A Dynamic Measure of Bureaucratic Reputation: New Data for New Theory

Abstract

Abstract Bureaucratic reputation is one of the most important concepts used to understand the behavior of administrative agencies and their interactions with multiple audiences. Despite a rich theoretical literature discussing reputation, we do not have a comparable measure across agencies, between countries, and over time. I present a new strategy to measure bureaucratic reputation from legislative speeches with word‐embedding techniques. I introduce an original dataset on the reputation of 465 bureaucratic bodies over a period of 40 years, and across two countries—the U.S. and the U.K. I perform several validation tests and present an application of this method to investigate whether partisanship and agency politicization matter for reputation. I find that agencies enjoy a better reputation among the members of the party in government, with partisan differences less pronounced for independent bodies. Finally, I discuss how this measurement strategy can contribute to classical and new questions about political–administrative interactions.

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