Theories Of Delegation Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Delegation of power is a ubiquitous feature of political life at all levels, reflected in the delegation of governing powers from electorates to legislatures (in democratic systems); from legislatures to governments (in parliamentary systems); from legislatures and governments to various nonmajoritarian institutions such as independent regulatory agencies, central banks, and courts; and in international politics, from states to international organizations, courts, and tribunals.

Such diverse acts of delegation raise two fundamental questions for political scientists: First, Why delegate? Why do political “principals” ever delegate power and authority to “agents”? Second, How can political principals, whether electorates or legislatures or states in the international system, control the discretion of their agents such that those agents will use their powers in the interests of the principals and not their own private interests?

Contemporary theories of delegation in political science have drawn largely, though not exclusively, from the rationalchoice tradition and in particular from principal-agent analysis. The question of delegation cannot be divorced completely from that of the agent’s discretion and subsequent behavior, but theories of delegation tend to focus on delegation of powers from legislatures and governments to various types of domestic and international agents.

Why Delegate?

Delegation in politics has been defined as “a conditional grant of authority from a principal to an agent, in which the latter is empowered to act on behalf of the former” (Hawkins et al. 2006, 7, emphasis in original). Such an action, however, raises the question as to why any political principal or principals would delegate such power to another actor whose interests might not be identical with their own. The basic approach of rational-choice theories to this question is functional: Institutional choices, such as the choice to delegate, are explained in terms of the functions that a given institution is expected to perform and the effects on policy that it is expected to produce subject to the uncertainty inherent in any institutional design.

Within American politics, a pioneering literature on political delegation examines the transaction costs involved in the making of public policy, which make it difficult for reelection-minded members of Congress to produce efficient policies and satisfy their constituents without delegating powers to an agent or agents. Such models of delegation emphasize two specific transaction costs of policy making that might be reduced through delegation. First, informational transaction costs arise when legislative principals are confronted with complex policy questions that may require technical information and expert advice to craft effective public policies. Delegation to expert bodies charged with information gathering and/or technical regulation can reduce such costs. Second, legislators may encounter problems of credible commitment, in which they prefer to adopt certain kinds of policies (such as a strict monetary policy or evenhanded regulation of powerful firms) but cannot bind themselves or their successors to maintain those policies over time. For this reason, legislators may often delegate powers to bureaucratic agents (such as congressional committees, regulatory agencies, or independent central banks) who, because of their independence and their insulation from day-to-day electoral pressures, are more able to commit to maintaining a given policy into the future. All else being equal, therefore, transaction cost theories predict that political principals will delegate power, and discretion, to agents where these two types of transaction costs are high.

Having thus delegated powers to an agent, political principals encounter a second problem, namely, whether the agents use their delegated powers to pursue their own preferences that are distinct from the preferences of their principals. Hence, when delegating authority, principals can adopt two general types of control mechanisms over their agents: Ex ante administrative procedures define more-or-less narrowly the scope of agency activity and the procedures to be followed by it; ex post oversight procedures enable principals to monitor and sanction agency behavior. Such ex post monitoring mechanisms may include “police patrol” oversight by the principals themselves, or “fire alarm” oversight, in which agency misbehavior is caught and signaled by constituents to the principals, who may then sanction errant behavior.

Furthermore, according to such models, political principals do not apply a one-size-fits-all approach to delegation and discretion but rather carefully tailor political mandates and control mechanisms depending on the nature of the task being delegated and on various aspects of the political environment. Empirical studies of variation in delegation and discretion across issue areas and countries have largely supported such hypotheses.

Nonetheless, while dominant in the literature, rational choice accounts are not the only way to theorize delegation, and some sociological institutionalist and constructivist theorists have suggested that political principals delegate powers to agents, not to reduce transaction costs, but rather because such delegation is widely accepted as legitimate or appropriate. For example, governments delegate powers to bodies, such as central banks or science bureaucracies, which are widely considered to be the hallmark of “modern” states. This diffusion of institutional forms across borders has been demonstrated by scholars in various studies, but evidence that these acts of delegation are motivated by normatively legitimate institutional templates rather than transaction cost calculations remains inconclusive.

Delegation In Domestic, Comparative, And International Politics

The contemporary study of political delegation derives in large part from the study of American congressional politics, but delegation is a much more widespread and timeless phenomenon that raises questions for all four subfields of political science. From its American beginnings, the study of delegation has moved to comparative politics, where scholars have attempted both to map and explain cross-national variations in patterns of political delegation to governments, regulatory agencies, private and public-private bodies, and courts. In recent years, the study of delegation has traveled from domestic to international politics, where scholars have applied both rationalist and constructivist theories to delegation in the European Union and other international organizations. Finally, at the risk of stating the obvious, the delegation of powers raises normative questions about democracy, accountability, and legitimacy that have been at the core of political theory for millennia.

Bibliography:

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Epstein, David, and Sharyn O’Halloran. Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policy Making under Separate Powers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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Huber, John D., and Charles R. Shipan. Deliberate Discretion:The Institutional Foundations of Bureaucratic Autonomy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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