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The article examines how different appointment mechanisms, namely, office selling, impacted the performance of government officials in colonial Peru. Results show that entry by sales into the audiencia —a high-level institution with provincial oversight duties—worsened local governance in at least two ways: first, it led to a surge in the value of provincial positions, which capture the (illicit) returns from office. Second, it increased the likelihood of spontaneous rebellions against colonial authorities. These outcomes are likely driven by the type of official entering the audiencia —one less likely to rein in provincial officials due to the nature of their social and economic connections. The findings imply that the potential for profitable complementarities across layers of government can help us understand why and when office selling may lead to inefficient outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whistleblowers play an integral role in oversight. In almost every employment sector, organizational insiders who come forward to expose alleged wrongdoing are protected from retaliation. In contrast, national security whistleblowers face steep fines and jail sentences for coming forward. Why? We argue that the difficulty of verifying allegations of wrongdoing in the national security arena make it hard to condition rewards and punishments on the veracity of whistleblowers' claims. In such cases, harsh punishments prove effective for encouraging honest whistleblowing. We use mechanism design to build these claims and investigate the implications through an analysis of proposed reforms to whistleblower protection laws in the United States over the last 40 years. We also report data from elite interviews with real-world whistleblowers using interview techniques designed to test the mechanisms of formal models. This article contributes to the study of whistleblowing, disclosure dilemmas, and oversight in the covert sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of Congress have long sought to combat assertions of presidential power and alleged executive misconduct through committee investigations. But are such investigations mere political theater, or do they have systematic effects on the course of politics? We argue that congressional investigations of the executive branch damage the president's support among the public, making investigations a useful tool in interbranch battles. Marshaling an original data set of more than 3,500 investigative hearings and over 50 years of public opinion data, we show that increased investigative activity in the hearing room significantly decreases the president's job approval rating. A survey experiment both confirms our assertion that investigations decrease public support for the White House and shows that committee-led charges of misconduct have a greater influence on public opinion than identical charges not attributed to a congressional actor. Copyright © Southern Political Science Association 2014.

Politicians react to administrative policy making by developing systems of oversight. Existing studies largely emphasize the advantages of reactive oversight, where politicians wait for interest groups to pull a “fire alarm” on noncompliant activity. Less attention has been paid to proactive oversight, where politicians police administrators directly. To evaluate the effectiveness of “police patrol” oversight, I look to the White House, which has been policing regulatory proposals since the Nixon administration. I show how policing, or regulatory review, has made agencies more responsive to the president, both by singling out noncompliant proposals and, critically, by shaping agency behavior in anticipation of review. My findings suggest that police patrol oversight is more efficient than previously acknowledged, notably because the associated deterrence effects yield low-cost compliance. I conclude with a discussion of why Congress, despite having similar incentives to control administrators, has not adopted a parallel system of policing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]