The Conditional Nature of Administrative Responsiveness to Public Opinion

1
Table 1. The Federal Communication Commission
Responsiveness to Public Opinion
The Conditional Nature of Administrative
Responsiveness to Public Opinion
Julia Rabinovich
Northwestern University
Comparative Static
Abstract
Statistical Model for Representation as a
Distance
Central to the study of democratic politics is
the study of the relationship between public
opinion and policy. Most public opinion-policy
nexus studies have focused on the electoral
connection between citizens and their elected
representatives, while paying little attention to
the relationship between public opinion and
policy-making delegated to and implemented by
executive agencies (e.g., Page and Shapiro 1983,
1992 Monroe 1979, 1998 Erikson, MacKuen and
Stimson 2003). Alternatively, administrative
politics scholars have focused almost exclusively
on the role of political elites (elected
politicians and interest groups), and have rarely
included the preferences of the general public in
their analyses e.g., McCubbins, Noll and Weingast
1987, Weingast and Moran 1983, McCubbins and
Schwartz 1984, Shipan 2004) . To address the
limitations of these two literatures, this study
examines the direct link between the preferences
and opinions of the general public and
administrative policy-making in the United States
over a period of more than 30 years. I develop a
new theoretical approach to studying the general
publics role in the policymaking process, one
that accounts not only for the electoral
connection between the public and elected
representatives, but also for the interactions
between political institutions such as Congress,
the President and executive agencies. I contend
that congressional oversight the primary
mechanism connecting legislative and executive
institutions affects administrative
policy-making and, consequently, plays a critical
role in shaping policy responsiveness to public
opinion. My theoretical model suggests that,
contrary to conventional wisdom, congressional
policy-making that closely reflects citizens
preferences does not necessarily translate into
administrative policy responsiveness to the
general publics wishes. In some cases,
legislative responsiveness indeed induces
administrative responsiveness however, under
certain political circumstances, such as a
divided government, greater legislative
responsiveness to public opinion can result in
less responsiveness from executive agencies.
.
Two views of representation 1. Responsiveness as
a movement of public opinion and policy in the
same direction. This assumption is prevalent in
the legislative responsiveness literature. The
basic logic behind this assumption is that
changes in public opinion (that precede changes
in policy) should be followed by changes in
policy in the same direction. To devise
comparative static for this notion of
responsiveness, I am solving for
each one of the equilibrium regimes.
Graphically Responsiveness Nonresponsivenes
s Adverse responsiveness Note The
location of public opinion has no effect on the
extent or the direction of responsiveness. 2.
Responsiveness as a change in the distance
between publics preferences and policy. Under
this notion of responsiveness, I am analyzing the
impact of legislative responsiveness, which is
represented in the legislatures utility function
as a, on the absolute distance between publics
preferences and policy, i.e. I analyze Note a
is a weight that legislature assigns to public
opinion in any given point in time (i.e.
legislative responsiveness to public
opinion) Graphically Nonresponsiveness Conve
rgence Divergence
Yt-Public Opinion ß0 ß1convergencelegislati
ve responsiveness ß2divergencelegislati
ve responsiveness ß3nonresponsivenessle
gislative responsiveness ßiXi,t et where Yt
is a measure of administrative policy output at
time t. Convergence, divergence and
nonresponsiveness are dummy variables set equal
to one when the condition is present and zero
otherwise. Xi,t is a vector of control
variables, including committee preferences,
agency preferences and appropriation data and et
is an error term.
Data
The estimation of the empirical model using
theoretical predictions requires a measure of a
(X(P,NP) NP)/P-NP. However, while X(P,NP) can be
estimated using legislative voting behavior (ADA
scores in this study), there are no available
measures of legislative preferences independent
of public opinion. In this study I estimate
legislative responsiveness as a difference
between the actual voting behavior of the
legislature and the one predicted by public
opinion. Legislative responsivenessADA
score-ADA score predicted by Policy Mood
Results FCC Policymaking 1966-1996
Theoretical Model
The model includes four actors a legislature
(L), a committee with jurisdiction over the
agencys policy realm (C), an agency (A) and the
general public (P). - One dimensional, full
information model The payoff functions The
decisive member of the agency uA(x) -(x
A)2 The decisive member of the oversight
committee uC(x) -(x C)2 The decisive member
of the legislature uL(x) -a (x P)2 (1-
a)(x NP)2 Notice that what sets this model
apart from other models is that I divide
legislatures utility function into two separate
components the utility derived from serving the
public and the utility from other sources such as
legislators own preferences, interest groups
pressure, etc. The Sequence of Actions Stage
1 The agency makes a policy proposal (x). Stage
2 In response to the agencys proposal, the
committee either introduces a bill (b) or
refrains from introducing a bill (gatekeeping).
If the committee decides not to propose a bill,
the game ends and the outcome is the originally
proposed policy (x). Stage 3 If the committee
decides to introduce a bill to the floor, the
legislature can either accept, reject or amend
the proposed legislation. If the legislature
rejects the legislation, the outcome is the
originally proposed policy (x). If the
legislature accepts the legislation, the outcome
is the committees proposal (c). If the
legislature decides to amend the legislation, it
will set it at its ideal policy (assuming open
rule) and the final outcome would be an amended
bill (b). Equilibrium strategies (SPE) A, if
A (min (X (P, NP), C(X (P,NP)), max (X (P, NP),
C(X (P,NP))) regime 1 X max (X (P, NP), C(X
(P,NP), if A max - regime 2 min (X (P,
NP), C(X (P,NP), if A min - regime 3 where X
(P, NP) argmaxx?RUL(x)aP (1-a)NP and C (X
(P,NP)) 2C X(P,NP)
Conclusions

• The theoretical results indicate that
  legislative responsiveness does not always
  translate into administrative responsiveness
• especially when the executive and the
  legislature are far apart and publics
  preferences are very close to either one of the
  institutions
• The theory directs us to reconsider the
  specification of the policy responsiveness to the
  public opinion
• On the one hand, we might underestimate
  responsiveness if we do not account for the
  possibility of movement of policy and public
  opinion in the same direction
• On the other hand, we might overestimate
  responsiveness if we do not account for the
  various conditions for responsiveness
• A need for further empirical investigation

The main difference between the two views of
responsiveness is that the responsiveness as a
distance view picks up the possibility that
public opinion and policy move toward each other.
The situation that would have been classified as
adverse responsiveness by the responsiveness as
a movement in the same direction view