The Craft of Bureaucratic Neutrality

How do interest groups and elected officials affect how government regulators enforce the law? This book reconciles the apparent contradiction between political understandings of bureaucracy, in which interest groups and elected officials shape how the law is enforced, with accounts in public administration and elsewhere about the neutral and consistent implementation of the law. It shows that bureaucracies can pursue a strategy of 'strategic neutrality' to build political support, therefore demonstrating that neutrality can persist in the face of external pressures and has political origins.