Independence after Delegation? Presidential Calculus and Political Interference in Brazilian Regulatory Agencies

Silva, Mariana Batista da

doi:10.1590/1981-3888201100020002

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Brazilian Political Science Review

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Article • Bras. Political Sci. Rev. 5 (2) • 2011 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1981-3888201100020002 copy

Independence after Delegation? Presidential Calculus and Political Interference in Brazilian Regulatory Agencies

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Is there Executive interference in the regulatory agencies after its formal establishment as independent bodies? Under what conditions the Executive chooses to interfere in the agencies? This paper analyses the degree of interference in Brazilian national regulatory agencies and provide a tentative explanation for the variation in the degree of interference. The basic hypotheses is that credibility costs, the degree of formal independence and the preferences of presidents are crucial factors affecting the extent to which presidents interfere in the regulatory process. A random effects model is estimated with panel data for the period between 1997 and 2008 covering ten national agencies. The degree of interference is operationalized by an index built using factor analysis. The data suggest that there is political interference, which varies across agencies and over time. The results show that the preferences of the president and some issue area specificity matters for the choice that presidents make regarding the interference in the regulatory process.

Keywords:
Delegation; Independence; Regulation; Political interference

Author	Political actor	Mechanisms	Control
Moe (1982)Moe, Terry. 1982. Regulatory performance and presidential administration. American Journal of Political Science 26 (2): 197-224.	Executive	Directors, budget, presidential leadership	Yes
Weingast and Moran (1983)Weingast, Barry and Mark Moran. 1983. Bureaucratic discretion or congressional control? Regulatory policymaking by the federal trade commission. Journal of Political Economy 91 (5).	Legislative	Oversight by the Legislative Commission	Yes
McCubbins and Page (1986)McCubbins, Mathew, and Talbot Page. 1986. The congressional foundations of agency performance. Public Choice 51: 173-90.	Legislative	Administrative procedures	Yes
McCubbins, Noll and Weingast (1987)McCubbins, Mathew, and Thomas Schwartz. 1987. Congressional oversight overlooked: Police patrol versus fire alarms. American Journal of Political Science 28: 165-79.	Legislative	Administrative procedures	Yes
Wood (1988)Wood, B. Dan. 1988. Principals, bureaucrats and responsiveness in clean air enforcements. The American Political Science Review 82 (1): 213-34.	Executive	Directors, budget, work force, managerial centralization	No
Spiller (1990)Spiller, Pablo. 1990. Politicians, interest groups and regulators: A multiple-principals agency theory, or let them ‘be bribed’. Journal of Law and Economics 33 (1): 65-101.	Legislative and Interests Groups	Directors, budget	Contingent
Wood and Waterman (1991)Wood, B. Dan, and Richard Waterman. 1991. The dynamics of political control of the bureaucracy. The American Political Science Review 85 (3): 801-28.	Executive and Legislative	Directors, budget, Legislative hearings, administrative Reorganization, New Legislation, Political Leadership	Yes
Snyder and Weingast (1999)Snyder, Susan, and Barry Weingast. 1999. Common Agency in the American System of Shared Powers: the President, the Congress and the NLRB. Draft. www.stanford.edu/people/weingast/Snyder.weingast.7.01.pdf (accessed May 21, 2007). www.stanford.edu/people/weingast/Snyder....	Executive and Legislative	Directors	Contingent
Howell and Lewis (2002)Howell, William, and David Lewis. 2002. Agencies by presidential design. The Journal of Politics 64 (4).	Executive	Administrative procedures	Yes
Shapiro (2006)Shapiro, Stuart. 2006. Presidents and process: A comparison of the regulatory process under the Clinton and Bush administrations. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=933678#PaperDownload (Accessed August 12, 2007). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?a...	Executive	Administrative procedures	No

