Personnel is Policy: Delegation and Political Misalignment in the Rulemaking Process

Luca Bellodi, Massimo Morelli, Jörg L. Spenkuch, Edoardo Teso, Matia Vannoni and Guo Xu

Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge

Abstract: We combine comprehensive data on the rulemaking activities of the U.S. federal government with individual-level personnel and voter registration records to study delegation and principal-agent frictions in the development of new regulations. We present three main results. First, even important pieces of new regulation are frequently delegated to career bureaucrats who are politically misaligned with the president. Second, rules that are overseen by misaligned regulators take systematically longer to complete, are more verbose, generate more negative feedback from the public, and are more likely to be challenged in court. Third, in assigning regulators to rules, agency leaders of-ten face a sharp trade-off between political alignment and expertise. Agency frictions notwithstanding, they tend to resolve this trade-off in favor of expertise.

Date: 2026-02-28
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