Transcript Regulatory policymaking - University of San Diego Home Pages

Bureaucratic policymaking
How do bureaucrats make
policy?
Specific examples?
Why might it be good for
bureaucrats to make policy?
• Expertise
• Harder to pressure, fairer to everyone?
Why might it be problematic for
bureaucrats to make policy?
• Unelected
• Unaccountable because of civil service
protections
Why might it be good for policy
decisions be made by politicians?
• Accountable to the public
• Responsive to the public
Democratic control?
• What are the mechanisms for democratic control
of the bureaucracy?
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Congress: lawmaking
Congress: oversight
Congress: budget
President: budget
President: regulatory review
President: PARTISAN APPOINTMENTS
Should elected officials or neutral
experts make policy on:
• How to balance forest health against public use?
– Experts: biologists
– Elected officials: represent loggers or
environmentalists
• Troop levels? How to deal with foreign nations?
– Experts: military officers, foreign service officers
– Elected officials: represent public opinion
• Whether global warming is a real phenomenon?
– Experts: physicists, chemists, geologists
– Elected officials: represent public opinion
What is the theory of the
unitary executive?
Signing Statements
Example: the Torture ban
• Timeline:
• April 2004: News about Abu Ghraib
• Military officers ask McCain for
clarification on what interrogation
techniques are allowed
• McCain introduces “torture ban
amendment” to approps. bill
Torture ban timeline
• Sept. 2005: Bush threatens veto:
– Calls amendment “unnecessary and
duplicative”
– “McClellan said existing law already prohibits
the mistreatment of prisoners in American
custody, and the amendment ‘would limit the
president's ability as commander-in-chief to
effectively carry out the war on terrorism.’”
Torture bill timeline
• Senate votes 90-9 to approve
• House approves 308-122
• Bush signs, saying “Senator McCain has been a leader to
make sure that the United States of America upholds the
values of America as we fight and win this war on terror.
And we’ve been happy to work with him to achieve a
common objective, and that is to make it clear to the
world that this government does not torture, and that we
adhere to the international Convention of Torture,
whether it be at home or abroad.”
Text: Detainee Treatment Act
• No person in the custody or under the effective
control of the Department of Defense or under
detention in a Department of Defense facility
shall be subject to any treatment or technique of
interrogation not authorized by and listed in the
United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence
Interrogation.
• Sct. 1002
• No individual in the custody or under the
physical control of the United States
Government, regardless of nationality or
physical location, shall be subject to cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatment or
punishment.
• Sct. 1003
• In this section, the term `cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment or punishment' means the cruel, unusual, and
inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the
Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the
Constitution of the United States, as defined in the
United States Reservations, Declarations and
Understandings to the United Nations Convention
Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York,
December 10, 1984.
• Sct. 1003(d)
Bush’s second signing statement
• “The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division
A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent
with the constitutional authority of the President to
supervise the unitary executive branch and as
Commander in Chief and consistent with the
constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which
will assist in achieving the shared objective of the
Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of
protecting the American people from further terrorist
attacks.”