Variable	Description	Codes
Term of office	Is the director's term greater than or equal to four years?	1 (Yes); 0.5 (<4 years); 0 (No fixed term)
Appointment	Is the appointment system shared between the president and the Legislative?	1 (Yes); 0 (No)
Dismissal	Is dismissal only possible with a sentence?	1 (Yes); 0.5 (Beginning of term); 0 (No)
Renewability	Is reappointment forbidden?	1 (Yes); 0 (No)
Experience	Is it necessary for directors to have specialized knowledge in the area?	1 (Yes); 0 (No)
Authorization	Does the agency make decisions without the necessity of approval from the government?	1 (Yes); 0 (No)
Review of decisions	Are decisions by the agency only subject to review by the Judiciary?	1 (Yes); 0 (No)
Budget	Is the budget defined by the agency itself?	1 (Yes); 0 (No)
Human resources	Is the agency in charge of its human resources policy?	1 (Yes); 0 (No)
Procedures	Can the agency's procedures only be modified with consent from the Legislative?	1 (Yes); 0 (No)

Agency	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Standard deviation
ANA	9	0	324	61.11	106.753
ANAC	3	0	116	47.00	61.049
ANATEL	12	0	365	128.33	134.660
ANCINE	6	76	365	214.83	130.824
ANEEL	12	0	226	52.08	90.767
ANP	11	0	365	202.82	167.398
ANS	10	0	273	110.20	106.208
ANTAQ	8	0	317	136.50	149.500
ANTT	8	0	352	92.88	140.030
ANVISA	10	0	300	121.90	110.308

Agency	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Standard deviation
ANA	8	2.94	17.31	12.45	5.42
ANAC	2	11.15	16.09	13.62	3.49
ANATEL	11	0.81	3.52	2.27	0.86
ANCINE	5	29.88	44.18	36.61	5.39
ANEEL	11	0.93	20.53	8.07	6.40
ANP	11	1.69	3.67	2.42	0.63
ANS	9	3.46	24.29	9.18	6.38
ANTAQ	7	21.33	61.11	41.73	15.61
ANTT	7	11.01	16.93	13.57	2.19
ANVISA	10	1.71	4.01	2.73	0.80

Indicator	Description
Turnover	Identifies the number of directors who handed over before the end of his/her term.
Vacancy	Identifies the number of days that the agency functioned with at least one of its directors missing.
Contingenciamento	Identifies the corrected portion of the budget approved in the budgetary annual law (Lei Orçamentária Annual (LOA)) retained by the government.

	Initial	Extraction
Turnover	1.000	0.275
Vacancy	1.000	0.530
“Contingenciamento”	1.000	0.476

		Initial eigenvalues		Extraction sums of squared loadings
Component	Total	% Variance	% Cumulative	Total	% of variance	% Cumulative
1	1.281	42.694	42.694	1.281	42.694	42.694
2	0.928	30.924	73.618
3	0.791	26.382	100.000

Variable	Component
Turnover	.524
Vacancy	.728
Contingenciamento	.690

Variable	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Constant	.871	.782	1.384	1.994
	(1.592)	(1.604)	(1.475)	(1.44)
Preferences	.788^* ***** sig. 0.01.	1.406^* ***** sig. 0.01.	1.364^* ***** sig. 0.01.	1.315^* ***** sig. 0.01.
	(.198)	(.437)	(.431)	(.418)
Formal	-2.085	-1.596	-2.831	-3.168
	(2.596)	(2.521)	(2.333)	(2.107)
Credibility	-.108	-.135
	(.379)	(.357)
Sector			.204
			(.347)
Chamber of Deputies		-.045	-.045	-.045
		(.028)	(.028)	(.027)
Senate		.039	.039	.039
		(.025)	(.025)	(.024)
Contract				-.720^ sig. 0.05,
				(.310)
R²	0.237	0.258	0.263	0.361
Wald X²	24.12^* ***** sig. 0.01.	27.31^* ***** sig. 0.01.	27.20^* ***** sig. 0.01.	33.74^* ***** sig. 0.01.
N	89	89	89	89

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[TFN1] Extraction method: principal component analysis.