Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory Advance Access originally published online on August 8, 2008
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 2008 18(4):517-541; doi:10.1093/jopart/mun015
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Organizing Attention: Responses of the Bureaucracy to Agenda Disruption
University of Washington
Address correspondence to the author at pmay{at}u.washington.edu.
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Abstract |
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 TOP Abstract POLICY DISRUPTIONS AND...STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL...TERRORISM POLICY SIGNALS AND...BUREAUCRATIC CHANNELING OF...REVERBERATIONS AND CONSEQUENCESCONCLUSIONSFUNDINGReferencesNotes |
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Federal agencies are routinely confronted with requests from policymakers that they must address in some manner. These range from routine directives to cut through red tape to exceptional demands to alter policy priorities. We theorize that how attention is organized by public bureaucracies affects their responses. We draw on a variety of scholarship about public bureaucracies to develop a theory about the bureaucratic organization of attention and its consequences. In illustrating these notions, we trace federal agency attention to the threat of terrorism as it gained prominence on the national policy agenda over the 1980s to 1990s and became a prominent issue after the terrorist attacks of 2001. The consequences of the Department of Homeland Security's centralized attention to the terrorism threat suggest a paradox of issue attention. Though concentration of authority at the top of the organization holds the prospect of control over the substance and speed of policymaking, this control is highly circumscribed by the limits of attention faced by all organizations.
One of the hallmarks of public bureaucracies is their ability to digest routine requests from policymakers to "do more" or to "do better." Yet, on occasion the demands are novel because the problem has changed or there is a greater sense of urgency about an existing problem. By definition, these demands to "do things differently" are disruptive to the existing agendas of affected agencies. The contrast between more-or-less routine and disruptive demands leads to two research questions that we address: How do federal agencies respond to disruptive demands? How do choices about agency responses to such demands affect agency performance?
Not surprisingly, there is a variety of scholarship that informs answers to these questions. One strand addresses efforts by the While House and Congress to control the actions of federal agencies through the use of administrative procedures, budgets, political appointments, executive orders, legislation, agency reorganizations, and the bully pulpit (e.g., Balla 1998; Meier and O'Toole 2006; Whitford 2005; Wood 1988). The role of these mechanisms in sending signals by policymakers about desired agency actions is of particular relevance to our theorizing. Another strand addresses the role of information flows and organizational routines in shaping bureaucratic behaviors (e.g., Arrow 1974; Feldman and Pentland 2003; Hammond 1986; Hammond and Thomas 1989). This literature underscores the importance of considering how organizations process demands for altering their priorities.
Although these literatures inform the understanding of the forces at play in shaping responses of public bureaucracies to policymakers’ demands, the accumulated research does not offer a theory about agency responses to new or exceptional demands. Two considerations for theorizing about these are evident from the prior research—the nature of policy signals and the ways that public bureaucracies process them. But, how these come into play is a different matter. They are potentially shaped by a diverse set of forces that include a combination of changes in agency leadership, budget revisions, new laws, and agency reorganizations. Efforts to incorporate each of these considerations into theorizing engender risks of developing overly complex and idiosyncratic depictions of bureaucratic responses.
Recognition that these forces are aimed at influencing organizational attention greatly simplifies the theoretical challenge and provides a central focus for our research. More than 25 years ago, March and Olsen (1983) observed in studying federal agency reorganizations:
The idea that attention is a prime scarce resource in governing is not a new one. In most cases, however, concerns about attention (or activation) arise as an annoying, but ultimately minor, constraint or complication within some more "basic" vision. The basic idea is that political processes and outcomes are determined by formal or legal rules, structures, power, or traditions, subject to attention constraints. Our observations suggest that perhaps we should shift the focus, that the core reality is the organization of attention ... (1983, 292).
In keeping with this observation, our central thesis is that how attention organized by public bureaucracies affects their responses to policy demands. This, we show, in turn affects agency performance.
Given the nature of human information processing and bureaucratic structures, we suggest agencies have two basic ways of organizing attention. One consists of delegated authority and the use of formal routines. The other involves centralized authority and the use of informal procedures. To delegate or centralize is the question. We show that the choice of organizational attention via delegation or centralization engenders unique reverberations within bureaucracies that lead to different consequences. The most notable implication is a paradox of issue attention under a centralized mode. Though new demands are attended by top levels, shortfalls are fostered in agency abilities to address on-going tasks due among other factors to the overloading of decision-making circuits at the top.
We take advantage of a natural experiment to illustrate the bureaucratic organization of attention and its consequences. We consider the changing demands by policymakers over the past 25 years for preparedness policy in the United States. A shift in policy direction for the domestic security component of preparedness policy is evident over this period from the long-standing Cold War emphasis on civil defense to an emphasis on weapons of mass destruction and the threat of terrorism. The 1980s and 1990s entailed growing concerns at top levels of government about the threat of terrorism. The signals to federal agencies were largely to do more. The aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2001 provided a sharp escalation in policymakers’ concerns with exceptional signals to address the threat. The demands after 9/11 were to do things differently. Policymakers responded with the creation of new agencies and organizations to meet this crisis as manifest in the Office of Homeland Security (OHS), followed in late 2002 with creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
We examine the responses of the OHS and DHS and their predecessor agencies to the threat of terrorism. Much has been written about the challenges of addressing this threat and the difficulties the Bush administration has had in fashioning an effective homeland security effort. That research highlights the limits to massive federal reorganizations and the conflicts brought about by shared governance of preparedness programs (e.g., Gerber 2007; Kettl 2007; Light 2007; Wise 2006). Our perspective and approach are different. We think of the Bush administration redirection of the policy agenda as a disruptive policy change. That change, as reified with funding and powerful signals from Congress, elevated attention to the terrorism issue and sent powerful signals to agencies to "address this problem." But, these signals were not in and of themselves determinative of the outcomes for federal agency preparedness for different types of extreme events, including terrorism. Our argument centers on the way in which federal agencies translated these signals into policy activity.
The evidence we provide shows that the Bush administration was very successful in focusing agency attention on the administration's antiterrorism agenda. But, the centralized attention to this agenda and the way that it was reinforced within the DHS overloaded circuits at the top. Attention to nonterrorism-related programs was crowded out as was evident in reduced preparedness efforts for natural and technological disasters and from the problems so evident in the failed response to Hurricane Katrina (see Cooper and Block 2006). In addition, the manner that attention was organized at top levels of the DHS fostered oscillation in grant programs, distrust among intergovernmental partners, and meddling from above. As a consequence, preparedness for terrorism incidents and homeland security more generally are arguably weaker than might otherwise have occurred if attention to the terrorism threat had been organized differently.
