Adverse Selection, Political Parties, and Policy Delegation in the American Federal System

George A. Krause and Ann O'M. Bowman

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2005, vol. 21, issue 2, 359-387

Abstract: We extend research on the nexus of federalism, policy delegation, and American politics by asserting that partisan politics at both the national and subnational levels of government matter when explaining variations in U.S. federal intergovernmental policymaking. Specifically, we maintain that national level institutions not only respond to the partisan composition of state level institutions in a direct manner, but also use this information as a means to mitigate adverse selection problems that they confront when making policy in a federal system. Using a novel data set of 459 U.S. public laws spanning the 1947--98 period, we uncover support for the importance of vertical partisan institutional relationships on policy delegation in American federalism. The conclusions drawn from this study highlight the importance attached to vertical institutional relationships for understanding policy delegation by showing how state governments influence the balance of policymaking authority in the United States, even when formal decision-making authority resides at the national level. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewi021 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:21:y:2005:i:2:p:359-387

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization is currently edited by Andrea Prat

More articles in The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().