Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T11:48:22.575Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Regulatory Enforcement in a Federalist System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1986

John T. Scholz  and
Feng Heng Wei
John T. Scholz
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Feng Heng Wei
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Federal agencies integrate federal, state, and local political demands at the operational level of service delivery. They balance conflicting political demands and task requirements as they attempt to develop feasible enforcement routines capable of attracting support and resources in multiple arenas without undermining central support for budgetary resources and statutory authority. Our regression analysis of annual enforcement data from 1976 through 1983 for all 50 states indicates that even the relatively isolated enforcement procedures of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration respond significantly to state-level political and task differences. Enforcement activities responded most consistently to daily enforcement contacts with interest groups. State differences in task conditions—particularly workplace accident and unemployment rates—also elicited instrumental responses, while differences in the party and ideology of elected officials elicited more symbolic actions. State agencies, with their smaller size and greater flexibility, were even more responsive than the federal agency to political and task differences. This integrative function of bureaucracy needs further attention in democratic theory.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 80 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 1249 - 1270
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. 1984. Regulatory Federalism: Policy Process, Impact and Reform. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Allison, Graham T. 1971. Essence of Decision. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Bardach, Eugene. 1977. The Implementation Game. Boston: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bardach, Eugene, and Kagan, Robert A.. 1982. Going By the Book: The Problem of Regulatory Unreasonableness. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Bendor, Johnathan, Taylor, Serge, and Van Gaalen, Roland. 1985. Bureaucratic Expertise versus Legislative Authority: A Model of Deception and Monitoring in Budgets. American Political Science Review, 79:1041–60.10.2307/1956247CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berk, Richard A., Hoffman, Dannie M., Maki, Judith E., Rauma, David, and Wong, Herbert. 1979. Estimation Procedures for Pooled Cross-Sectional and Time Series Data. Evaluation Quarterly, 3:385–410.10.1177/0193841X7900300304CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, Marver. 1955. Regulating Business by Independent Commission. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400878789CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carson, W. G. 1970. White Collar Crime and the Enforcement of Factory Legislation. British Journal of Criminology, 10:383–98.10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a046261CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Centaur Associates. 1985. The Impact of OSHA's Recent Enforcement Activities. Washington, D.C.: Centaur Associates.Google Scholar
Chubb, John E. 1985. The Political Economy of Federalism. American Political Science Review, 79:994–1015.10.2307/1956245CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cnudde, Charles F., and McCrone, Donald J.. 1969. Party Competition and Welfare Policies in the American States. American Political Science Review, 63:858–66.10.1017/S0003055400258620CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diver, Colin S. 1980. A Theory of Regulatory Enforcement. Public Policy, 28:257–99.Google Scholar
Dye, Thomas R. 1969. Income Inequality and American State Politics. American Political Science Review, 63:157–62.10.1017/S0003055400261546CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, Keith. 1984. Environment and Enforcement. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, Keith, and Thomas, John M., eds. 1984. Enforcing Regulation. Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing.10.1007/978-94-017-5297-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, Edward T. Jr., 1979. Competition, Constituencies, and Welfare Policies in American States. American Political Science Review, 73:414–29.10.2307/1954888CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Bryan D. 1981. Party and Bureaucracy: The Influence of Intermediary Groups on Urban Policy Service Delivery. American Political Science Review, 75:688–700.10.2307/1960961CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Bryan D., Greenburg, Saadia R., Kaufman, Clifford, and Drew, Joseph. 1977. Bureaucratic Response to Citizen-Initiated Contacts: Environmental Enforcement in Detroit. American Political Science Review, 71:148–65.10.1017/S0003055400259352CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Carol Adaire. 1984. Agency Enforcement and Company Compliance Behavior: An Empirical Study of the OSHA Asbestos Standard. Unpublished Manuscript.Google Scholar
Kagan, Robert A. 1978. Regulatory Justice: Implementing a Wage-Price Freeze. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Kagan, Robert A., and Scholz, John T.. 1984. The “Criminology” of the Corporation and Regulatory Enforcement Strategies. In Enforcing Regulation, pp. 67–96. See Hawkins and Thomas 1984.10.1007/978-94-017-5297-8_4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katzmann, Robert A. 1981. Regulatory Bureaucracy: The Federal Trade Commission and Antitrust Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Herbert. 1960. The Forest Ranger: A Study in Administrative Behavior. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Kelman, Steven. 1982. Regulating America, Regulating Sweden. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kemp, Kathleen. 1985. Political Parties, Industrial Structures and Political Support for Regulation. In Eyestone, Robert, ed., Public Policy Formation. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Pp. 151–83.Google Scholar
