For the Balkinization symposium on Susan Rose-Ackerman, Democracy and Executive Power: Policymaking Accountability in the US, the UK, Germany, and France (Yale University Press, 2021).
Susan Rose-Ackerman
I am very grateful to Jack Balkin and to the seven participants
in the symposium on Democracy and
Executive Power: Policymaking Accountability in the US, the UK, Germany, and
France. The symposium coincides with the book’s publication in London,
following its October publication in the US. The aim is to generate an informed
debate about the value of public consultation and reason-giving in justifying
executive policymaking in representative democracies. In engaging with different
dimensions of my work, I hope that the blog posts will encourage administrative
law and constitutional scholars in the US and beyond to ask how my arguments
might or might not apply both to internal debates in my case study countries
and to other legal and political systems as well.
The blog posts engage with the differing executive
policymaking processes in my case study countries and provide critical perspectives
on my defense of strong public engagement in administrative rulemaking. They assess
my arguments in the light of other contemporary scholars, including the work of
the bloggers themselves. They direct readers to important work by Margin Cohn, Blake
Emerson, Jerry Mashaw, Edward Page, Eberhard Schmidt Aßmann, and Paul Tucker and
to Frank Goodnow’s comparative administrative law treatise from 1893.
Fundamental questions engage the participants: Do administrative rulemaking procedures matter to the justifications for executive branch policymaking? Even if they do matter, are they worth the time and trouble needed to implement them in practice? As Peter Strauss aptly remarks, I am seeking a difficult compromise between efficiency, transparency, participation, and accountability—one that cannot satisfy any of these ideals its pure form. My comparative exercise looks across several well-established systems of executive rulemaking to isolate their strengths and weakness and to suggest ways forward.
My cases are all representative democracies that delegate
policymaking power to the executive, guided and constrained by the language of
statutes and constitutions. I assume, and my commentators accept the premise,
that a modern regulatory-welfare state cannot function effectively without
delegation to the executive, including specialized expert agencies. But the technical
expertise of public officials is not sufficient. I argue that in a democracy
the application of specialized knowledge to policy ought to require outreach to
citizens and civil society groups, as well as to those who are directly
affected. Even executive officials who can trace their political authority back
to the voters--presidents, prime ministers, and their appointees—ought to be
accountable to citizens as they implement public policies, not just at election
time.
In seeking to understand four different systems of public
law, I have developed a framework for assessing the ways in which each country deals
with the issues that arise when policymaking occurs in executive bodies. To do
so, as Matthias Ruffert points out, comparative law must wrestle with the
problem of translation. I use the word “accountability” in my book’s title, but
other languages, including French and German, tend to use a literal translation
of that term to refer to honest and competent financial accounts -- the
preserve of accountants. My commentators understand its broader meaning as a
reference to the obligation of public officials to justify their actions to
citizens, not just as financially correct, but also as effective policy
responses. As a second example, the term “agency” in Europe refers to the national
regulatory bodies that resulted from European Union policies. To some extent,
these agencies resemble independent regulatory bodies in the US, but Americans
use the term “agency” more broadly to refer to such bodies as the Environmental
Protection Agency, inside the core executive.
My commentators have sufficient comparative experience of
their own not to fall into such misunderstandings. Rather, they engage with the
practical problem of how to legitimate rulemaking procedures in polities with
millions or hundreds of millions of voters. Some citizens will be directly
affected through impacts on their property and human rights. Others will have
policy views and/or information relevant to understanding the impact of a
policy on the citizenry. Administrative rulemaking procedures should include
invitations for both types of civil society input, as a necessary condition for
policy delegation. These procedures leave the ultimate policy choices in the
hands of those with political accountability and subject matter expertise, but
require them both to consult broadly and to supply public reasons for rules
with the force of law.
As Liz Fisher points out, my comparative study is “thin” in
the sense that I do not take account of all the complex details of case law and
doctrine. She used “thin” in a descriptive, not a critical sense, and she
defends my approach as one route into the study of public law. She is correct
that I have tried to capture the basic legal and constitutional structures of
the four cases and to analyze how each system operates in practice without
getting lost in minutiae. I include lots of case-specific details, but I have
tried to retain a fundamental anchor in the underlying cross-country
differences. Although I articulate these differences, I do not believe that
they should be accepted as historically determined and unchangeable. My goal is
to encourage national-level debates over executive policymaking accountability
and to put the issue of public consultation and reason-giving on the table for
discussion.
