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The Puzzle of Private Rulemaking: Expertise, Flexibility, and Blame Avoidance in U.S. Regulation
Author(s) -
Weimer David L.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2006.00617.x
Subject(s) - rulemaking , blame , notice , allocative efficiency , incentive , law and economics , business , corporate governance , public administration , agency (philosophy) , public good , delegation , government (linguistics) , public economics , economics , political science , law , finance , sociology , psychology , social science , linguistics , philosophy , neoclassical economics , psychiatry , microeconomics
The standard federal regulatory process in the United States involves notice and comment by government bureaus. This traditional agency model of public rulemaking faces difficulties in taking full advantage of the expertise of stakeholders, and it has been criticized as being slow and inflexible; therefore, it is not surprising that alternative institutional forms involving the delegation of rulemaking to stakeholders have appeared. Yet it is surprising that private rulemaking has been used to allocate valuable goods such as transplant organs. Why is private rulemaking used as an allocative institution of governance? The answer recognizes the advantages it offers in certain rapidly changing circumstances in which essential expertise inheres in the stakeholders, as well as the asymmetric political rewards involved in the allocation of highly valued goods, which create incentives for politicians to avoid blame by delegating substantive rulemaking authority to nongovernmental organizations.