Kmenta, Jan. 1971. Elements of Econometrics. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Levy, Frank, Meltsner, Arnold J., and Wildavsky, Aaron. 1974. Urban Outcomes. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520315303CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lineberry, Robert. 1977. Equality and Public Policy: The Distribution of Municipal Public Services. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore J. 1969. The End of Liberalism. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Manley, John F. 1970. The Politics of Finance. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Marlow, Michael L. 1981. The Impact of Different Government Units in the Regulation of the Workplace Environment. Public Choice, 37:349–56.10.1007/BF00138255CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marlow, Michael L. 1982. The Economics of Enforcement: The Case of OSHA. Journal of Economics and Business, 34:165–71.10.1016/0148-6195(82)90031-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marvel, Mary K. 1982. Implementation and Safety Regulation: Variations in Federal and State Administration under OSHA. Administration and Society, 14:15–33.10.1177/009539978201400102CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCaffrey, David. 1982. OSHA and the Politics of Health Regulation. New York: Plenum Press.10.1007/978-1-4615-9287-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCaffrey, David. 1983. An Assessment of OSHA's Recent Effects on Injury Rates. Journal of Human Resources, 18:131–46.10.2307/145661CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCubbins, Mathew D. 1985. The Legislative Design of Regulatory Structure. American Journal of Political Science, 29:721–48.10.2307/2111178CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCubbins, Mathew D., and Schwartz, Thomas. 1984. Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols versus Fire Alarms. American Journal of Political Science, 28:165–79.10.2307/2110792CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendeloff, John. 1979. Regulating Safety: An Economic and Political Analysis of Occupational Safety and Health Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mitnick, Barry M. 1980. The Political Economy of Regulation: Creating, Designing and Removing Regulatory Forms. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Morehouse, Sarah McCally. 1981. State Politics, Parties and Policy. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Moe, Terry M. 1982. Regulatory Performance and Presidential Administration. American Journal of Politics, 26:197–224.10.2307/2111036CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moe, Terry M. 1985a. Control and Feedback in Economic Regulation: The Case of the NLRB. American Political Science Review, 79:1094–1116.10.2307/1956250CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moe, Terry M. 1985b. Congressional Control of the Bureaucracy: An Assessment of the Positive Theory of “Congressional Dominance.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, LA.Google Scholar
Neustadt, Richard E. 1980. Presidential Power. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Google Scholar
Niskanen, William A. 1971. Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Nivola, Pietro. 1976. Municipal Agency: A Study of the Housing Inspectorial Service in Boston. Ph.D. diss., Department of Political Science, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Noll, Roger G., and Owen, Bruce M.., eds. 1983. The Political Economy of Deregulation. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute.Google Scholar
Parks, Richard W. 1967. Efficient Estimation of a System of Regression Equations When Disturbances Are both Serially and Contemporaneously Correlated. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 62:500–09.10.1080/01621459.1967.10482923CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pressman, Jeffrey, and Wildavsky, Aaron. 1976. Implementation. Boston: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Scholz, John T. 1982. State Regulatory Reform and Federal Regulation. Policy Studies Review, 1:347–59.10.1111/j.1541-1338.1981.tb00417.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scholz, John T. 1984. Cooperation, Deterrence, and the Ecology of Regulatory Enforcement. Law and Society Review, 18:601–46.10.2307/3053402CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selznick, Phillip. 1966. TVA and the Grassroots. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Sharkansky, Ira, and Hofferbert, Richard. 1969. Dimensions of State Politics, Economics and Public Policy. American Political Science Review, 63:867–79.10.1017/S0003055400258632CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shover, Neil, Lynxwiler, John, and Clelland, Donald. 1983. Developing a Regulatory Bureaucracy: The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice.Google Scholar
Silbey, Susan. 1984. The Consequences of Responsive Regulation. In Enforcing Regulation, pp. 145–68. See Hawkins and Thomas 1984.Google Scholar
Smith, Robert S. 1976. The Occupational Safety and Health Act: Its Goals and Its Achievements. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute.Google Scholar
Stigler, George J. 1970. The Optimal Enforcement of Laws. Journal of Political Economy, 78:526–36.10.1086/259646CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stimson, James A. 1985. Regression in Space and Time. American Journal of Political Science, 29: 914–47.10.2307/2111187CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Frank J., and Schicchitano, Michael J.. 1985. State Implementation Effort and Federal Regulatory Policy: The Case of Occupational Safety and Health. Journal of Politics, 47:687–703.10.2307/2130903CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thompson, James D. 1967. Organizations in Action. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Viscusi, W. Kip. 1979. The Impact of Occupational Safety and Health Regulation. Bell Journal of Economics, 10:117–40.10.2307/3003322CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, Suzanne. 1977. Decision to Prosecute. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry R., and Moran, Mark J.. 1983. Bureaucratic Discretion or Congressional Control: Regulatory Policymaking by the Federal Trade Commission. Journal of Political Economy, 91:765–800.10.1086/261181CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Bruce A., and Matheny, Albert R.. 1984. Testing Theories of Social Regulation: Hazardous Waste Regulation in the American States. Journal of Politics, 46:428–58.10.2307/2130969CrossRefGoogle Scholar