern?, ed. JE Chubb,

PE Peterson, pp. 267–329. Washington, DC: Brookings Inst.Moe TM, Wilson SA. 1994. Presidents and the politics of structure. Law Contemp. Prob. 57:1–44Morgenstern RD. 1997. Economic Analyses at EPA: Assessing Regulatory Impact. Washington, DC: Resour.

FutureMorgenstern RD, Pizer WA. 2007. Concluding observations: What can we learn from the case studies? In

Reality Check: The Nature and Performance of Voluntary Environmental Programs in the United States, Europe,and Japan, ed. RD Morgenstern, WA Pizer, pp. 166–86. Washington, DC: Resour. Future

Nash J. 2002. Industry codes of practice: emergence and evolution. In New Tools for Environmental Protection:Education, Information, and Voluntary Measures, ed. T Dietz, PC Stern, pp. 235–52. Washington, DC:Natl. Acad.

Niskanen WA. 1971. Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Chicago: AldineO’Connell AJ. 2008. Political cycles of rulemaking: an empirical portrait of the modern administrative state.

Virginia Law Rev. 94:889–986Olson M Jr. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

Univ. PressPeltzman S. 1976. Toward a more general theory of regulation. J. Law Econ. 19:211–40Pierce RJ Jr. 1995. Seven ways to deossify agency rulemaking. Admin. Law Rev. 47:59–96Potoski M, Woods N. 2001. Designing state clean air agencies: administrative procedures and bureaucratic

autonomy. J. Public Admin. Res. Theory 11(2):203–22Prakash A, Potoski M. 2006. The Voluntary Environmentalists: Green Clubs, ISO 14001, and Voluntary Environ-

mental Regulations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. PressPrendergast C. 2007. The motivation and bias of bureaucrats. Am. Econ. Rev. 97(1):180–96Quirk PJ. 1981. Industry Influence in Federal Regulatory Agencies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. PressRees JV. 1994. Hostages of Each Other: The Transformation of Nuclear Safety since Three Mile Island. Chicago:

Univ. Chicago Press



Rees JV. 1997. Development of communitarian regulation in the chemical industry. Law Policy 19(4):477–528

Richards KR. 2000. Framing environmental policy instrument choice. Duke Environ. Law Policy Forum10(2):221–86

Ringquist EJ. 1995. Political control and policy impact in EPA’s Office of Water Quality. Am. J. Polit. Sci.39:336–63

Rose-Ackerman S. 2007. Introduction. In Economics of Administrative Law, ed. S Rose-Ackerman, pp. xiii–xxviii.Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar

Scholz JT. 1984. Cooperation, deterrence, and the ecology of regulatory enforcement. Law Society Rev.18(2):179–224

Scholz JT. 1991. Cooperative regulatory enforcement and the politics of administrative effectiveness.Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 85(1):115–36

Schuck PH, Elliott ED. 1991. To the Chevron station: an empirical study of federal administrative law. DukeLaw J. 1990:984–1077

Segerson K. 1988. Uncertainty and incentives for nonpoint pollution control. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 15:87–98

Segerson K. 1999. Mandatory versus voluntary approaches to food safety. Agribusiness 15(1):53–70Seidenfeld M. 1997. Demystifying deossification: rethinking recent proposals to modify judicial review of

notice and comment rulemaking. Texas Law Rev. 75(3):483–524Seidenfeld M. 2009. Why agencies act: a reassessment of the ossification critique of judicial review. Ohio St.

Law J. 70(2):251–321Shapiro S. 2002. Speed bumps and roadblocks: procedural controls and regulatory change. J. Public Admin.

Res. Theory 12(1):29–58Shepsle KA, Weingast BR. 1987. The institutional foundations of committee power. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev.

81(1):85–104Shipan CR. 2004. Regulatory regimes, agency actions, and the conditional nature of congressional influence.

Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 98(3):467–80Spence DB. 1997. Administrative law and agency policymaking: rethinking the positive theory of political

control. Yale J. Reg. 14:407–50Spence DB. 1999. Managing delegation ex ante: using law to steer administrative agencies. J. Legal Stud.

