Learning While Governing
Expertise and Accountability in the Executive Branch
336 pages
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4 line drawings, 4 tables
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6 x 9
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© 2012
Although their leaders and staff are not elected, bureaucratic agencies have the power to make policy decisions that carry the full force of the law. In this groundbreaking book, Sean Gailmard and John W. Patty explore an issue central to political science and public administration: How do Congress and the president ensure that bureaucratic agencies implement their preferred policies?
The assumption has long been that bureaucrats bring to their positions expertise, which must then be marshaled to serve the interests of a particular policy. In Learning While Governing, Gailmard and Patty overturn this conventional wisdom, showing instead that much of what bureaucrats need to know to perform effectively is learned on the job. Bureaucratic expertise, they argue, is a function of administrative institutions and interactions with political authorities that collectively create an incentive for bureaucrats to develop expertise. The challenge for elected officials is therefore to provide agencies with the autonomy to do so while making sure they do not stray significantly from the administration’s course. To support this claim, the authors analyze several types of information-management processes. Learning While Governing speaks to an issue with direct bearing on power relations between Congress, the president, and the executive agencies, and it will be a welcome addition to the literature on bureaucratic development.
William G. Howell, University of Chicago
“For the creativity of its design, the importance of its subject matter, and the depth of its analysis, Learning While Governing is sure to make a splash in the discipline. Pairing formal theory with American political development, Sean Gailmard and John W. Patty dish up a rich array of insights into the development of policy expertise within the executive branch. Most importantly, they show that the development and transmittal of expertise is unavoidably haphazard, as the institutional solutions to some problems of governance unavoidably exacerbate others.”
David E. Lewis, Vanderbilt University
“This book tackles big questions in governance: how to recruit expertise, how to cultivate it, and how to keep it. Sean Gailmard and John W. Patty deftly connect political choices about the structure of institutions with the provision of government expertise in a theoretically rich and accessible work.”
Sidney M. Milkis, University of Virginia
“Learning While Governing offers an entirely fresh perspective on the transformation of the executive office into a full-blown institution. Pushing against the received wisdom that the expansion of the presidency undermines constitutional forms, Sean Gailmard and John W. Patty show how an executive-centered administrative state emerged from the complicated dance of executive-congressional relations. Cautiously optimistic about the incentives for responsible governance ingrained in America’s complex system of checks and balances, the book offers a compelling formula for the construction of a representative bureaucracy. Strongly recommended for anyone seriously interested in the historical development of political institutions in the United States.”
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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Political Science: American Government and Politics | Public Policy
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