Our empirical foci are shifts in relevant federal agency preparedness agendas in response to new demands from policymakers—how agencies organize their attention.1 In studying these phenomena, we introduce a new approach for tracing the agendas of federal agencies. Scholars who study political control of bureaucracies typically trace agency outputs such as administrative and legal enforcement actions to identify changes in agency activity. These indicators tell us little about the substance of federal agency attention. Drawing inspiration from the research of policy scholars who track national policy agendas by studying changes in the issue emphasis of statutes, bills, and executive orders (see Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Kindgon 1984), we consider the substance of rules and guidance materials that agencies issue as indicators of agency priorities.
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POLICY DISRUPTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONAL ATTENTION |
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TOPAbstractPOLICY DISRUPTIONS AND...STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL...TERRORISM POLICY SIGNALS AND...BUREAUCRATIC CHANNELING OF...REVERBERATIONS AND CONSEQUENCESCONCLUSIONSFUNDINGReferencesNotes |
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As we note in the introduction, policymakers attempt to alter the attention of federal agencies through a variety of mechanisms that among other things signal desired behaviors (see Rose 1989). Despite these efforts, the signals are often muted and federal agencies are typically less than wholly responsive. Katzmann (1989) discusses the reasons why congressional policy signals are typically weak, leaving federal agencies with limited policy direction. Weaver (1989) demonstrates how formulaic policy triggers undermine the ability to alter policy signals. Even when signals are stronger, Carpenter (1996) shows that federal agencies tend to ignore them until they are repeated. Whitford and Yates (2003) demonstrate the importance of the reinforcement of signals by policymakers for altering agency behavior.
This understanding is mostly based on the study of fairly routine signals about on-going agency tasks for which agencies are typically asked to do more or do better. Yet, as discussed by Jones and Baumgartner (2005, 55), sometimes the demands from policymakers are novel because the problem has changed or the signals are stronger due to a greater sense of urgency about an existing problem. We label these policy disruptions that typically are associated with policymakers’ recognition of failures of agencies to adequately address salient aspects of problems. The demands can be particularly intense when these failures reach crisis proportions. A prime example is policymakers’ demands after the terrorism events of September 2001 for the federal bureaucracy to both "do much more" and "change the way things are done" in addressing the threat of terrorism.
Responses to Policy Disruptions
How do public bureaucracies respond to disruptive demands? The organizational literature suggests the answer to this question lies in considering their structure and their routines. Thus, for example, Thomas Hammond posits "[s]ince the structure influences which options are to be compared, in what sequence, and by whom, a particular organizational structure is, in effect, the organization's agenda" (1986, 382 emphasis in original). The difficulty, as Hammond and Thomas (1989) show, is that it is impossible to tell a priori how different structures influence decisions and agendas.2 Standard operating procedures and routines that are the hallmarks of bureaucracies would seem to dictate organizational responses to policymakers’ demands. However, Feldman and Pentland show that organizational routines are not necessarily constraining and can be "an important source of flexibility and change" (2003, 94; also see Heimer 2008). Although it is generally recognized that organizational structures and routines affect the way bureaucracies respond to policymakers’ demands, the variation in potential responses poses theoretical challenges.
Consideration of how bureaucratic structures and routines affect organizational attention helps to unravel this mystery. A key insight of Arrow (1974, 47–59) is that organizational structures and routines channel information and, we argue by extension, also organize and channel attention. But, how is attention allocated? We suggest the interplay of bureaucratic authority and structure is central to this. As Richard Elmore (1979–80, 606) observes choices about how authority is located and expertise is employed with bureaucracies can have profound effects on policy implementation. In describing this interplay, Jacobides (2007, 455) notes that "the dual role of authority and hierarchy is to reframe the problem, and either intervene in existing routines or design new interventions." The distinction between intervening and designing new routines is the nub of how agencies differentially respond to policy demands. Figure 1 summarizes our theorizing about the two modes with which bureaucracies channel attention.
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The prototypical bureaucratic channeling of attention, the top path in figure 1, entails incorporating policy signals into existing information channels, involving delegation of tasks to expertise at lower levels of the organization, and invoking existing routines for bureaucratic policymaking. As Wilson (1989, 221–6) observes public agencies are biased toward existing task definitions and as a consequence tend to frame new demands within their existing repertoire. Anthony Downs (1967, 179–84) theorizes that bureaucratic limitations in organizational search routines further limit change. Carpenter empirically demonstrates this form of bureaucratization at work for the response of federal regulatory agencies to budget shifts: "[t]he agency responds slowly to a volatile resource environment, and successive levels of information hierarchy multiply this delay" (1996, 299).
A contrasting channeling of attention is a centralization of authority, shown as the lower path in figure 1. This path is more likely to be invoked when policymakers’ demands involve substantial changes in the direction or intensity, as with policy disruptions. Rather than channeling attention to lower levels, demands are attended at the top levels of the organization, along with a consequent concentration of authority within the agency (see Pugh et al. 1968). Rather than invoking existing routines for processing information and overseeing implementation, new decision-making processes are devised and new units may be created near the top as the organizational embodiment of a centralized response mode. Rather than ceding control to lower levels, leaders retain decision-making authority and discretion. As a consequence, authority for addressing the new demands is concentrated nearer the apex of the bureaucratic hierarchy.
Delegated authority and formal routines need not go hand-in-hand as lower levels can be granted discretion in exercise of authority and flexibility in organizational routines (see Cullen and Perrewé 1981). Though the prototypical response to routine demands that we describe helps public bureaucracies deal with uncertainty in their policy environments (see O'Toole and Meier 2003), Meier and O'Toole (2008) discuss how the creation of organizational buffers comprised of policy and budget units help further reduce uncertainty in organizational environments. Recognizing the existence of these and other variations in bureaucratic forms, the important point for our purposes is that the two modes of bureaucratic channeling of attention that we consider are based on fundamental distinctions in bureaucratic structure and the allocation of authority (see Meyer 1968; Pugh et al. 1963).
Though the structure of federal agencies—the functions that are included and the agencies that are melded with reorganizations—are shaped by a combination of presidential and congressional actions, the choices of delegated or centralized responses to policy agenda shifts are determined by federal agencies themselves. As discussed by Wilson (1989, 221–3), public bureaucracies typically respond to new task assignments by adapting their on-going efforts as consistent with the delegated mode. Because bureaucratic failures are sometimes seen as part of the problem in the first place, both political principals and organized interests press for the creation of new organizations to address new or substantially redefined issues. This is exemplified by the creation of the DHS. Creating a new agency reinforces the powerful signals from above to do things differently.
