Structure and Process, Politics and Policy: Administrative Arrangements and the Political Control of Agencies

I N 1977, Congress substantially revised the Clean Air Act,1 the nation's flagship legislation on environmental policy. Many changes were considered, and among those that Congress adopted was an intricate redefinition of the procedures to be used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in making rules.2 The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 (1970 Amendments), which had moved responsibility for air pollution regulation from the Public Health Service in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to the newly minted EPA, set up the EPA's rulemaking procedures as "informal" with few procedural requirements and considerable decisional flexibility.' After extensive debate in both the 94th and 95th Congresses,4 Congress changed this to a new hybrid process (more formal than "informal rulemaking" but less formal than "formal rulemaking") that requires a more elaborate written record and a clearer statement of agency intentions and of the bases for its decisions.' As a reading of the committee reports and floor debates about these and similar proposals makes clear, legislators regard the choice of administrative structure and process as vitally important.6 The legislative history of admin-