| Abstract: |
Legislators can benefit from delegation to executive agencies, but they have
limited tools to hold these agencies accountable. One key tool is 'power of
the purse': control of the agency's appropriations. We present a theory that
incorporates heterogeneous legislator preferences over bureaucratic activity,
legislative budgetary control, and endogenous bureaucratic policy discretion
to understand legislative incentives when appropriating funds to bureaucratic
agencies. Our theory provides several insights: first, legislators' induced
preferences over budgets are only partially determined by their policy
preferences. Second, in some cases a legislator opposed to the direction that
the agency will take policy nevertheless supports increased funding for that
agency, which we refer to as the legislator facing cross-pressure. Finally,
"strange bedfellows" coalitions emerge in which legislators with competing
policy preferences may nonetheless agree on their most-desired budget level
for the agency. |