The US Administrative Procedure Act (APA) articulates one
route to rulemaking legitimacy. It mandates that the body issuing the rule,
whether a core executive department or an independent agency, must follow
certain procedures focused on public legitimacy that do not mimic judicial
courtroom practice. These are public notice, a hearing process not limited to
those whom the agency selects, and a public statement of reasons. Judicial
review concentrates on enforcing these procedural requirements – as well as
assuring the regulation’s consistency with the implementing statute and the Constitution.
Of course, in practice, there is much to criticize about the operation of the
APA process, and presidents and cabinet members often manage to avoid or
undermine its demands. Nevertheless, it establishes a minimal set of conditions
that seek democratic accountability through procedural requirements. In other
words, democratic accountability depends not just on the chain of legitimacy
from officials to elected presidents and legislators to the voters. Given the
weaknesses of the so-called “chain”, participants are involved in the APA rulemaking
process, not just as holders of individual rights but also as democratic citizens.
My concern with the citizen’s role in informing executive
policymaking has a special salience for Germany and France as members of the
European Union. For them, establishing the democratic legitimacy of rulemaking
procedures is made more difficult by the shift of much regulatory policymaking
to the EU level. As Peter Strauss observes, European administrative law
scholars have drafted a proposed EU administrative law code that would include
a notice-and-comment process for executive rulemaking. However, Member States
and the European Parliament have little incentive to enact such a code, and the
Commission -- the EU’s bureaucracy -- expresses mixed feelings for procedural
reforms, especially if subject to judicial review. To me, such a code would be
a particularly important locus for public accountability, given other
democratic deficits in the EU structure of governance.
Turning back to the country cases that are my book’s focus,
several of my commentators point to the difficulty of putting my ideals into
practice given the political incentives of those with executive and legislative
power at the country level.
One form of skepticism is John Ferejohn’s argument that
substance rather than procedure is the root of political legitimacy and that
legally required public participation can be undermined and manipulated by
those with executive power – allowing them to escape accountability in real-world
settings. I agree that this will happen in some cases, but to me, that result does
not undermine the basic argument for legally required consultations during
executive rulemaking. The APA, importantly, includes some safeguards against
bias by refusing to give the public body the power to limit who may post
comments and by requiring a public statement of reasons when it issues a rule.
As I discuss in my book, the APA’s provisions have important weaknesses,
especially the lack of a requirement for outreach beyond a notice in the
Federal Register. Nevertheless, they set a minimum standard for public input.
Thomas Perroud, my co-author on much of the work that lies
behind my discussion of the French case, strongly supports my normative
argument but expresses pessimism about the likelihood that France will adopt
the relevant reforms. Part of the problem is the weakness of the French
legislature relative to the president. However, also fundamental are weaknesses
in civil service’s training and career incentives. These critiques may seem
misguided to those who view the French civil service as a model of
professionalism based on an ethic of public service. Perroud, however, has an
insider’s perspective. He emphasizes “the grip of the high civil service on
policymaking” and worries that a weak civil society is unlikely to provide a
strong counterweight, even if invited to participate. At present, when president
organize broad consultations, they are unlikely to provide much balance to their
policy priorities.
Drawing on the case of Brazil, Mariana Prado expresses
concern for the way a chief executive can undermine even legal consultation
requirements. She shows how a powerful president can use public consultations,
even those required by law, to undermine the technocratic policy choices of
nominally independent agencies. She applies Kim Scheppele’s concept of
“autocratic legalism” to show how a powerful president (or in Scheppele’s case,
the Hungarian prime minister) can use consultative processes to delay and
undermine the recommendations of expert bodies. A consultation mandate,
standing alone, is subject to manipulation by those with political power. An
independent and competent judiciary is a necessary check. However, as the Vermont Yankee case has taught US
administrative lawyers and as Perroud shows for the French case, courts may not
support procedural challenges to administrative decisions. One lesson of
Prado’s post is that cross-country borrowing needs to be done with care and with
an awareness of how partial reforms can go wrong.
