Regulatory Negotiation as a Form of Public Participation

The growth of administrative power in the first two-thirds of this century posed a dilemma for democratic societies: How do they reconcile democratic process with the powers invested in non-elected administrative officials? A resort to administrative power to deal with the complex issues of modern society was almost inevitable. Legislatures simply lacked the capacity to develop the necessary technical expertise, establish the needed administrative routines, and concentrate the required attention on the narrow sets of issues that twentieth-century governments had to address — whether it was financial markets, food and drug safety, transportation, energy or environmental quality. Administrative agencies were an answer to one set of questions — of how to organize government to deal with the demands of modern society — but they raised an entirely new set of questions related to democratic control and accountability.