Mass Administrative Reorganization, Media Attention, and the Paradox of Information

How does media attention influence government decisions about whether to terminate independent administrative agencies? The authors argue that an agency's salience with partisan audiences has a direct effect, but a high media profile can disrupt normal government monitoring processes and obfuscate termination decisions. This argument is evaluated in the context of a recent mass administrative reorganization by the British coalition government using probit and heteroscedastic probit regression models. The evidence suggests that termination is less likely for agencies salient in newspapers popular with the government's core supporters but not those read by its minority coalition partner. We also find that agencies with greater overall newspaper salience as well as younger agencies have a higher error variance.

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [Mass Administrative Reorganization, Media Attention, and the Paradox of Information. Public Administration Review 75, 6 p855-866 (2015)], which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12396. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions: https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/licensing/self-archiving.html#3.

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Work Title Mass Administrative Reorganization, Media Attention, and the Paradox of Information
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Open Access
Creators
  1. Anthony M. Bertelli
  2. J. Andrew Sinclair
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Public Administration Review
Publication Date June 4, 2015
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12396
Deposited November 10, 2023

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