We present the American State Administrators Project (ASAP), a decades‐long survey of state agency leaders. This remarkable dataset provides a 50‐state chronological portrait of state administrative leaders, what they think, and what their agencies do. The dataset has traditionally been closely held but is now being shared with the broader scholarly community for the first time. We use this article to demonstrate the dataset's potential to advance theory and knowledge of the modern administrative state through the example of principal‐agent theory. As we show, the ASAP data allow us to reorient scholarship away from an empirical focus on how the president/governor, legislature, and other political principals try to influence the bureaucracy and toward a fuller appreciation of how bureaucrats formulate and administer public policy in a political environment. Such a refocusing is critical because it better recognizes the “agency” held by bureaucratic agents within modern governance.

中文翻译：

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美国国家行政人员项目：面向学者的新的50个州，50年的数据资源

我们介绍了美国国家行政人员计划（ASAP），这是对国家机构领导者长达数十年的调查。这个非凡的数据集提供了州行政领导者，他们的想法以及他们的机构所做的50个州的时间顺序描述。数据集传统上一直是封闭的，但是现在第一次与更广泛的学术界共享。我们使用本文通过委托代理理论的例子来证明数据集在发展现代行政状态理论和知识方面的潜力。正如我们所展示的，ASAP数据使我们能够将学术研究的方向从对总统/州长，立法机关，其他政治负责人则试图影响官僚机构，并更全面地了解官僚机构如何在政治环境中制定和管理公共政策。这种重新定位很关键，因为它可以更好地识别现代治理中官僚机构所拥有的“机构”。