Empirical Examination of Agency Rulemaking, 1983-2003

Anne Joseph O'Connell (Berkeley) has deposited Political Cycles of Rulemaking: An Empirical Portrait of the Modern Administrative State in SSRN. The article provides the first comprehensive empirical examination of agency rulemaking, with and without prior public comment, from President Ronald Reagan to President George W. Bush. From the abstract:

The empirical results offer new insights into the rulemaking process and the interplay of politics and regulation. Some of these insights are surprising. For example, certain agencies withdrew more proposed rules after political transitions in Congress than after a new President took office. Rather than capitalizing quickly on their electoral mandates, Presidents generally started fewer, not more, rules in the first year of their terms than in later years. Agencies generally did complete more rules in the final quarter of each presidential administration, but cabinet departments (as a group), finished slightly more actions after the 1994 election changed control of Congress than in President Clinton's last quarter. And although the press highlighted President Clinton's spate of midnight regulatory activity, President George H.W. Bush began nearly 50 percent more notice-and-comment rulemakings in the final quarter of his term than did President Clinton and nearly 40 percent more than President Reagan.

[JH]