Presidential Investment in the Administrative State

Abstract

In this paper, we explain how presidents strategically invest in administrative capacity, noting that presidents have few incentives to invest effort in capacity building in most agencies. We test our account with two analyses. First, we examine the time it took for the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations to nominate individuals to appointed positions. We find that presidents prioritize appointments to policy over management positions and that nominations occur sooner in agencies that implement presidential priorities. Second, we examine the responses of federal executives to the 2020 Survey on the Future of Government Service to see whether perceptions of presidential investment in administrative capacity match our predictions. We find that federal executives perceive higher levels of investment when the agency is a priority of the president and when the agency shares the president’s policy views. We conclude with implications for our understanding of the modern presidency and government performance.