A Public Choice Case for the Administrative State

Abstract

Public choice models have tended to take a dim view of delegation of policymaking authority to administrative agencies, but public choice methods can be used just as easily to construct a normative defense of delegation. We offer just such a defense here. We construct a simple formal model posing a hypothetical voter choice: whether to delegate policy decisions to elected politicians or to agencies. We then use the model to (1) suggest reasons why voters might often prefer to delegate policymaking authority to agencies, and (2) address the questions of whether agency policymaking autonomy is desirable, constitutionally valid, and practically workable irrespective of whether voters prefer it. Ours is essentially a Madisonian argument for deliberative decision-making in the modern administrative state, one that mirrors non-public choice defenses of administrative agencies as loci of deliberation. We thus take a different route to conclusions similar to those reached by Mark Seidenfeld, that civic republicanism is consistent with broad delegations of political decisionmaking authority to officials with greater expertise and fewer immediate political pressures than directly elected officials or legislators. Our model demonstrates that agency policymaking is often desirable (and often desired by voters) irrespective of the ability of elected politicians to control what agencies do.