In the complex and multilayered world of congressional budgeting, the authorization process attracts less attention than dramatic battles over taxes and deficits or spending bills. The literature on public policymaking rarely puts much emphasis on how and when Congress authorizes programs. Thad Hall's book fills an important gap in these literatures with his insightful analysis of the strategic use of short-term authorizations. He looks at many dimensions of authorizations, including their ability to induce stability by enforcing policy agreements, their relationship to congressional institutions and instrumental behavior by members, and their effect on the policy environment, policy implementation, and congressional oversight.

When George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, the education reforms did not include desired changes in Head Start. Why? According to Hall, it was because Head Start was not due for reauthorization for two more years, thus demonstrating how influential short-term authorizations are in structuring timing in the policy process. He argues that through short-term authorizations, “Congress and its committees can gain the benefits that accrue from planning when legislative activity will occur, and ensuring that a given policy issue is taken off of the legislative agenda for a fixed period of time between authorizations” (p. 3). Authorizations serve a gatekeeping function, inducing stability and preventing difficult policy agreements from unraveling over time. Short-term authorizations also affect the policy environment by fostering member reelection goals and strengthening committees. He argues that short-term authorizations are important to include when studying how policies change, adding an important timing dimension to the work of scholars such as John Kingdon, Bryan D. Jones and Frank Baumgartner, and Paul A. Sabatier and Hank C. Jenkins-Smith.

Short-term authorizations have been used by Congress only since the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 and were first employed to give members tighter control of the Marshall Plan. In the 1950s, they became an important tool for tightening congressional control over military procurement. Under House and Senate rules, no appropriation may be made for a program that does not have an enacted authorization. Authorizations create a program but also have a fiscal component that signals appropriators about appropriate levels of funding. Despite these requirements, one of the surprising revelations of this book is how often the rules are waived and how many programs operate on expired authorizations. Today, short-term authorizations remain particularly important in the areas of transportation, education, agriculture, commerce, defense, and international relations.

After providing a history of authorizations and his theoretical overview, Hall begins the empirical analysis of a set of related research questions. Chapter 4 considers the signaling process by measuring the authorization/appropriation gap. On average, since 1977, appropriators have approved 5.6% less in spending than authorized. But since 1989, the gap has grown to 30.5% (p. 47). Hall's analysis suggests that new budget rules adopted in the 1980s and 1990s constrained discretionary spending and weakened authorizing committees. That weakness is also suggested by the increasing number of programs operating on expired authorizations, now approximately 30%.

In Chapters 5, 6, and 7, Hall turns to the questions of oversight, steering agencies through reauthorization, and policy control. He concludes that reauthorizations are a critical part of “police patrol” oversight, whose importance may have been underestimated in comparison to “fire alarm” oversight. He finds that hearings are no more frequent during a reauthorization year and occur regularly over time. He also finds that programs with expired authorizations continue to receive scrutiny. Examining the reauthorization of Head Start, transportation programs, and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, he concludes that interested parties are able to achieve favorable outcomes. In terms of policy control, by examining the introduction of new legislation, he finds that reauthorizations are more important sources of changes in legislative activity than enhanced media coverage or congressional hearings.

Chapter 8 looks more closely at expired authorizations, which increased by 110% between 1990 and 1995, from 49 to 137 programs. His explanation is a combination of high transaction costs, growing partisan polarization, supermajority institutions, and the influx of inexperienced politicians after the 1994 elections. The consequences are poorer oversight, complications in the appropriations process, and weaker standing committees.

In his conclusion, Hall restates the importance of short-term authorizations for Congress in gaining predictability and stability and ensuring that difficult compromises do not come unraveled for a period of years. Normatively, he argues that short-term authorizations prevent wild swings in policy and level the playing field for interest groups.

There are relatively few problems with this concise and valuable analysis of what might seem to be an arcane topic. It would have been useful to put the phenomena of multiyear authorizations in some larger context in terms of the federal budget and totality of national programs. Although there are hundreds of important programs with short-term authorizations, they still represent a relatively small proportion of budget dollars and all programs. It would be helpful to see some overall comparisons over time. In terms of the policy process, certainly short-term authorizations are regular and predictable, but I remain unconvinced that they are the most important factor in opening a “policy window,” particularly for major, nonroutine policy change.

Overall, Authorizing Policy is an excellent contribution to our understanding of budgeting, legislative behavior, and national policymaking. Thad Hall combines the experience of a congressional insider with a scholarly appreciation of the congressional and public policy literatures. This work fills a real gap in the literature, and for those who commonly ignore the congressional authorization process, it provides both rich description and rigorous analysis of how consequential it can be.