Attention Consequences
Our expectations about the reverberations and consequences of how public bureaucracies channel attention are also summarized in figure 1. The prototypical bureaucratic response of delegated authority and use of formal routines have a dampening effect upon policymakers’ demands while also slowing organizational responses. But, this way of channeling attention also makes responses more predictable. Carpenter shows "agencies literally mete out their behavioral response over time" (1996, 284) with this type of bureaucratic processing of policy demands. As a consequence, the response is less extensive and slower than desired by policymakers. By definition, there is less flexibility in responding to the new demands as they are channeled into lower levels of the bureaucracy and discretion is limited by organizational routines. The costs of this approach include a loss of flexibility, delays in taking action, and limited discretion over the substance and quantity of activity. Policymakers who are pushing for substantial change are inevitably frustrated by what they perceive as the lack of an adequate response.
Yet, the prototypical response has advantages for overall organizational performance. It allows the bureaucracy to deal with new demands by channeling them aside so as to limit disruption of on-going tasks. Meyer refers to this as "rationalized authority" that "is a very effective form of administration in that its operations remain constant from day to day ...." (1968, 227). In organizational terms, the delegation of authority permits parallel processing of demands. This mitigates disruptions to an agency's agenda and enhances organizational stability.
In contrast, centralized responses tend to amplify the policy demands from above. Organizational attention is redirected to the agenda items made prominent by the new demands. Leaders reinforce the importance of attention to the agenda shift by giving it their attention and by locating the organizational response within their direct purview. As noted by Meyer, "[n]ot only does top management make policy where authority is centralized, but it also translates the generalities of policy into the specifics of commands .... Centralized authority, then, renders a bureaucracy very responsive to the wishes of its leader and very flexible in its operations" (1968, 226). The use of informal procedures further enhances flexibility while speeding organizational responses. In short, this mode fosters greater flexibility and discretion for responding to the new demands.
At the same time, this way of allocating attention raises potential for instability in policymaking and is disruptive to the on-going tasks within the organization. Concentrating authority lessens the ability of the individuals and administrative units at the top of the organization to balance the demands of competing tasks, including the new tasks. The ability to process issues in parallel or simultaneously is decreased. Instead, demands are processed serially. New agenda items compete for scarce attention with existing organizational tasks and substantive concerns. The limits of attention at the top and the serial processing of demands induce the potential for heightened policy instability.
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STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL ATTENTION |
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TOPAbstractPOLICY DISRUPTIONS AND...STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL...TERRORISM POLICY SIGNALS AND...BUREAUCRATIC CHANNELING OF...REVERBERATIONS AND CONSEQUENCESCONCLUSIONSFUNDINGReferencesNotes |
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Preparedness policy in the United States provides a fruitful area for examining bureaucratic responses to shifting policy demands and the consequences of different ways of allocating attention to them. Over recent decades, the policy direction for preparing for natural and technological disasters has been fairly consistent with a renewed emphasis on "doing better" following different disasters and accidents. Policymakers’ demands for addressing the threat of terrorism increased in the 1980s and 1990s and became exceptional after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. We study the preparedness agenda of relevant federal agencies for the period 1984 through mid-2006 with particular attention to the domestic security aspects of this agenda.3 This time frame was selected to provide sufficient historical context for considering agency disruptions concerning terrorism along with practical consideration of data availability.
Three bureaus are central to preparedness during this period: the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA; our data for 1984 through mid-2003), the DHS (our data for mid-2003 through 2006, which incorporates FEMA after mid-2003), and the Office of State and Local Domestic Preparedness within the Department of Justice (our data for 1999 through mid-2003). The latter organization served as a central conduit for antiterrorism funding for state and local governments prior to the creation of the DHS, when it was incorporated into the Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP). These are the major organizational players who are concerned with preparing federal, state, and local governments for responding to extreme events.
Approach to Analyzing Attention
We argue the attention of federal agencies is reflected by their organizational agendas. We consider how relevant agencies have channeled attention to the threat of terrorism over a 25-year period by tracing changes in preparedness agendas. We employ a novel approach to trace the content of these agendas by coding the content of preparedness-related rules and guidance materials. William West (2005, 663), who has studied rule making in federal agencies in detail, comments that the issuance of agency rules constitutes allocation of "scarce organizational resources to the development of some policies and not others." Rules are adopted according to provisions of the Administrative Procedures Act and have legal standing, whereas guidance materials are less formal agency-generated policy statements and grant program guidelines.4 As discussed by Anthony (1992), these have the practical effect of a binding agency policy to the extent that they specify such things as eligibility for benefits and application procedures. Tracing the topics that are subjects of rule making and related issuance of agency guidance provides a way of monitoring agency attention. In order to monitor changes in attention, we trace those rules and guidance materials that are either new to the agency or subject to change.
Federal agencies have increasingly blurred the lines by using guidance materials for items that arguably should be subject to formal rule making (see Anthony 1992; Spence 1997; West 2005). Concern about this led the US Office of Management and Budget (2007) to issue a memorandum on "good guidance" that underscored problems with federal agencies skirting formal rule-making procedures through use of less transparent and nonlegally binding guidance documents. Formal rule making can be cumbersome, entails substantial time and expertise, and mandates elaborate public participation processes. In contrast, reliance on guidance allows greater flexibility in program operations, for making subsequent changes in policy provisions, and in crafting the content of the guidance. Moreover, the issuance of guidance substitutes informal and more rapid processes for formal rule making.
As noted by West (1988), the processes for promulgating rules and guidance differ greatly among federal agencies. Some rely on centralized offices. Others leave the details to program offices. And, many rely on a combination of these roles. Agencies have discretion concerning these organizational matters.5 How federal agencies exercise this organizational discretion in locating rule making and the issuance of guidance serves as an important indicator of the allocation of authority. Rules and guidance issued from the upper reaches of a bureau suggest centralization of authority in setting agency agendas. In contrast, rules and guidance emanating from the lower reaches of a federal agency show delegation of authority in setting agency agendas. Stated differently, how agencies locate these functions serve as indicators of centralization or delegation of attention.
A related indicator of the different modes of channeling attention is whether agencies issue formal rules or offer informal guidance. Formal agency rule making goes hand-in-hand with delegated authority since it is based on the expertise within subdivisions of federal agencies. In contrast, the issuance of guidance materials provides flexibility that is more in keeping with centralized attention. Delegation of guidance functions limits discretion at the top and slows the process of agency policymaking.
