Resumen de Bureaucrats in the Headlights: Question Times and Delegation to Bureaucrats

Rob Salmond

• This study argues that the structure of parliamentary questioning affects decisions to delegate authority from ministers to bureaucrats. Open, spontaneous question times where ministers can be forced to account for bureaucratic action publicly and with little or no notice are hypothesised to be associated with less delegation. This is because the reputational risks to ministers are higher in such an environment. Cross-national empirical evidence, building on Huber and Shipan's 2002 analysis of delegation, supports this theory. The evidence suggests that valence dimensions as well as policy dimensions are important to delegation decisions, and also supports a general conjecture that governments delegate less to bureaucrats when legislative–executive relations favour the legislature.