Professor: B. Dan Wood; Office: 2098 Allen Building; Phone: 845-1610; EMAIL: bdanwood@polisci.tamu.edu. Office Hours: 4:10-4:40 TR.

You are assigned to do an annotated bibliography on political science and/or economics work on one of the following research questions.

1)    What are the causes and consequences of economic inequality in the U.S.?

2)    How does a lack of health care insurance for millions of Americans affect the U.S. economy?

3)    How does government regulation/deregulation affect the U.S. banking and financial system?

4)    What are the economic consequences of regulating/not regulating factors affecting global climate change?

5)    How do deficits and debt affect U.S. economic welfare?

6)    How, if at all, does politics shape U.S. monetary policy?

7)    What determines the vigor and nature of U.S. antitrust regulation?

8)    How does discrimination affect the U.S. economy?

What is an annotated bibliography? It is a listing and summarization of the most important SCHOLARLY works in a particular research area (both journal articles and books). The bibliography may also include government reports. However, the bibliography should NOT include journalistic or textbook materials.

The bibliography should begin with a clear statement of the research question and some description of the important issues.

Each subsequent bibliographic entry should be summarized for its relevance to the research question. For each entry you should include a complete reference to the source in APSA format, a statement of the research design (how the author addresses a research question), hypotheses, methods, data, research findings, and how those findings pertain to the overarching research question. Note that in order to provide all of this information you will need to have read each article, book, or other work in the bibliographic entry.  The typical bibliographic entry should be no more than a page. Be succinct.

A good place to start in researching your question would be the library’s databases for academic journals. First, go to http://library.tamu.edu . Then select databases. Three good databases for our purposes are jstor, ebsco, and ingenta. From the database, use the included search engine to search on articles relating to your topic.

Another strategy would be to use the references at the end of a recent or important article in your area. Expand your search for important work simply by going through each article in the references.

A typical student question is how many entries should there be. The answer is that the annotated bibliography should include ALL of the important work on your research question.

You can tell if a work is important by checking whether it is cited by others, or running a citation search on google scholar at http://scholar.google.com .

The annotated bibliography will be graded in stages.  The purpose is to help you do well on the project. The first submission is due on Tuesday, November 22th.  The first revision counts 10 percent of the grade and will be returned with comments and suggestions for improvement.  The final revision is due on Tuesday, December 6rd and is worth another 20 percent of the grade.  The total weighting for the annotated bibliography is 30 percent of the final grade. 

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Annotated Bibliography Example Entries

The research question evaluated in this annotated bibliography is “How do presidential efforts at administrative control affect the behavior of federal bureaucracies?”

Wood, B. Dan. 1988. Bureaucrats, Principals, and Responsiveness in Clean Air Enforcements. American Political Science Review. 82 (March): 215-234.

The research question addressed by this article is “How do public bureaucracies respond to presidential efforts at political control?” Specifically, it evaluates the manner and extent to which the Environmental Protection Agency responded to presidential tools of administrative control during the early 1980s. Using time series intervention analysis techniques for monthly data running from 1977 through 1985, the author hypothesizes that Environmental Protection Agency enforcement outputs responded in a systematic fashion to changes in political appointments and budgets during the Reagan administration. Consistent with the hypothesis, large budget cuts in October 1981 resulted in about a 50 percent reduction in EPA inspections and abatement actions. This reduced level of enforcement lasted until March 1983 when EPA administrator Ann Gorsuch Burford was forced to resign by Congress and was subsequently replaced by William Ruckelshaus. A substantial proportion of the budget was restored later the same year. The study shows that public bureaucracies are responsive to presidential efforts at control. Presidential control of the bureaucracy occurs through formal tools that enable every president to have an impact on bureaucratic activities. From the standpoint of political science theory, the study verifies one aspect of principal-agent models of political control of bureaucracy. Specifically, political principals do effectively alter agent behavior through the use of monitoring and sanction.

Wood, B. Dan and Richard W. Waterman. 1994. Bureaucratic Dynamics: The Role of Bureaucracy in a Democracy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

The research question addressed by this book is “How do public bureaucracies respond to efforts at political control by the president, Congress, and, to a lesser extent, the courts?” The book begins with a discussion of past research on bureaucratic responsiveness. Then, it presents a theoretical framework that guides the research. Specifically, the authors use the principal-agent model in developing testable hypotheses. Hypotheses are tested using time series data from eight different bureaucracies over the period from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s. Focusing mainly on efforts at political control during the Reagan administration, the general findings are that bureaucracies respond to the president, Congress, and courts. However, the mechanisms of political control are varied. By far the most important tool of political control is political appointments. Appointees wield control by manipulating organizational incentives and direct supervision of subordinates. Budgets are also important, as are reorganization authority and oversight by Congress and the courts. The larger implication of the research is that bureaucracies are not the “massive, lumbering entities depicted in the lay literature. Rather, they are entities that are routinely molded and shaped by changing politics and political administration. The authors conclude with some recommendations for making bureaucracies even more responsive in the future.