A third indicator of the channeling of attention is the degree to which leaders of federal agencies reinforce particular agenda items. When attention is centralized, agency heads can be expected not only to attend to disruptive issues but also to highlight them by focusing on the issues when speaking to external audiences and by appearing at congressional hearings addressing the issues. This reinforcement of top-level agendas, we suggest in our theorizing, also serves to amplify the importance of these agenda items. We trace top-level attention and amplification of it through a content analysis of speeches by heads of the OHS and the DHS to external audiences. We obtained electronic copies of the speeches from the on-line pressroom of the DHS. We also trace appearances of top-level officials of FEMA and the DHS at congressional hearings as an indicator of their allocation of issue attention.6
Data
We employ two data sources for tracking rules and guidance materials issued by relevant preparedness agencies. One is the entry found in the Unified Agenda. The Unified Agenda is published in the Federal Register biannually (spring and fall) pursuant to Executive Orders by Presidents Reagan and Clinton (Executive Orders 12291 and 12866). It contains all substantive regulatory actions for which executive branch agencies reasonably anticipate they will take action in the coming 12 months.7 Each entry in the Unified Agenda lists the title, abstract (synopsis of the problem the rule addresses), statutory authority, statutory deadlines, offices or policy divisions issuing the rule, and other characteristics of each rule. We identified 1421 rules for the agencies we study over the period 1984 through mid-2006.
A second data source is the set of guidance materials issued by FEMA and the Office of State and Local Domestic Preparedness (and later the Office of Grants and Training) in the DHS. Guidance materials were first identified using the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance for the years 2005 and 2006 to identify all relevant programs. Electronic versions of relevant grant guidance were obtained for 1998 through 2006 from Web sites for the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, FEMA, and the DHS.8 We document 56 relevant issuances of guidance materials over the period under study. Identifying guidance materials prior to 1998 is problematic as none are electronically posted. Guidance materials were generally less relevant in these earlier years because agencies relied less upon them.
In order to track the content of federal agency agendas, each rule and guidance item was content coded into a set of seven major topic categories: administrative matters, disaster assistance, disaster preparedness, domestic security, response and recovery, flood insurance, and crime and riot insurance. We achieved 90% agreement among two coders for a sample of rules in the topic coding of administrative rules and 100% agreement in the topic coding of guidance materials. As elaborated upon below, we use subsets of these issue codes for tracing changes in preparedness agendas. We also coded each rule and guidance item for whether it was issued from the lower levels or policy divisions of the bureaucratic hierarchy or from offices and individuals at or near the apex of the hierarchy. A rule or guidance document was considered centralized if issued from these upper levels of the bureaucracy. Otherwise, it was considered as delegated.
We employ several other sources of data for documenting changes in policymakers’ demands. We trace congressional and presidential signals concerning the threat of terrorism using keyword searches of the Congressional Record and of presidential speeches and statements. We also document key legislation, executive orders, and decision directives concerning preparedness policy.
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TERRORISM POLICY SIGNALS AND AGENCY AGENDA CHANGE |
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TOPAbstractPOLICY DISRUPTIONS AND...STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL...TERRORISM POLICY SIGNALS AND...BUREAUCRATIC CHANNELING OF...REVERBERATIONS AND CONSEQUENCESCONCLUSIONSFUNDINGReferencesNotes |
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Concerns at the highest levels of the US government about preparedness for terrorism-related events predated events of September 2001 by three decades. Donohue (2001) dates the first administrative response to the perceived threat of terrorist attacks as 1972 in response to the attacks on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. President Reagan appointed an interagency task force in 1985 chaired by then vice president George H. W. Bush that reviewed federal antiterrorism programs (Office of the Vice President 1986). The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Office building, and the 1995 Tokyo subway nerve gas attack focused concern about potential weapons of mass destruction and led to several initiatives. Presidential decision directives by President Clinton (no. 39 in 1995 and no. 62 in 1998) provided for a stronger federal role in terrorism preparedness planning.
Congressional enactment of the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act (PL 104–201 Section 14; the "Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment") and the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (PL 104–132) provided the base for an expansion of federal funding and called on federal agencies to increase preparedness activities for responses to use of weapons of mass destruction or related materials. The events of September 2001, the creation of the OHS and later the DHS, and the focal emphasis on terrorism preparedness substantially expanded these earlier initiatives.
The changing intensity of policy signals about the threat of terrorism in Congress and by presidents is shown in figure 2. The upper panel shows congressional signals concerning the threat of terrorism based on a keyword search of the Congressional Record for mention of variants of the root word terror from 1989 through 2006. The lower panel shows presidential references to the threat of terrorism over this period based on a keyword search with terror as the root word of the database created by the American Presidency Project.9 These figures are based on raw counts of terrorism references in order to convey the intensity of the signals from Congress and the President.10
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Figure 2 shows that concerns about the terrorism issue were on the minds of elected officials well before the attacks of 2001. The impact of those events is especially evident by the sharp increase in policy attention in 2001. From 2000 to 2001, mentions of terrorism increased by 163% in the Congressional Record (from 113 to 298 mentions). Likewise, presidential mentions of terror increased 345% (from 20 to 89 mentions) over the same period.
Shifting Agency Attention
Figure 3 shows perturbations from 1984 through mid-2006 in federal agency preparedness agendas in response to policymakers’ shifting demands. Our measure of agency attention is the annual percentage change in rules and guidance materials that are issued by relevant agencies. The figure shows the patterns and interplay of federal agency attention to the two major components of preparedness policy, labeled in shorthand as domestic security (solid line that includes civil defense and terrorism-related activities) and disaster preparedness (dashed line that includes natural and technological disaster preparedness).11 We calculate the degree of attention to each based on coding the topics of each relevant rule and guidance material.
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This figure suggests two patterns. One is greater variability in the domestic security agenda than the disaster preparedness agenda, especially over the period 1995–2004 when the threat of terrorism became an increasingly salient issue for policymakers.12 The standard deviation of the disaster preparedness series is 21, whereas the standard deviation for the domestic security series is nearly two and a half times greater at 50.
The second pattern is a difference in the responsiveness of federal agency preparedness agendas to presidential and congressional signals. Particularly after 1995, federal agencies are highly responsive to higher-level signals concerning the domestic security agenda. Spikes are evident in 1997 following congressional enactment of antiterrorism provisions following the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, in 1999 following a Clinton presidential directive about terrorism planning, and post-2001. The limited responsiveness of the disaster preparedness agenda is evident by little change in agenda items following major congressional reforms in disaster programs under the Stafford Act in 1988 (P.L. 100–707), additional reforms in 1994 following the problems evident in the response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and changes in funding for disaster preparedness following the creation of the DHS in 2003.
