Replication Data for: Bureaucratic Autonomy and the Policymaking Capacity of United States Agencies

Despite a renewed interest in the health of the U.S. administrative state, the absence of meaningful time-series measures of bureaucratic capacity hinders the testing of core theories of bureaucratic and executive politics. Using over 190 million personnel records, I estimate 5,590 yearly policymaking-capacity scores for 261 unique agencies from 1998 to 2021. These measures provide an invaluable tool as either an independent or dependent variable in studies of administrative policymaking. To illustrate the value of these measures, I test longstanding theories about the relationship between bureaucratic autonomy and capacity. In contrast with emerging survey research, this study demonstrates that agencies with higher levels of structural independence have higher levels of policymaking capacity.

尽管学界重新关注美国行政国家（U.S. administrative state）的运行状况，但缺乏有效衡量官僚能力（bureaucratic capacity）的时间序列测度（time-series measures），这一缺陷阻碍了官僚政治与行政政治核心理论的实证检验。本研究依托超过1.9亿条人事记录，对1998年至2021年间261家不同机构的政策制定能力进行年度评分，最终得到总计5590组年度政策制定能力得分。该测度指标可作为行政政策制定研究中自变量或因变量的分析工具，具备极高的学术应用价值。为阐明该测度指标的应用价值，本研究对探讨官僚自主性（bureaucratic autonomy）与政策制定能力间关联的经典理论开展了实证检验。与新兴的调研类研究结论不同，本研究证实：机构的结构自主性（structural independence）越高，其政策制定能力也越强。