ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the state agency heads of the influence that they and their staff, as well as various institutional and external actors, exert on agency policymaking. One of the paramount practical as well as theoretical issues regarding the mingling of policy and administration is the extent to which this blending occurs because of the aggrandizing tendencies of bureaucracy, or because of the lack of external influence and oversight by institutional and other actors. The chapter analyzes bureaucratic influence and the sources of administrative accountability using data from the 1984, 1994, and 2004 American State Administrators Project surveys. Some empirical work suggests there are different dimensions of accountability by policy actors in the state administrator's environment. In sum, these results clearly reflect pluralistic and multidimensional accountability framework. Stated more broadly, actual influence query reveals a pluralistic accountability setting with the agency head in a position of primacy balancing or coping with the historic executive–legislative institutional separation of powers.
