Reputation-Sourced Authority and the Prospect of Unchecked Bureaucratic Power

We explore the democratic implications of a reputational account of bureaucratic authority. While an influential literature has examined the relevance of reputation-and mutual exchange between principals and agents in public organizations generally-the normative implications of these insights have largely escaped scrutiny. We discuss how reputation-building impacts both the ability and the motivation of principals to oversee administrative policymaking. We argue that reputation-sourced authority eschews ex ante incentives through the claims-making and maneuvering of bureaucrats as they develop reputations with audiences. At the same time, it de-legitimizes ex post oversight because monitoring and compliance must compete both with reputational authority and with resistance from the audiences that are the very sources of such authority.