The Venues of Influence: A New Theory of Political Control of the Bureaucracy
Author(s)
Waterman, Richard W.; Rouse, Amelia; Wright, Robert
Abstract
Employees of the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program and the New Mexico Environment Department were surveyed to investigate how bureaucratic agents view the influence associated with political principals. The results revealed that agents perceive the influence as not only due to each separate principal. Other types of principals, such as interest groups, exert similar forms of influence. The results supported the notion that agents view various venues of influence in their agencies’ enforcement of the law.
