Collaborative Research: Effectiveness, Control and Competence in Public Agencies

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This project will enhance and test new game theoretic models of a "Competence-Control" dialectic in public administration. Specifically, it will explore how 1) supervision and intervention by political appointees; 2) supervision and intervention by elected officials; and 3) opportunities for promotion into policy making positions affect the propensities of bureaucrats to develop certain types of policy and policy-implementation expertise. As part of this project, the research team will develop a new, publicly available database of federal agencies that includes information on political environments, agency structure, expertise investment, and agency performance in order to test hypotheses about tradeoffs between political interventions and agency competence. Results from this work will provide insight into how political interactions with government agencies affect the expertise, competence, and, ultimately, performance of those agencies. In the public arena, this is a crucial question: democratic government must be responsive to political direction, yet a government without expertise lacks the capacity to deliver effective services to its citizens. The insights will also matter to non-public organizations, as tradeoffs between interventions by principals and implementations by agents are common to many other types of organization.