| Summary: | "Administrative law scholarship has increasingly focused on the ways in which Congress and the President coordinate the interactions of multiple agencies. Common motivating questions include how political principals should manage interagency relationships according to various normative criteria, such as efficiency or accountability. Few commentators, however, have pursued analogous inquiries about the internal structures and processes for drafting regulations within an agency. Despite the overlapping duties of staff members, there is little systematic analysis about how agency heads manage intra-agency - as opposed to interagency - coordination. As a result, the agency head has been neglected as an important determinant of institutional design. This Article seeks to provide a general account of how agency heads, distinct from political principals like Congress or the President, direct and operate their organizational divisions. More specifically, the analysis presents a theory of how bureaucratic leaders use internal structures and procedures to process information and reduce informational asymmetries in light of their individual preferences and exogenous uncertainties. In doing so, this Article offers a conceptual framework to analyze agency institutional design problems as well as to explain variations in bureaucratic form. Armed with these insights, the analysis then considers some normative tradeoffs among the contemplated coordination tools, including the implications for political and judicial oversight. It concludes by suggesting various reforms such as the judicially-enforceable disclosure of internal agency processes, as well as doctrines designed to foster accountability and protect agency expertise."
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