Federal employee unionization and presidential control of the bureaucracy: Estimating and explaining ideological change in executive agencies

Jowei Chen and Tim Johnson
Additional contact information
Jowei Chen: Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, USA
Tim Johnson: Atkinson Graduate School of Management, Willamette University, USA

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2015, vol. 27, issue 1, 151-174

Abstract: We present a formal model explaining that US presidents strategically unionize federal employees to reduce bureaucratic turnover and ‘anchor’ the ideological composition of like-minded agency workforces. To test our model’s predictions, we advance a method of estimating bureaucratic ideology via the campaign contributions of federal employees; we then use these bureaucratic ideal point estimates in a comprehensive empirical test of our model. Consistent with our model’s predictions, our empirical tests find that federal employee unionization stifles agency turnover, suppresses ideological volatility when the president’s partisanship changes, and occurs more frequently in agencies ideologically proximate to the president.

Keywords: Bureaucracy; ideological measurement; bureaucratic ideal points; unionization; executive politics; public administration and management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629813518126 (text/html)

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:sae:jothpo:v:27:y:2015:i:1:p:151-174

DOI: 10.1177/0951629813518126

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().