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struggle to resolve technically complex, ill-defined, and rapidly changing policy problems. Indeed, such problems are virtually impossible to resolve with a single decision and agencies will often fail before they succeed.
The deficiencies in the regulatory politics literature discussed previously have occurred for at least two main reasons. First, social science scholarship over the last three decades has favored generalization over detailed case analysis. Thus, scholars opt for broad theoretical statements and “large-n” quantitative empirical studies that often miss the nuances of regulatory agency decision making. Second, studies of regulatory agency politics have tended to emphasize the role of external political forces in shaping policymaking. Although external politics is undoubtedly important, there is a second factor that scholars too often miss: internal agency decision-making processes. When scholars look inside an agency and carefully examine the process it goes through to make a major regulation, they see how personnel, technical knowledge, and ideas interact to shape policy. Admittedly, empirical exploration of internal agency processes is difficult, requiring qualitative methods (interviews, document analysis, and archival work) that many social scientists are not trained to utilize. However, by failing to account for internal agency decision-making processes, many theories of regulation do not consider the full range of variables influencing regulatory policy. In this study, I have taken advantage of the rich data set associated with the case of FCC cable television regulation in an attempt to develop a more complete picture of regulatory agency policymaking.
Whether I have ultimately succeeded or failed in accomplishing either of the goals stated above, I take full responsibility for the arguments and findings contained in this study.