Political Control and Bureaucratic Autonomy Revisited: A Multi-Institutional Analysis of OSHA Enforcement

The proper role of bureaucracy in democratic governance haslong been a matter of controversy. One part of the debate involvesthe argument that democratic control and bureaucratic autonomyare dichotomous opposites: if there is democratic control, therecannot be bureaucratic autonomy, and vice versa. This articledevelops a spatial model of bureaucratic policy choices thatreveals that conditions of democratic control and bureaucraticautonomy are not incompatible: the interactions among politicalinstitutions not only create the condition in which governmentagencies must respond to the will of the elected officials butalso provide the opportunity for the agencies to reflect theirown preferences in policy outcomes. Empirical analyses of occupationalsafety and health enforcement between 1982 and 2000 providesupport for the general argument that bureaucratic responsivenessand bureaucratic autonomy together constitute the behavioralcharacteristics of bureaucracy under institutional influence.