As the bureaucratic policymaking process has frequently deviated from conventional procedures contemplated by administrative law statutes, recent research suggests that bureaucrats strategically use rulemaking procedures to pursue their own goals and circumvent political interventions. However, the literature has often neglected implementation issues that bureaucrats confront in the policymaking process. Building on a bureaucratic reputation perspective that explicitly recognizes bureaucrats’ concern for implementation failure and reputational damage, this study examines when and why U.S. federal agencies issue rules without prior notice and comment instead of proposing rules through the conventional notice-and-comment process. Using logistic regressions with fixed effects, based on over 16,000 rules published between 2000 and 2020, we find that agencies are more likely to solicit prior public comment when making more complex and stringent rules. However, they tend to bypass it when making new rules and joint rules with other agencies. This study also shows that the positive effect of rule stringency on agencies’ use of the conventional notice-and-comment process tends to be more pronounced in agencies with higher proportions of professional bureaucrats. Overall, our findings indicate that bureaucrats’ choices of rulemaking procedures might be shaped by their incentives to prevent implementation failure and preserve agency reputation, which can be compatible with the norms of democratic governance.

中文翻译：

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程序性政治为了什么？官僚声誉和民主治理


由于官僚主义的决策过程经常偏离行政法法规所设想的常规程序，最近的研究表明，官僚们战略性地使用规则制定程序来追求自己的目标并规避政治干预。然而，文献往往忽视了官僚在政策制定过程中面临的实施问题。本研究以官僚声誉的角度为基础，明确认识到官僚对实施失败和声誉损害的担忧，研究了美国联邦机构何时以及为何在没有事先通知和评论的情况下发布规则，而不是通过传统的通知和评论流程提出规则。使用具有固定效应的 logistic 回归，基于 2000 年至 2020 年间发布的 16,000 多条规则，我们发现各机构在制定更复杂和严格的规则时更有可能事先征求公众意见。然而，在制定新规则和与其他机构联合规则时，他们往往会绕过它。这项研究还表明，规则严格性对机构使用传统通知和评论流程的积极影响在专业官僚比例较高的机构中往往更为明显。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，官僚对规则制定程序的选择可能受到他们防止实施失败和维护机构声誉的激励措施的影响，这可能与民主治理的规范相兼容。