28(2):413–59Stavins RN. 1998. What can we learn from the grand policy experiment? Lessons from SO2 allowance training.

J. Econ. Perspect. 12(3):69–88Stavins RN. 2006. Vintage-differentiated environmental regulation. Stanford Environ. Law J. 25(1):29–63Stigler GJ. 1971. The theory of economic regulation. Bell J. Econ. Manag. Sci. 2:3–21Thaler RH, Sunstein CR. 2008. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New Haven,

CT: Yale Univ. PressThornton D, Kagan RA, Gunningham N. 2008. Compliance costs, regulation, and environmental perfor-

mance: controlling truck emissions in the US. Regul. Governance 2(3):275–92Tietenberg TH. 1990. Economic instruments for environmental regulation. Oxford Rev. Econ. Policy 6(1):17–

33Viscusi WK. 1983. Risk by Choice: Regulating Health and Safety in the Workplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

Univ. PressVogel D. 1989. Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America. New York: Basic BooksVogel D. 2005. The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility. Washington,

DC: Brookings Inst.Volden C. 2002. A formal model of the politics of delegation in a separation of powers system. Am. J. Polit.

Sci. 46(1):111–33Weingast BR. 1984. The congressional-bureaucratic system: a principal-agent perspective. Public Choice

44:147–91Weingast BR, Moran M. 1983. Bureaucratic discretion or congressional control? Regulatory policymaking

by the Federal Trade Commission. J. Polit. Econ. 91(5):765–800



Whitford AB. 2005. The pursuit of political control by multiple principals. J. Polit. 67(1):29–49Wilson JQ. 1980. The Politics of Regulation. New York: Basic BooksWilson JQ. 1989. Bureaucracy. New York: Basic BooksWood BD, Waterman RW. 1991. The dynamics of political control of the bureaucracy. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev.

85:801–28Yackee JW, Yackee SW. 2009. Divided government and US federal rulemaking. Reg. Governance 3(2):128–44Yackee JW, Yackee SW. 2010. Administrative procedures and bureaucratic performance: Is federal rule-

making “ossified”? J. Public Admin. Res. Theory 20(2):261–82


PL14-frontmatter ARI 11 April 2011 17:22

Annual Review ofPolitical Science

Volume 14, 2011Contents

A Life in Political ScienceSidney Verba � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � i

Leadership: What It Means, What It Does, and What We Want toKnow About ItJohn S. Ahlquist and Margaret Levi � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 1

Examining the Electoral Connection Across TimeJamie L. Carson and Jeffery A. Jenkins � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �25

Presidential Appointments and PersonnelDavid E. Lewis � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �47

Understanding the 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis: Lessons forScholars of International Political EconomyEric Helleiner � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �67

Presidential Power in WarWilliam G. Howell � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �89

The Politics of Regulation: From New Institutionalism to NewGovernanceChristopher Carrigan and Cary Coglianese � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 107

The New Judicial Politics of Legal DoctrineJeffrey R. Lax � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 131

The Rhetoric Revival in Political TheoryBryan Garsten � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 159

The Rhetoric of the Economy and the PolityDeirdre Nansen McCloskey � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 181

The Contribution of Behavioral Economics to Political ScienceRick K. Wilson � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 201

The Causes of Nuclear Weapons ProliferationScott D. Sagan � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 225

Network Analysis and Political ScienceMichael D. Ward, Katherine Stovel, and Audrey Sacks � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 245

v

PL14-frontmatter ARI 11 April 2011 17:22

The Big Five Personality Traits in the Political ArenaAlan S. Gerber, Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling � � � � � � � � � � 265

ClientelismAllen Hicken � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 289

Political Economy Models of ElectionsTorun Dewan and Kenneth A. Shepsle � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 311

Modeling Dynamics in Time-Series–Cross-Section PoliticalEconomy DataNathaniel Beck and Jonathan N. Katz � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 331

Voting TechnologiesCharles Stewart III � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 353

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 10–14 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 379

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 10–14 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 381

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Political Science articles may be foundat http://polisci.annualreviews.org/

vi Contents

the politics of regulation: from new institutionalism … · the politics of regulation: from new...

Documents