Inviting outsiders in: Choosing access to bureaucratic *implementation.

Abstract

Bureaucrats seek to influence the policies they implement, and they do so through both secrecy and access. Secrecy offers bureaucrats room to use their privileged knowledge to steer policy implementation within an agency's jurisdiction. By gathering and distributing knowledge through access, bureaucrats can use knowledge as a regulatory tool to extend influence beyond the boundaries of bureaucratic hierarchy. Access offers bureaucrats a means of gathering technical knowledge to apply to policy implementation, a means of getting knowledge out of the agency and into other implementers' hands, and a means of gathering and distributing knowledge about other implementers and their secrets. Bureaucratic choices for secrecy and access depend on the tasks they implement. Routine tasks, those that occur within an agency's jurisdiction, allow bureaucratic implementers to develop privileged knowledge conducive to influence through secrecy. Bureaucrats are more likely to seek access for intricate tasks: such tasks rely on multiple implementers in multiple organizational units beyond the boundaries of specified hierarchical authority and stretch the sufficiency of bureaucratic technical knowledge. Access works on two levels. On one level, it operates as a regulatory tool: gathering and distributing knowledge to extend influence beyond hierarchical authority. On another level, it consists of particular institutional arrangements that set the terms for how bureaucratic implementers will engage with other implementers. This work explores this latter sort of access through public advisory committees in the context of the National Center for Education Statistics and the Food and Drug Administration. This research finds that when bureaucratic implementers enjoy authority over the terms of access---over the terms of public committees' agendas---they structure that access to focus on intricate tasks. Those same bureaucratic implementers seek secrecy for routine tasks. Variation, thus, occurs at the task level rather than at the agency level. When agencies lack authority over the structure of access, they are not only poorly situated to use access to expand regulatory influence through knowledge, but such access also threatens bureaucratic influence: it interferes with the official secrets that accompany bureaucratic routines. Agencies want access for complex tasks, but they want access they can shape.