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Abstract
This dissertation analyzes regulatory agencies as political organizations and addresses the nexus between bureaucratic design and effectiveness and accountability of public policy. A historical account of telecommunications regulation and the complex political organization that evolved with it is presented as a foundation. Two quantitative studies on the effects of various structures and institutions on policy outcomes and outputs are also presented. The first study asks if the sharing of authority among government actors is important for effectiveness; results provide guarded support for the importance of state-level program administration but condition its impact on the sharing of authority with other government subunits. The second quantitative study tests the impact of competition between the state legislature and its bureaucratic counterparts on the incidence of legislation that favors a subset of the electorate over the interest of the broader public; results show that state legislators are more likely to favor special interests when the locus of authority resides at the state level, and less likely to favor special interests when decision-making authority is shared between state and local government or when it is concentrated at the local level.