Agencies vary over which individuals have final authority to make decisions. But this authority differs in two important ways. While officials with final authority can be either political appointees or civil servants they can also be located anywhere within the agency’s hierarchy. This begs the question of whether it is the nature of political appointees or the workflow of actions through an agency that are more responsible for inserting politics into agency decisions. This study addresses this question by employing new institutional data on all state and local air agencies to examine how decision-making authority competes or reinforces political appointee’s efforts to shape agency actions. Our empirical exercise centers on the regulation of 16,000 major air pollution sources under the U.S. Clean Air Act. Our results suggest that while political appointees may influence regulatory output, centralized workflow, regardless of party, impedes output.

中文翻译：

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指挥链与谁在指挥：结构、政治和监管执行

对于哪些个人拥有最终决策权，各机构各不相同。但这种权威在两个重要方面有所不同。虽然拥有最终权力的官员可以是政治任命者或公务员，但他们也可以位于该机构等级制度中的任何地方。这就引出了一个问题，即是政治任命的性质还是通过机构的行动流程更负责将政治纳入机构决策。本研究通过使用有关所有州和地方航空机构的新机构数据来解决这个问题，以检查决策机构如何竞争或加强政治任命者为塑造机构行动所做的努力。我们的实证研究以美国《清洁空气法》对 16,000 个主要空气污染源的监管为中心。