Institutional Foundations of the Power to Persuade

We study how legislative oversight shapes intra-executive politics. We develop a theory in which the president can shape information available to lower-level bureaucrats via both overt, legitimate actions (e.g., through appointments or policy directives) but also via covert, illegitimate interventions (i.e., interference, which can be uncovered by oversight). We show that the president's ability to persuade bureaucrats to act in line with her policy goals requires (i) some degree of bureaucratic insulation and (ii) sufficiently aggressive legislative oversight. Both factors contribute to the overall credibility of presidential directives. When legislative oversight is not sufficiently aggressive (e.g., under unified government), the president might actually lack the necessary credibility influence the bureaucrat and her best course of action is to provide unbiased information.