What is the best way for lawmakers to choose among ideologically different bureaucrats? Intuition suggests to screen candidates and to choose the bureaucrat who is more ideologically consistent. Drawing on a game-theoretic model and laboratory experiment, we test whether this premise can be supported theoretically as well as empirically. Our model features an oversight game with one lawmaker and two bureaucrats who need to overcome different ideological distance for fulfilling the same implementation task. The law maker can acquire information about the agents’ ideological position (screening) and the actual performance of the chosen agent (oversight). We find that the lawmaker would be well advised to utilize oversight rather than screening if screening is costly and the bureaucrats can know whether screened or not. These theoretical expectations are tested in a series of laboratory experiments.
