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Replication data for: What Makes An Agency Independent

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication data for: What Makes An Agency Independent
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/26943
 
Creator Selin, Jennifer
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description The responsiveness of government agencies to elected officials is a central question in democratic governance. A key source of variation in responsiveness is agency structure. Yet scholars often view agencies as falling into broad structural categories (e.g. cabinet departments or independent commissions) or fixate on some features of design (e.g. "for case protections). I develop new estimates of structural independence based on new data on 50 different structural features of 321 federal agencies in the federal executive establishment. Using a Bayesian latent variable model, I estimate independence on two dimensions: limits on the appointment of key agency decision makers and limits on political review of agency policy. I illustrate the value of this new measure by using it to examine how structure affects political influence and how agency independence can vary over time.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Bureaucracy
Executive politics
Political control
 
Contributor Jennifer Selin