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BUREAUCRATIC CHANNELING OF POLICY DEMANDS |
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TOPAbstractPOLICY DISRUPTIONS AND...STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL...TERRORISM POLICY SIGNALS AND...BUREAUCRATIC CHANNELING OF...REVERBERATIONS AND CONSEQUENCESCONCLUSIONSFUNDINGReferencesNotes |
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The preceding shows changes in federal agencies’ preparedness agendas, but tells little about how they organized their attention. We turn now to our empirical findings about this in referencing our theorizing. Table 1 shows evidence about the different ways with which different agencies organized attention to changing demands concerning preparedness policy. The perturbations in the domestic security component of agency agendas are evident from the data in the upper part of the table that show the civil defense emphasis of the 1980s and early 1990s in FEMA, to substantially reduced attention in the ODP and FEMA in the late 1990s, to the heightened attention from 2002 through 2006 after the events of 9/11.
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Although the agencies we consider clearly had different scales and functions, the important point for our analyses is that the choices about the channeling of policy demands were not dictated by congressional or presidential actions. The latter established the demands, but the agencies themselves decided how to channel responses. The substantive findings concern the difference in bureaucratic responses to demands pre- and post-9/11. Two clarifications apply to the delineation of different eras and agencies in table 1. One is that the actions of the ODP and FEMA are included in the data for the post-9/11 period given their transition to the DHS during this period (see Sylves and Cumming 2004).13 The second is that inclusion of the OHS in table 1 makes no difference for our findings given that the OHS was a White House coordinating organization without power to issue rules or guidance materials. However, as we show below, the OHS had an important attention-forcing role that is consistent with the centralized mode of responses to policy demands.
The degree of centralization of agency rule making and issuance of guidance along with the ratio of guidance to rules that are issued show the extent to which agencies employ a centralized mode of organizing attention, as opposed to the more routine actions of delegated bureaucratic responses. The use of the two modes of organizing attention is evident from the findings concerning agency policymaking for the domestic security (including civil defense) and disaster preparedness (including technological risks). FEMA and the ODP employed a delegated response for the period 1984 through 2001 as shown by the low levels of centralized agency policymaking and greater reliance on formal rule-making procedures. These are especially apparent for the more stable disaster preparedness programs. In contrast, a centralized response is evident for these agencies and DHS post-9/11 as shown by high levels of centralized agency policymaking and strong reliance on guidance materials. These are especially evident for the domestic security items. The chi-square and t-test statistics for relevant comparisons of our measures of delegated and centralized bureaucratic responses further substantiate the differences in ways that agencies organized attention to policymakers’ demands.
Delegation and Formalization Prior to 9/11
Our interpretation of the empirical findings about different ways of organizing attention is supported by a brief recounting of agency behaviors during the periods we consider. The more muted shifts in the disaster preparedness component of FEMA's agenda and the delegated mode of response reflect business as usual in FEMA's management of disaster programs that are marked over time by cycles of criticism and reforms (see Sylves and Cumming 2004). A key aspect of this was the ability of the FEMA to dampen response to criticism by delegating their responses to critics who demanded reforms. This included deflecting criticism by shifting blame to state- and local-level actors and promising to make necessary internal management reforms rather than remake the agency (see Daniels and Clark-Daniels 2000; Wamsley and Schroeder 1996). The greater centralization of civil defense program policymaking within FEMA during the 1980s reflects the emphasis placed on civil defense by the Reagan administration and controversy over the "dual use" and "crisis relocation" aspects of the civil defense program that drew top-level attention (see May and Williams 1986, 109–24).
The agency's delegated bureaucratic response to policy demands concerning the threat of terrorism during the period 1998 until September 11, 2001 is particularly noteworthy. Key initiatives included Presidential Decision Directives by President Clinton (no. 39 in 1995 and no. 62 in 1998), congressional enactment in 1996 of the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act (PL 104–201 Title 14; the "Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment"), and the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (PL 104–132). These actions sought to enhance existing federal efforts by increasing attention and capacity, rather than to alter the ways to think about the threat or with the development of new solutions. Even the implementation of new federal funds for state and local terrorism-related preparedness under the "Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment" of 1996 (PL 104–201 Title 14) resulted in a dampening of this initiative through eventual bureaucratic delegation of authority to a fourth-level unit in the Department of Justice—the Office of State and Local Domestic Preparedness that was later renamed the ODP (see Falkenrath 2001).14
In sum, the translation of policymakers’ demands for increased emphasis on antiterrorism programs was a decidedly prototypical bureaucratic response involving delegation during the period 1998 through most of 2001. As a consequence, the attention shift to antiterrorism programs was muted. The federal efforts were undertaken mainly within existing organizations that invoked existing processes of formal policymaking. The assignment of new roles to the Justice Department reflected the bureaucratization through delegation of the new initiative.
Centralization and Informality after 9/11
The policy responses to the terrorism attacks of September 11, 2001 followed the patterns that scholars observe for large focusing events in leading to dramatic shifts in media attention, legislation, and symbolic undertakings. As Birkland (2004) documents, more than 450 bills and resolutions relating to these events were introduced in the 107th Congress. The presidential choice to create the OHS, with Tom Ridge appointed as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security (E.O. 13228, October 8, 2001), established the basis for top-level attention to the terrorism agenda rather than a delegated response to the federal bureaucracy. Partly out of a distain for large bureaucracy, White House officials vociferously argued against creating a new agency. Though the OHS had no power to issue rules or guidance memoranda, by definition its creation was a centralizing action to force decisions about homeland security to the top. Although this was intended to turn the attention of federal agencies to the threat of terrorism, the actual implementation of any plans or programs had to take place through existing agencies.
The limitations of the OHS and the politics of the situation soon led to renewed calls for creation of a cabinet-level agency. The Bush Administration responded to the shifting political environment adroitly and worked with Congress to fashion a super-agency. The legislation creating the DHS was enacted in November 2002 (P.L. 107–296), and the Department was constituted in March 2003. Although the Department was established to carry out a wide range of preparedness and response activities, the major foci were domestic security and terrorism-related efforts. Secretary Ridge took specific actions to gain greater control over the domestic security initiatives of the Department and to reinforce the terrorism-related agenda. One of these was the creation of an Office of State and Local Government Coordination that reported to him as a central contact point with subnational governments "so we can speak with one voice" (DHS Office of Press Secretary 2003). He later restructured this office, renaming it the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness, and consolidated within it key funding programs for terrorism-related grants to local governments that were previously housed within various subunits of the Department.
Secretary Chertoff, who took office in 2005, exercised his organizational powers with a controversial reorganization that took effect in October 2005 (see Congressional Research Service 2006 21–2). Among other things, the "second-stage review" consolidated the preparedness and grant-related functions that were housed within FEMA with other related functions in a new Directorate for Preparedness. This maintained a high-level role for this function along with continued issuance of guidance materials, rather than rule making, for state and local funding programs.
