Rule Significance and Interbranch Competition in Rulemaking Processes

Fang-Yi Chiou and Jonathan Klingler

American Political Science Review, 2023, vol. 117, issue 4, 1506-1521

Abstract: As one of the most powerful executive actions, rulemaking by U.S. federal agencies involves all three branches and governs many issue areas, but some rules are routine and others are highly consequential. We build a new rule universe composed of nearly forty-thousand considered rules listed in the Unified Agenda since Spring 1995 and employ an item response model with 15 raters to generate integrated estimates of rule significance for each of the rules. To showcase the usefulness of this new measure, we propose and test competing models on agency productivity, finding that the president and Congress influence rule promulgation in a nuanced way. The president is dominant when agencies consider moderately noteworthy rules, and Congress has more influence over the most significant regulations, suggesting that the branches’ influences vary with the consequential nature of the issues considered.

Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:117:y:2023:i:4:p:1506-1521_22

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