13:00 - 14:30
Panel Session 1
Room: Zoom
Moderator/s:
Alexandra Cirone
Accountability in Governing Hierarchies
Gregory Sasso 1, Ian Turner 2, Chris Li 3
1 Bocconi University, Milano
2 Yale University, New Haven
3 Florida State University, Tallahassee

Formal theories of accountability and bureaucratic politics often consider voter-politician interactions in isolation from politician-bureaucrat interactions. In this paper, we study a model of electoral accountability and policy-making with a hierarchy consisting of a voter, a politician, and a bureaucrat. The politician and bureaucrat both produce government output valued by the voter. The voter can then choose to reelect the politician, while the politician can expropriate some of the bureaucrat's output for his own ends. We show that when times are conducive to high quality governance -- budgets are large and players are farsighted -- incorporating the bureaucratic layer of the hierarchy makes for weaker accountability standards. However, when times are tough and budgets are small or players are myopic it is possible that voters may benefit from increasing their demands on elected officials. These accountability standards change even when reelection does not depend at all on the bureaucrat's output directly.


Reference:
Th-P1-04
Session:
Political Economy, Public Policy and Administration
Presenter/s:
Gregory Sasso
Topic:
EU Politics
Presentation type:
Oral presentation
Room:
Zoom
Moderator/s:
Alexandra Cirone
Date:
Thursday, 18 June
Time:
13:45 - 14:00
Session times:
13:00 - 14:30

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