Date Thesis Awarded
5-2017
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Public Policy
Advisor
Paul Manna
Committee Members
Brian Beach
Jennifer Mellor
Abstract
During the Obama administration, waves of new legislation upended regulatory environments in finance and healthcare. At the forefront of these changes were the federal bureaucracies tasked with adopting and implementing new rules based on the legislation. This thesis examines final rules published by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Health and Human Services related to the Dodd-Frank Act and Affordable Care Act to determine which organized interests have an advantage during the notice-and-comment period required by the Administrative Procedures Act, what factors encourage agencies to change proposed rules, and how regulatory bureaucracies differ from public service agencies on these topics. The results indicate that biases towards particular types of commenters exist, but those biases differ across different types of agencies. Furthermore, coalitions of commenters are effective at achieving desired results in both types of agencies.
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Recommended Citation
Testa, Michael R., "The Political Environment of Federal Rulemaking: An Analysis of Comment Submissions on Regulatory Outcomes" (2017). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 1080.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/1080
