The politics of presidential removals

Abstract

Abstract Much scholarship and legal reasoning assume that the ability to remove and replace political appointees furthers presidential control. However, I argue that the possibility of removal changes the agency problem between the president and her appointees in a subtle but important way that affects the president’s appointment problem. I demonstrate that the president may have incentives to make nonally appointments to encourage reliance on bureaucratic expertise. To show this, I develop a formal model that introduces career concerns for appointees that lead them to distort their use of bureaucratic expertise to appear more expert. The president is uncertain of an appointee’s expertise but infers it from the appointee’s involvement in policymaking. In equilibrium, nonexpert appointees more aligned with the president face greater incentives to determine policy themselves to improve their reputation. By selecting nonally appointees, the president commits to sometimes dismiss even experts which improves her control over policymaking (JEL C72, D73).