Presidential Administration and the Accountability Illusion

For over a decade, the Supreme Court has upended executive-branch structures that insulated administrative agencies from the White House. Judges and scholars justify this project in part by claiming that presidential control over administration boosts agencies’ accountability to the American people. Yet, despite the importance of “the people” as this endeavor’s asserted beneficiaries, public attitudes concerning this foundational claim are unknown. This Article puts this claimed connection to the test. Grounded in a set of novel experiments involving over five thousand participants, it presents the first evidence of Americans’ views regarding whether greater presidential authority over agencies enhances accountability to people like them. These experiments reveal that participants presented with an agency over which the president possesses the authority to appoint decision-makers, remove them for any reason, or review the agency’s proposed regulations are no more likely to perceive the agency as accountable than are participants presented with a politically insulated agency. Whereas prominent judges and scholars claim that these presidential-control mechanisms—that is, appointment, removal, and review authority—bolster agencies’ accountability to the people, the people do not agree. In a politically divided country, Americans do not experience presidential power over agencies as fostering accountability. This finding challenges the ongoing judicial project of tethering agencies to the president for the supposed benefit of the American people.