In this study I reassess a set of fundamental organization forms (unitary, divisional, and matrix) as agenda-setting and political governance systems. My method of analysis is based on how political scientists study agendas in committees. Specifically, I first recount that moving from a...

This paper addresses the intersection of coalition formation, judicial strategies, and regulatory politics. Coalitions are a low-cost means for assembling minority interests into more powerful blocs. However, in most cases in regulatory politics, judicial strategies are high cost efforts. I...

Summary Efforts to explain corruption have increased dramatically in recent years. The interest stems from the increasing weight economists assign to corruption when explaining economic growth. A great deal of the research focuses on how political institutions influence perceptions of...

This study addresses institutional representation in legislative delegations through the decomposition of the southern U.S. House delegation over time. Linear first-order difference equations are calculated to show the shift from the Solid South and the disintegration of Democratic dominance....

Few issues are more contentious for local communities than industrial pollution. When local industries pollute, lawmakers and regulators must balance two primary concerns: economic prosperity and the environment. The role of political pressure is well-documented in environmental policy. What is...

The canonical principal-agent problem involves a risk-neutral principal who must use incentives to motivate a risk-averse agent to take a costly, unobservable action that improves the principal’s payoff. The standard solution requires an inefficient shifting of risk to the agent. This...

In contrast to principal-agency theory, the possibility of the political control of the bureaucracy depends on bureaucratic structure. In this article, I argue that the functional decentralization of responsibility and authority for policy formulation and implementation involves a net loss of...

One important effect of price shocks in the United States has been increased political attention paid to the structure and performance of oil and natural gas markets, along with some governmental support for energy conservation. This paper describes how price changes helped lead the emergence of...

National statistical systems are the enterprises tasked with collecting, validating and reporting societal attributes. These data serve many purposes - they allow governments to improve services, economic actors to traverse markets, and academics to assess social theories. National statistical...