The Tools of Administrative Management

On February 6, 2020, the Gray Center hosted a public policy conference on “Bureaucracy and Presidential Administration: Expertise and Accountability in Constitutional Government.” The conference was inspired in part by James Q. Wilson’s book, Bureaucracy, and Elena Kagan’s article, “Presidential Administration.” The panel sessions centered around new papers the Gray Center helped to incubate on the history of civil service; on presidential power; on bureaucracy; and on several other important questions of expertise and accountability. Keynote remarks on “The Need for Professionalism” were given by Jonathan Rauch, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The third panel looked at the tools of administrative management. It centered around two new papers: One on “Central Clearance as Presidential Management” by Andrew Rudalevige of Bowdoin College, and the other on “Regulating Agencies: Using Regulatory Instruments as a Pathway to Improve Benefit-Cost Analysis” by panelist Christopher Carrigan of the George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School, and his coauthors, Mark Febrizio of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center and Stuart Shapiro of Rutgers University. Rudalevige and Carrigan were joined on the panel by Lisa Heinzerling of the Georgetown University Law Center and Susan Dudley of the GWU Regulatory Studies Center. The discussion was moderated by Philip Wallach of the R Street Institute.

The papers and video are available at: https://administrativestate.gmu.edu/events/bureaucracy-and-presidential-administration/

Featuring Christopher Carrigan, Susan Dudley, Lisa Heinzerling, Andrew Rudalevige, and Philip Wallach.