Legislative Choice of Regulatory Forms: Legal Process or Administrative Process?

Perhaps because of the importance and visibility of some regulatory agencies and commissions, numerous observers have come to regard the administrative form of regulation as the “logical“ or “natural“ method of intervening in the economy or society. In fact, however, regulation comes in a variety of forms. The administrative form might seem all pervasive upon first consideration, but a variety of legislative enactments clearly regulatory in effect such as large portions of the tax code, direct government subsidies and so forth suggest that delegation of legislative authority to administrative entities is, not so universal as is often assumed. Moreover, when viewed in historical perspective, choice of bureaucratic implementation of regulatory programs does not obviously emerge as the “logical“ or “natural“ method, at least not in the view of many political actors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper surveys a heterogeneous body of literature on the subject of regulatory origin in order to identify proposed explanations for legislative choice of administrative forms of regulation in preference to judicial enforcement of legislative enactments. The focus of the survey is on the choices made by legislators and the considerations underlying their choices. Among the latter are (1) beliefs in the inherent superiority of administrative forms, (2) efforts to escape the costs, political and otherwise, of regulating directly, (3) ideologies supportive of delegation to administrators, and (4) uncertainty about the future operation of the regulatory process. These ideas are examined in an exploratory spirit; no firm conclusions are drawn at this time

Foundations of a Theory of Constituency Influence

This chapter contains a presentation and discussion of the components of our theory. We will introduce and attempt to justify a number of concepts and assumptions which in combination make possible the analysis in later chapters. Like all theoretical worlds, the one we posit is more or less unrealistic, an idealization of the empirical reality we hope to explain. But if we abstract appropriately and capture the most important features of the empirical situation, then we may expect to find that the theoretical processes present in the model world bear some correspondence to the behavior we observe in the empirical world

Bureaucratic (?) Failures: Causes and Cures

Bureaucracy is a traditional object of disparaging commentary, but in recent years it has received more than a proportionate share of popular and political criticism. Perceived problems of wasteful, unresponsive, power-hungry, and out-of-control bureaucracy have generated calls for across the board cut-backs in bureaucratic size and authority, as well as for various structural reforms designed to limit the activities of what is left after the pruning. This paper argues that much criticism of American bureaucracy is misplaced, and that attempts at structural tinkering are therefore doomed to fail. Too many critics of contemporary bureaucracy fail to understand that deeper political (usually Congressional) failures are the basic causes and bureaucratic failures often only symptoms. The single-member district electoral system, re-election seeking Congressmen, and the Congressional division of labor combine to produce a system in which apparent bureaucratic failures emerge as a by-product of efforts to generate political support. Structural reforms may be useful to contemplate, but they should address electoral and Congressional structures as well as if not more so than bureaucratic structures

Legislative Facilitation of Government Growth: Universalism and Reciprocity Practices in Majority Rule Institutions

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Axiomatic Models of Risk and Decision: An Expository Treatment

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The Decline of Collective Responsibility in American Politics

In the American constitutional system the formal powers of government are sufficiently fragmented that no single official, including the president, is individually responsible for the outcomes of government activity. Thus, American officials face the continual temptation to "pass the buck"—to avoid any difficult or politically dangerous decision in the hope that some other official(s) will get stuck with the consequences of acting or failing to act. The American citizen in turn, faces the difficult task of assessing responsibility on numerous officials all of whom deny that they share in that responsibility. The only remedy for such a situation is some form of collective responsibility by which all officials who share authority are held equally responsible for acting or failing to act. Thus far in our history the political party has been the only vehicle by which collective responsibility has been enforced. Strong parties provide the leadership to organized and maintain national policymaking coalitions, and in doing so become clearly responsible for the policies which emerge. Unfortunately, the political party has undergone a steady decline in American politics, a decline evident in the organizational, electoral and governmental spheres. As a result there is a crisis of collective responsibility in contemporary American politics. This situation contributes to more often discussed contemporary problems such as immobilism in our policymaking processes, the increasing importance of single-issue groups, and the increasing political alienation of the American populace

Short and Long-Term Effects of Economic Conditions on Individual Voting Decisions

A review of the Political Business Cycle (PBC) literature provides grounds for cautious optimism: the literature is cumulative and it exhibits steady theoretical advancement. Early contributions focused primarily on the demand side of the system, i.e. do voters react to economic fluctuations in simple, direct, self-interested fashion (e.g. Kramer, 1971)? More recently, the supply side of the system has attracted attention: do governments stimulate their economies in the period prior to elections then dampen those economies after the electoral challenge is past (e.g. Nordhaus, 1975)? And in current research scholars have begun to integrate the two sides of the system as part of what ultimately may become a reasonable general equilibrium model of the PBC (e.g. Fair, 1975; Frey and Schneider, 1978a)