In sum, the translation of policymakers’ demands for a new policy direction and vastly expanded emphasis on addressing the threat of terrorism after 9/11 fostered a highly centralized mode for organizing attention within the OHS and DHS. Despite being given the responsibility of creating the largest bureaucracy since the assembling of the Department of Defense with all the attendant problems of coordination, control, and monitoring of diverse centers of policy expertise, DHS secretaries attempted to fashion a centralized and flexible approach to addressing the threat of terrorism. These actions were not that unusual given that a common organizational response to crises and for managing disasters is to centralize authority (see Bourgeois et al. 1978; Hermann 1963; t'Hart, Rosenthal, and Kouzim 1993). In addition, leaders of newly constituted agencies typically seek to exert control by centralizing decision making given that they do not trust subordinate units. For example, Radin and Hawley describe how Secretary Hufstadler of the then newly created Department of Education centralized rule making in the Office of the Secretary in establishing processes that "provided opportunities for both coordination and control" rather than focusing on more time-consuming structural reorganizations (1988, 208).
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REVERBERATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES |
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Although the centralization of attention within the DHS is not that surprising, the reverberations and consequences of it are noteworthy. Our theorizing about these suggests the centralized channeling of attention is amplified by leaders’ actions. This, in turn, exacerbates instability in agency functions. In what follows, we consider evidence about these phenomena.
Amplification of the Antiterrorism Agenda
Focusing attention on a particular agenda item at the top of an organization by definition highlights policymakers’ demands to attend to that item. As more and more activity is channeled in favor of the agenda item, the attention to it is amplified. We document agenda amplification for the antiterrorism agenda by tracing the topics that are emphasized by OHS and DHS leaders in speeches given to outside groups. We reason that agency heads place greater emphasis on what they see as top agenda items when speaking to outside groups than they give to those items when speaking to employee groups about more specific programs or when announcing new initiatives. We undertook a content analysis of 101 speeches identified in the DHS pressroom archives for the period of September 2001 through December 2006. Our measures of different agenda emphases are the number of sentences in each speech that contained variants of the root word terror (antiterrorism emphasis) and separately the number of sentences that contained either the term natural disaster or natural hazards (disaster preparedness emphasis). Table 2 summarizes the different emphases of the agency leaders.
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The degree of attention to the antiterrorism agenda is evident from the terrorism index scores and mean percentages of references to terrorism items shown in table 2. Both Ridge and later Chertoff used their positions to steer the agenda of OHS then DHS toward antiterrorism efforts. Before Hurricane Katrina, 90% or more of the references to preparedness items were specific to terrorism. The amplification of the antiterrorism focus is evident by the increases in the references to terrorism moving from those by Ridge as Director of the OHS, to his role as Secretary of the DHS, to that of Secretary Chertoff prior to Hurricane Katrina. Explicit references to natural disasters or hazards were at most a tiny fraction of any speech, and in many instances, no references were made to these agenda items at all.
The shift in emphasis post-Katrina reflects a disruption of the antiterrorism agenda amplification. The poor governmental response to the Hurricane led to new demands by policymakers to fix problems with disaster preparedness and response. Given the centralized mode of channeling attention within the DHS, those demands were also interpreted with a centralized response to correct course. This is evident by the reduced frequency with which terrorism is mentioned and the greatly increased frequency of mention of natural disasters in Chertoff's speeches pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina. The mean percentage of sentences with references to terrorism in Chertoff's speeches after the Hurricane is one-third of those prior to it (p < .01).
Organizational Performance Consequences
One consequence of the antiterrorism emphasis is inattention to nonterrorism-related programs that were folded into the DHS. The attention focus was such that top leaders could not simultaneously juggle the demands of the antiterrorism agenda with the pressing demands of a catastrophic Hurricane or the routine demands of natural and technological disaster preparedness. The terrorism focus of top DHS leaders was cited by the House Select Bipartisan Committee (2006, 153–5) as one of the key factors in the fumbled DHS response to Hurricane Katrina (also see Cooper and Block 2006, 67–92). We examine the contrasting task-juggling implications of different agency response modes by considering appearances at congressional hearings of top-level FEMA (1995–2003) and DHS (2003 and 2004) officials.15 Appearances of top officials at hearings for multiple issue areas indicate little delegation of authority and serial processing of top-level attention. In contrast, top-level appearances that are concentrated into fewer issue areas indicate delegation of authority and parallel processing of agency attention.
Table 3 summarizes the participation of top-level officials in congressional hearings for eight different issue areas that broadly constitute homeland security as it relates to responses to extreme events including terrorist attacks. The first set of columns shows the percentage of all federal agency witness appearances for hearings addressing each issue area that were comprised of top-level FEMA and DHS officials. This depicts the importance that these officials attach to congressional hearings in issue area. The second set of columns shows the relative distribution of hearing appearances by top-level FEMA and DHS officials across the different subsystems. This depicts the allocation of attention by top-level officials.
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Both sets of entries show the same pattern. DHS top officials were spread more thinly across different policy areas than were the predecessor FEMA top officials. This partly reflects the broader portfolio of the DHS, but the key point of our analysis is that top-level DHS officials were making these appearances. They had the option of delegating the appearances to other agency officials. DHS officials constitute noteworthy percentages of federal witnesses in half of the policy subsystems, whereas FEMA officials are prominent only in the natural disaster subsystem (not including the anomalies of hearings with only one FEMA witness appearance). As shown by the distribution of witness appearances, DHS officials were juggling attention—in order of relative number of appearances—to domestic security, transportation security, and border protection with no attention to natural and technological disasters. In contrast, the attention foci of FEMA officials were natural disasters and to a lesser extent, domestic security. Lower levels of FEMA were left to address other considerations. The greater agenda focus of FEMA's top officials is evident from the larger Herfindahl concentration index, which is a measure of the extent to which a given percentage distribution is concentrated into relatively few categories. A chi-square test for the distribution of DHS and FEMA witnesses confirms that the distributions for the two agencies are statistically distinguishable (p < .01).
A second consequence of the concentration of attention on antiterrorism agenda at the top levels of the DHS is extreme instability in grant programs for homeland security. DHS officials were in a rush to get the large amount of funds that Congress appropriated for antiterrorism programs out to state and local governments. The centralization of grant programs and the use of hastily developed grant guidance were presumably intended to provide flexibility in funding and to speed delivery of funds. But, DHS officials clearly lacked the information they needed to craft effective grant programs. Instead, they revised grant materials on an annual basis, shifted the ground rules for funding in a number of programs, and undermined a predictable basis for terrorism-related preparedness by state and local governments as highlighted in a series of reports by the US Governmental Accountability office (see GAO 2002, 2003, 2005). A DHS "Grant Migration Chart" shows the conversion of eight state and local grant programs in fiscal year 2002 into five recategorized and renamed programs in two stages in 2003, further recombined into four grant programs in two stages in 2004, which became two omnibus grant program in 2005.16 These were later supplemented with the addition of new grant programs that in subsequent years were also redesignated.
