We examine the impact of bureaucratic politics within the US Agency for International Development on the allocation of its development assistance. Existing studies of aid allocation have focused on donor interests, recipient needs, and recipient merit without accounting for the bureaucratic decision-making process that helps determine these budgets. We theorize that most field-based development officials seek to maximize their country's budgets and that better-staffed country offices have greater capacities to do so. We test this theory using novel data on USAID staffing patterns between 1980 and 2020 and leverage staff rotation patterns using an instrumental variable strategy. Consistent with our theory, results show that increasing the number of USAID staff in a country mission led to substantial increases in aid allocation. We draw on key informant interviews to explore mechanisms underlying this effect. Interviews highlight the close relationships between country-level aid allocation and two country office capacities which better staffing tended to increase: (1) understanding of the USAID budget process and (2) ability to move through time-consuming procedures related to funding commitment and disbursement. The findings have important implications for debates regarding the allocation of development assistance as well as broader discussions on bureaucratic politics in US foreign policy.

Misallocation of staff across subjurisdictions can have profound negative impacts on the performance of decentralized government agencies. Yet we lack an integrated view of the range of factors that can produce misallocation. I build a conceptual framework of the personnel (mis)allocation process through an historical study of Brazil's federal protected areas agency, which, according to prior research, could have prevented 600–1,700 km² of deforestation over its first 10 years through more effective personnel allocation. More broadly, this paper enhances our understanding of the determinants of bureaucratic structure, autonomy, and performance.

Many government agencies operate with fewer personnel than they need to perform effectively. Yet little research has explored how agencies might allocate their personnel so as to maximize performance with the personnel they have. I address this gap through a study of Brazil's federal protected areas agency, which manages the world's third largest system of conservation areas. Based on 66 interviews and econometric analyses covering 322 administrative units, I find that three moderators influence the relationship between sub-unit size and performance: the size of a sub-unit's jurisdiction, a sub-unit's likelihood of near-term failure, and the strength of a sub-unit's ties with local stakeholders. Personnel re-allocation strategies informed by these factors may have reduced deforestation on the order of 26% over the agency's first decade. This study contributes a framework for analyzing the efficacy of personnel allocation strategies, with implications for management of one of the world's greatest natural assets.

What shapes social-environmental regulations in the World Bank? To date, scholars have emphasized the influence of nongovernmental organization activism, donor power, and various elements of the Bank's internal culture and incentive system. This article documents a new and important source of influence: outside financing options for borrower countries. I demonstrate this influence through an in-depth study of the World Bank's Safeguards Review and Update, a four-year policy-making process that concluded in 2016. As alternative sources of finance carrying less stringent safeguard requirements than those of the World Bank proliferated in years preceding the Safeguards Review, borrowers gained negotiating power over Bank policy, enabling them to successfully push for more regulatory autonomy. These findings suggest that understanding the future of social-environmental standards in development finance institutions will require greater attention to new sources of finance and the power shifts they may entail.

Demand charges have recently emerged as an important feature in many proposals to reform residential electricity rates. Relying on load and income data for more than 1,000 utility customers, the authors provide an assessment of the impact this rate design could have on residential customer bills and examine the potential for home energy storage to enhance bill savings. One encouraging finding: demand charges do not disproportionately impact low-income customers relative to the rest of the sample.

Recognizing their critical importance in furthering global sustainability goals, environmental politics scholars are paying increasing attention to domestic public environmental organizations—how they vary across countries, what shapes them, and what their effects are. One salient feature of domestic public environmental organizations is the degree of autonomy that environmental agencies have from politicians. Such independence can be critical for insulating long-term reform efforts from short political cycles and ensuring that highly technical matters are led by specialists. Yet we know little about why some environmental agencies are more autonomous than others. Analyzing 39 national environmental agencies spanning six continents, I find that autonomy is positively related to country income levels and overall quality of governance but unrelated to political system type. I also highlight countries for which environmental agency autonomy is far above or below what is typical for countries with similar governance quality. This analysis advances our understanding of what shapes domestic public environmental organizations and provide clues as to where reform may be most valuable and feasible.