Political institutions, public management, and bureaucratic performance: political-bureaucratic interactions and their effect on policy outcomes

摘要

This project examines the determinants of political responsiveness tobureaucratic performance. A large literature exists that has examined how bureaucraticagencies are responsive to political institutions. While policy theory contends that thereverse is also true ? that is, political institutions engage in political assessment ofpolicies ? there is little empirical literature examining this important question. Indeed,research in public administration suggests that political responsiveness only occursfollowing massive bureaucratic failure or policy crises. Using data from Texas publicschool districts, this dissertation explores the role of policy salience in determining thelikelihood of political responsiveness to bureaucratic outputs and outcomes.The findings suggest that issue salience is the key determinant of politicalinvolvement in administration. Furthermore, this project incorporates the concepts ofdescriptive and substantive representation in examining these questions. The resultsindicate that policy salience depends on the composition of the interests of politicalinstitutions. Furthermore, race and ethnicity work to shape those preferences and, inturn, condition what policy makers deem as salient. The findings suggest that descriptively unrepresentative political institutions are less likely to be responsive to theneeds of those who are not represented (e.g. Latino students). Thus, representation iscentral to political responsiveness when the policy outputs or outcomes in question arenot universally salient.Finally, this project examines whether political institutions can influence policyoutcomes, and, more importantly, what factors ? environmental, organizational,managerial ? either facilitate or constrain the political influence of elected officials. Thefindings suggest that goal and preference alignment between political institutions andbureaucratic agencies is critical in enhancing political influence ? a finding that iscommonly argued in formal models of political control, but rarely tested empirically.This research also finds that bureaucratic power or independence can work to hinderpolitical influence of policy outputs.