Revisiting the Administrative Presidency: Policy, Patronage, and Agency Competence

Recent episodes of presidential politicization of the executive branch present a quandary for administrative presidency scholars. (1) While existing work on the politics of appointments assumes that appointed positions are intended to enhance presidential control of the bureaucracy and are generally successful at doing so, at least some of these cases suggest otherwise. For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was heavily politicized, employing two to three times the number of political appointees compared to other agencies its size (Lewis 2008). According to recent agency evaluations by academics, Congress, and the press, FEMA's appointee-heavy management structure was driven partly by patronage concerns and created numerous administrative problems that made the agency less competent, unresponsive, and, ultimately, harder to control (Lewis 2008; Roberts 2006; U.S. Senate 2006). In this paper, I argue that we should revisit the common assumptions that presidential politicization of the executive branch is intended only to enhance political control of the bureaucracy and is successful at doing so. Instead, politicization choices are driven by patronage concerns, and politicization of the bureaucracy ultimately can make it harder for presidents to control the bureaucracy. I use material from my recent book on presidential appointments to illustrate how we can theorize more generally about patronage politics in the White House and the impact of appointments on performance. The argument proceeds deliberately. In the first section, I review the literature on politicization of the executive branch and explain how it focuses largely on control. In the second section, I describe the patronage pressures on the White House personnel operation and describe how they work in parallel with appointment politics centered around policy concerns. In the third section, I explain how politicization influences performance and why presidents politicize even when it appears harmful for performance. In the final section, I conclude and suggest that more research needs to be done on the patronage side of presidential personnel politics. Politicization and Political Control The most prominent academic work on the administrative presidency was written in response to actions taken by presidents Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan. President Nixon's administrative strategy is well documented in a number of sources (Heclo 1975, 1977; Nathan 1975, 1983; Rudalevige 2005). According to these accounts, Nixon's approach to the administrative state began unremarkably when he publicly gave cabinet secretaries authority to make their own subcabinet appointments and tried to integrate appointees into the operations of the White House through interagency working groups. When this strategy failed to produce the type of responsiveness Nixon desired, he adopted a strategy of centralization and politicization, first by building a White House counter-bureaucracy and then by shifting his personnel strategy. After the 1972 elections, Nixon replaced existing appointees with loyalists, inserted loyal political appointees deep into the bureaucracy, and layered appointees on top of existing structures. Taking its cue from the Nixon administration, the Reagan administration used similar strategies to gain control of environmental and social welfare agencies. Reagan used the enhanced appointment power granted by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, natural vacancies occurring through attrition, reorganization, program cuts, and increases in political appointees in key agencies to get control (Goldenberg 1984; Rosen 1983). (2) Extant evidence suggests that Reagan's efforts to get control of agencies were at least partially successful at changing the ideological composition of the top executive ranks (Aberbach and Rockman 1990, 2000). (3) Moe (1985b), building on the work about Nixon and Reagan, argues that all modern presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, have incentives to get control of the bureaucracy. …