Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-22-2024

Publication Title

Presential Studies Quarterly

Volume

54

Issue

4

First Page

481

Last Page

502

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12887

Abstract

Do the career motives of presidential appointees affect program administration? To answer this question, I examine the phased development of policy communication of the U.S. Farm Service Agency (FSA) across states from 2002 to 2018 based on an original collection of historical official websites. This is a rare policy context for examining why peer appointees administer the same programs differently. Linking the state-by-state development of FSA newsletters to the career trajectories of state executive directors (SEDs), the presidential appointees who lead state FSAs, I show that SEDs interested in elective office post-appointment are associated with faster institutionalization of newsletters. Examining these newsletters’ content, I then show that SEDs interested in elective office or a career in advocacy include more participation-encouraging language in newsletters. These results suggest that appointees’ career goals outside the bureaucracy can potentially expedite innovation in program implementation and enhance the delivery of government benefits to the public, with implications for selecting appointees to enhance bureaucratic performance.

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This article was published open access under the Wiley and University of Nebraska at Omaha open access publishing agreement.

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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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Funded by the University of Nebraska at Omaha Open Access Fund