Executive policymaking influence via the administrative apparatus
通过调查1800多个州政府机构的领导，评估政治任命和决策集权两种策略的有效性，发现任命关键官员比集权更能帮助州长实现政策目标，且共和党州长被认为更擅长使用这些策略。
Abstract Elected chief executives in the United States—that is, governors and presidents—routinely attempt to achieve their domestic policy goals by influencing the decision‐making of public agencies. I provide empirical assessments of the two most frequently theorized elected executive influence tactics: political appointments and the centralization of agency decision‐making. Using an expansive survey of the leaders in over 1800 state agencies, observational and experimental evidence are used to evaluate the effectiveness of these tactics. I find that state agency leaders believe that the appointment of officials to key agency posts allows the governor to better achieve his or her policy objectives than centralizing decision‐making, and Republican governors are seen as more successful in using these tactics than Democratic ones. Overall, the results provide a real‐world sense of how one government institution—the elected chief executive—tries to steer the policymaking of public managers and the government agencies that they lead.