A third consequence of the concentration of attention on the antiterrorism agenda was the inability to establish a stable relationship with congressional principals or the DHS clientele of first responders. This lack of control over its environment serves as a major impediment to obtaining the kind of agency autonomy that Wilson (1989, 195) argues is essential for stable functioning. One might think that like curing cancer, there would be strong support in Congress and among state and local officials for the DHS agenda emphasis on domestic security and antiterrorism programs. Strong support for these efforts is evidenced by the substantial Congressional appropriations that provided new funds to first responders for antiterrorism preparedness. Nonetheless, frustration with the handling of these grant programs by the DHS has led Congressional appropriations committees to repeatedly redirect the programs (see GAO 2005; Roberts 2005). Another key source of congressional frustration was the decision by the DHS in 2003 to centralize the preparation of a national response plan for terrorist events, rather than rely on long-standing expertise within FEMA to revise existing preparedness plans concerning national responses to natural and technological catastrophes (see Cooper and Block 2006; 82–3). As we note below, this centralized effort continued for later revisions to the plan even after Congress mandated delegation of that function to FEMA.
The rocky relationship with state and local governments stemmed from the uncertainties surrounding grant programs, given changing grant guidance issued by the DHS, and the reluctance of the agency to treat state and local first responders as knowledgeable partners. One well-known director of county emergency preparedness encapsulated the views of first responders in a Washington Post opinion piece in writing: "Those of us in the business of dealing with emergencies find ourselves with no national leadership and no mentors. We are being forced to fend for ourselves, making do with the ‘homeland security’ mission" (Holdeman 2005). Eisinger concludes his extensive review of the many tribulations experienced by local governments with DHS grant programs in commenting that "the local government ‘bill of particular irritants’ regarding the nature of the homeland security partnership with the federal government is a long one" (2006, 541).
The Paradox of Attention
The net result of the preceding is a paradox. The centralized organization of attention to the terrorism threat within the DHS was undermined by the crowding out of attention to nonterrorism-related programs, oscillation in antiterrorism grant programs, distrust among intergovernmental partners, and meddling from above. As a consequence, preparedness for terrorism incidents and homeland security more generally were arguably weaker than might otherwise have occurred if the agency response to policymakers’ demands about the threat of terrorism entailed more of the prototypical bureaucratic delegated response. The New York Times editorial title "Homeland Insecurity Department" (July 17, 2006, A16) is embolic of the policy image that was fostered by this paradox.
Bureaucracies normally address the limits of attention by delegating functions to lower levels within which requisite expertise exists for carrying out different tasks. This delegation of attention promotes parallel processing of agenda items so that no single item disrupts agency functioning. Recognition of the failures of DHS performance in response to Hurricane Katrina led Congress to mandate a major reorganization on March 31, 2007 under the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act (Title VI of P.L. 109–295). This sought to reduce the centralized authority of the DHS by making FEMA a semiautonomous agency. Congress specifically delegated authority for preparedness and response functions within the DHS by shifting the national preparedness planning and the grant functions being performed by top-level units of the DHS to the reconstituted FEMA.
Despite the congressional mandate to delegate more authority, the attention processes that led to top-level focus on antiterrorism programs seem to be well entrenched within the DHS. These are illustrated by the efforts of the DHS to revise the national plans for responding to incidents of national significance that include catastrophic natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The most recent version of the DHS national preparedness framework centralized, rather than delegated to FEMA, key terrorism response authority despite response planning and management expertise within FEMA. This concentration of authority at the top of DHS led the New York Times to label the DHS the "Department of Brazen Bureaucracy" in an editorial criticizing the DHS preparedness framework (September 13, 2007, A22).
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CONCLUSIONS |
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Recognition that the demands policymakers place upon federal agencies to do things differently can be disruptive to their agendas has led us to consider how such demands are addressed. We theorize that how attention is organized by public bureaucracies affects their responses. We draw on a variety of scholarship about public bureaucracies to develop a theory about the bureaucratic organization of attention and its consequences. In illustrating these notions, we trace federal agency attention to the threat of terrorism as it gained prominence on the national policy agenda over the 1980s to 1990s and became a prominent issue after the terrorist attacks of 2001. There is little question that policymakers’ demands about the terrorism threat after 9/11 constituted policy disruptions with the potential to alter agency agendas. These are far different than the more routine, but still noteworthy, policy signals of the prior decades about the need for increased attention to the threat of terrorism. These differences establish a basis for the comparisons that we undertake.
Our main contribution is theorizing about two basic ways that public bureaucracies organize attention. One mode entails delegation and formal policymaking. The second entails centralization and informal policymaking procedures. The choice of organizational mode channels attention in ways that either dampen or amplify policymakers’ signals to alter course. The choice also has different consequences for organizational performance. We provide empirical evidence about these phenomena by characterizing different ways that federal agencies have organized attention to policymakers’ signals to address the threat of terrorism. We employ a unique set for characterizing agency attention and the ways in which they organize it by coding the content and promulgation of formal rules and informal guidance of relevant federal agencies. From 1984 to 2001 when policymakers’ signals about the threat of terrorism were more muted but still increasing in volume, FEMA and the ODP in the Department of Justice evidenced a delegated response. After the events of September 11, 2001, the OHS and DHS responded in a centralized manner.
Although the centralized response is not surprising, the more noteworthy aspects are its consequences. Consistent with our theorizing, the delegated organization of attention by FEMA and the ODP tended to downplay the terrorism threat and treat it more or less as business as usual. The centralized mode of attention by the DHS to the antiterrorism agenda had the beneficial effect of focusing attention of top-level agency officials on that agenda item. But, it also crowded out attention to nonterrorism-related programs as was especially evident in atrophied preparedness efforts for natural and technological disasters and the problems so evident in the failed response to Hurricane Katrina. Less evident were a variety of negative consequences for agency performance that included oscillation in grant programs, distrust among intergovernmental partners, and meddling from above.
The net result of the centralized response mode is a paradox of issue attention that is far more general than the specific case of federal preparedness. We trace the roots of this paradox to overloaded circuits at the top. Though concentration of authority at the top of the organization holds the prospect of control over the substance and speed of policymaking, this control is highly circumscribed by the limits of attention at the top. The amplification of centralized attention that we document reifies a narrow attention focus while simultaneously blinding organizational leaders to other less powerful signals about other agenda items. This can lead to poor organizational performance with respect to both the focal agenda item and other on-going tasks that are largely ignored. Thus, there exists a real trade-off where centralization and control are concerned. Control over decision making gained via centralization drains away under the limits of attention.
