An Empirical Examination of Adjudications at the National Labor Relations Board

Understanding empirically how administrative agencies work is crucial to designing an optimal political system. In this dissertation, I study the National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB”) administrative adjudication decisions during the Clinton and second Bush presidencies. In addition to gathering necessary information about how a particular agency actually works, I examine the impact that partisanship has in impacting case outcomes, and in particular how partisan panel effects affect case outcomes. I also look at how other political actors, such as the reviewing court of appeals, oversee agency decisions. Further, the study is one of the first to empirically look at how agencies go about the business of interpreting governing statutes. Such empirical information does much to inform our understandings about the role of partisanship in agency decisionmaking. Moreover, it informs our understanding of how multi-member adjudicative bodies make decisions as well as what should be the appropriate relationship between reviewing courts and administrative agencies.