Correspondence: Legitimacy, Selectivity, and the Disunitary Executive: A Reply to Sally Katzen

This reply addresses the thoughtful comments that former OIRA Administrator Sally Katzen has provided on our Article, Inside the Administrative State: A Critical Look at the Practice of Presidential Control. Our Article is the first to investigate the agency perspective on White House involvement in agency rule-making. We interviewed 30 of the 35 top political officials in the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) during the George H.W. Bush (“Bush I”) and the William J. Clinton Administrations during 1989–2001.  Prior to our study, empirical studies of White House involvement in agency rule-making had focused almost exclusively on the White House side, mainly analyzing White House documents and interviewing White House officials.  While these studies could describe how the White House exercises control of agency rule-making, they could not speak to how agencies experience such control. We began to remedy the imbalance and paint a more complete picture of presidential control.