Unlike much of the recent scholarship in political science and public administration about public bureaucracies, we make the simple and uncontroversial assumption that agency officials want to do what policymakers demand of them. We do not see the negative consequences we identify as the result of policy subversion. To the contrary, we show the heads of OHS and DHS were eager to carry out the wishes of elected officials. Organizational considerations and human cognitive limitations steered OHS and DHS agency heads toward a centralized response that set in place the dynamics we identify.
Public administration scholars have commented that it is an impossible job for the DHS to balance the diverse issues, tasks, and interests involved in the agency's broad homeland security mission (see e.g., Kettl 2007; Light 2007). Our point is that the problems we observe are not inherently structural. Overloaded circuits can occur in large agencies or small ones or in multifunction agencies or single function agencies. Some organizational solutions may be better than others. For example, the positive aspects of centralized attention can be harnessed within top-level policy and evaluation offices while also employing delegated authority for carrying out agency operations (see Thompson 1991). Regardless of the organizational structure, the fundamental issues we address are matters of attention. March and Olsen (1983) surmised correctly that bureaucratic outcomes are as much a function of the choices that agency leaders make about organizing attention as they are about structure or routines.
Future shifts in issue attention for different aspects of extreme events will certainly arise because of new terrorist incidents, major technological accidents, or catastrophic natural disasters. Development of an institutional capacity at the top levels of government to respond to these shifts in ways that invoke rather than disrupt federal agency disaster preparedness and response capabilities is essential for improved homeland security. This requires an institutional capacity both within the White House and at top levels of the DHS and other relevant federal agencies to establish appropriate direction and to provide effective oversight of federal agency responses. It also requires the willingness of agency heads to marshal the expertise within lower levels of their organizations rather than circumventing it.
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National Science Foundation (SES-0554845 and SES-0623900). Neither the NSF nor those who have offered insights are responsible for the content.
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Acknowledgments |
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The authors thank Josh Sapotichne for his contributions as well as Stuart Bretschneider, Raymond Burby, Desmond King, Allan McConnell, Colin Provost, the participants in the 2007 Oxford Conference on Politics and Policy Making in the Bush Administration Federal Bureaucracy, and JPART reviewers for their insights.
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Notes |
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1 This is a different set of issues than examining what actions presidents or Congress can take, or how agencies should be organized, in order to enhance their responsiveness to policymakers’ demands. These issues have been examined in the literature about political control and bureaucratic delegation. We take the set of agencies and organizational arrangements as given and examine how organizational attention affects agency agendas and performance.
2 Though Hammond and Thomas are concerned with the bottom-up flow of information to top-level decision makers in organizations, it is reasonable to presume that organizational structure also affects the downward flow of information.
3 We use the term preparedness in reference to all aspects of federal disaster and after-crisis event activities including terrorist events (see Falkenrath 2001). As such, our terminology is shorthand for distinctions that disaster specialists usually make—mainly the four phases of disasters: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Our focus is on domestic preparedness for which we exclude activities relating to border security (part of DHS), pandemics (Center for Disease Control), port and transportation security (part of DHS), and the security of defense facilities (Department of Defense). These other security functions are largely separable from general preparedness for addressing natural disasters and terrorist events.
4 Actions pertaining to military or foreign affairs and agency organization, management, and personnel are exempt from formal rule making, but agencies sometimes choose to issue rules for these in order to provide increased legitimacy to these functions and to establish turf. None of these types of issues are relevant to our coding of the substance of preparedness agendas.
5 Stated differently, the choice of organization location for issuing rules or guidance materials is not a matter of institutional design that is established when agencies are created by presidential reorganizations or congressional action.
6 Though congressional hearings are orchestrated in terms of who is invited to testify, agency officials have discretion about personally appearing or sending other agency representatives. As such, the choice of an agency head to appear at a given hearing reflects at least in part the importance they place on the issues being addressed by that hearing.
7 The Unified Agenda contains the actions that an agency predicts will receive attention in the coming 12 months, but this is only a preview of the agenda. Agencies may take action on matters not appearing in the Unified Agenda and, as such, they have a measure of discretion in its contents.
8 The total number of grant program entries for our period of study is 149. For these 149 potential entries, we were able to identify 56 different guidance materials. We do not have any reason to suspect that there are systematic forces related to the creation of grant guidance for some programs and not for others. Most of these programs exist year after year for which grant guidance would only be issued if changes are made.
9 See http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/. We include references to domestic terrorism in all public appearances and speeches. We exclude references to terrorist acts in foreign countries and presidential announcements of antiterrorism programs or other press releases that duplicate our tracking of Executive Orders and Decision Documents.
10 Figures based on annual percentage change or standardized counts based on the length of documents or speeches mask the overall intensity of signals that we seek to convey.
11 These categories are based on our coding of rules and guidance materials. Domestic security consists of items coded as pertaining specifically to domestic security and relevant subcategories pertaining to response and recovery. Disaster preparedness consists of items addressing disaster preparedness, flood insurance, and elements of response and recovery. Items relating to administrative matters and disaster assistance were excluded from our analyses.
12 A Siegel-Tukey rank sum dispersion test of the two variances yields a test statistic of 3.65, which is statistically significant at p < .01. This confirms that the two series differ across time in terms of volatility. The Siegel-Tukey test does not make a priori distributional assumptions.
13 These were formally folded into the DHS in 2003. But, our data show that these agencies altered their response mode as early as 2002 given the prominent signals from elected officials after 9/11 to attend to the threat of terrorism. During 2002, these agencies issued 17 rules and guidance dealing with domestic security and disaster preparedness. Of these, 35% dealt with domestic security. Thirty-three per cent of the domestic security items were centralized, whereas 84% of disaster preparedness items were centralized. The increased reliance on centralized actions of these agencies during 2002 underscores our findings about the role of agency choices in affecting bureaucratic processing of demands rather than the external forces of institutional design.
14 The Justice Department's ODP was transferred to the DHS Directorate of Border and Transportation Security when the DHS came into existence in March 2003 although grants were still processed through the DOJ financial offices. In March 2004, the ODP was consolidated with the DHS Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness that reports directly to the Secretary of the DHS (see GAO 2005, 5).
15 Tom Ridge refused as Director of the OHS to appear before Congress citing executive privileges as an advisor to the President. The incommensurability of the scale of FEMA and DHS complicates the designation of top levels for which we consider appearances by the director or deputy director of FEMA and by the DHS officials with the title secretary, deputy secretary, under secretary, or administrator. This excludes DHS personnel who were the equivalent of second-level FEMA personnel prior to FEMA being folded into the DHS.
16 This chart was accessed at http://www.dhs.gov/xlilbrary/assets/Grants_AuditMigrationChart_Feb06.pdf on December 28, 2006.
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