Matthias Ruffert refers to his own participation in a
multi-year effort to reform German public law, including the reform of
rulemaking procedures. In Germany, as in my other European cases, the main
cases of public involvement concern public-planning decisions -- for example,
the location of highways and high-tension power lines, the rebuilding of a
railway station, or, in the past, the construction of nuclear power plants. As Ruffert
points out, such public involvement has a mixed record, sometimes excessive,
other times insufficient or biased. Furthermore, such input is not generally required
for the promulgations of rules with the force of law (Rechtsverordnungen), which some characterize as political
activities beyond the reach of administrative law. Consultation frequently
occurs in practice, but its adequacy is not subject to judicial review. The
environment is a partial exception, but the relevant environmental treaty
dealing with the civil society access to executive decision-making mainly
concerns project-level decisions. It enhances the consultation rights of civil
society organizations for such decisions but has little to say about
rulemaking.
Jeff King, a British academic, well-informed about the US
case and deeply involved in a study of national responses to Covid-19, shares
my basic interest in limiting the democratic deficit of executive procedures
that produce rules with the force of law. In critiquing my recommendations,
however, he accepts the so-called “ossification” hypothesis concerning American
practices that emphasizes the time and trouble characteristic of the
notice-and-comment process. To the extent this objection is valid, it suggests
the need to reform, not abolish, these procedures. Indeed, King is himself a
leading reformer in the UK, joining other commentators who urge that the Houses
of Parliament should do a better job of reviewing proposed rules, called
Statutory Instruments (SIs). Such review already occurs for many SIs and
involves both the Lords and Commons. Jeff urges that these processes should be
strengthened. This is a worthy goal, but there are several structural features
that its advocates need to surmount. The most important is the British parliamentary
system itself -- which implies that a majority of the Commons organizes the
government and populates the cabinet. That fact casts doubt on the ability of
the Commons to provide independent review. In addition, if the House of Lords
has a role in the review of SIs, it must overcome its lack of democratic
legitimacy as an appointive and hereditary body. Nevertheless, reformers may
well develop plausible responses to these critiques and come up with ideas that
might be transferable to the US. However, given the US separation of powers with
two elected houses, intensive Congressional review would produce a deeply
serious problem of ossification—not just delay, but deadlock. The Chadha case, holding that legislative vetoes of executive regulations are
unconstitutional, of course, limits statutory options, but it has the
salutatory effect of giving Congress the incentive to consider the benefits and
costs of delegation at the drafting stage.
In spite of the lack of general procedural requirements for
executive rulemaking, all three European governments engage in public
consultations over broad policies at their own initiative. These processes may
have lessons for those who seek legal reforms in executive rulemaking
procedures, but so long as they merely reflect the political priorities of the incumbents,
they will have limited impact. They pose the special danger of political
manipulation emphasized by Perroud and Prado.
Whatever the weaknesses of the US notice and comment process, at least,
it creates a legal framework for rulemaking that is required even when the
executive would prefer to avoid its strictures.
American reformers must also confront other fundamental
issues: How should agencies engage in outreach to engage concerned civil-society
groups, including lowering the costs of participation? How can use of
technocratic experts be reconciled with public input that may be heartfelt but
lack a strong knowledge base? When should the executive be able to avoid the
notice-and-comment process by invoking exceptions or my using policy tools that
do not have the force of law, such as executive orders or memoranda? How should
the rulemaking process proceed when many program beneficiaries do not know that
they will be beneficiaries at the time of the rulemaking?
My aim in writing this book was to generate an informed
debate about the relationship between executive power and legitimacy in
representative democracies. I focus on four countries, but they are important
exemplars of alternative routes to public involvement in executive
policymaking. Borrowing can never be a routine and uncritical affair, but the
study of different systems can help reformers in one location to understand the
range of options and come up with new ideas. I am very grateful to my
commentators for engaging in precisely this debate – and encouraging others to
join in, including scholars from other parts of the world that confront the
same fundamental problems.
Susan Rose-Ackerman is
the Henry R. Luce Professor of Law and Political Science, Emeritus, and
Professorial Lecturer, Yale Law School, Her email is
susan.rose-ackerman@yale.edu.