Replication Data for: Presidential Investment in the Administrative State

Given the U.S. president’s authority over the administrative state, one may expect that the chief executive invests great effort to build capacity within agencies to implement the tasks Congress and the president have assigned to them. The empirical data shows that this not the case. In this paper we explain how presidents strategically invest in administrative capacity, noting that presidents have few incentives to invest effort in capacity building in most agencies. We test our account with two analyses using new observational and survey data. First, we examine the time it took for the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations to nominate individuals to appointed positions. We find that presidents prioritize appointments to policy positions over management positions and that nominations occur sooner in agencies that implement presidential priorities. Second, we examine the responses of federal executives to the 2020 Survey on the Future of Government Service to see whether perceptions of presidential investment in administrative capacity match those anticipated by our predictions. We find that federal executives perceive higher levels of investment when the agency is a priority of the president and when the agency shares the president’s ideological leanings. We conclude by drawing out implications for our understanding of the modern presidency, particularly presidential reputation, and government performance.

鉴于美国总统对行政国家（administrative state）享有管辖权，人们或可认为，这位行政首长会投入大量精力推动各机构内部能力建设，以落实国会与总统赋予各机构的任务。但经验数据表明，实际情况并非如此。本文阐释了总统如何战略性地投入行政能力建设，并指出，在多数机构中，总统几乎缺乏开展能力建设的动力。我们通过两项基于全新观测数据与调查数据的分析，对本文提出的理论阐释进行实证检验。首先，我们考察了布什、奥巴马、特朗普及拜登政府提名官员至委任职位所耗费的时长。研究发现，总统优先填补政策岗位而非管理岗位的委任空缺，且在落实总统优先施政议程的机构中，提名流程推进更为迅速。其次，我们分析联邦行政人员对《2020年政府服务未来调查》的作答情况，以验证他们对总统行政能力建设投入的认知是否契合我们的理论预测。结果显示，当某机构属于总统的优先施政事项，且该机构与总统的意识形态倾向一致时，联邦行政人员会感知到更高水平的行政能力建设投入。最后，本文通过引申该研究的相关启示，为我们理解现代总统制——尤其是总统声誉——与政府绩效提供了新的视角。